FORMER SNP minister Ash Regan has branded her old party as “quite disgusting” for their rejection of her prostitution bill, which would have resulted in the act of buying sex becoming criminalised in Scotland.
During a podcast interview, she also suggested that the SNP is a party with “zero integrity” which does not care about “vulnerable” women and girls.
Ash Regan, who is currently campaigning as an independent in the Edinburgh region, last year introduced the Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill, which would have seen the purchase of sex become a criminal act in Scotland.
Despite explicitly recognising prostitution as a form of violence against women, the Scottish Government refused to back the bill, whipped MSPs against it, and the bill was voted down 64-54 at stage one.
At the time, the Scottish Government said that it rejected the bill because there was not enough time left of this parliamentary session to amend it to deliver its aims.
Regan rubbished this explanation, saying that “all bills need amendments”, and suggested the SNP may have refused to back the bill out of personal malice.
She appeared on an episode of the Patterson Podcast, an Edinburgh-based news, current affairs, and general interest podcast, to discuss her “unbuyable” bill and its rejection.
She claimed that people involved in prostitution are “some of the most marginalised and vulnerable people you will ever meet”.
On Regan’s website, she cites statistics which show that 20% of sex workers began in the industry as children, 40% had been trafficked, 60% had addiction issues, 80% experienced violence and abuse in prostitution, and 90% had mental health issues.
On the SNP’s rejection of her bill, she added: “Whatever the reason and whatever reasons they gave, I didn’t find any of the reasons they gave very convincing.
“Unfortunately, it’s given rise to the perception that this was based on malice, that they just didn’t want to do it because it was something that I’d come up with.
“And if something is your party policy and something aligns with you government policy then you shouldn’t be voting against it, because that shows you to be a party with absolutely zero integrity, and a party that doesn’t care about what are mainly very vulnerable women and girls.
“It’s actually quite disgusting,” she added emphatically.
She said that the government told her that the bill could not pass because it would need amendments.
She refuted this defence, however, saying that “every bill needs amendments”.
She added: “That’s what the three-stage process is for, bills do not go in perfect then stay the same to the end.
“The whole point is, bills go in at stage one, you do extensive consultation, you get witnesses to give evidence.
“From that, you refine the bill at stage two, then you refine it again at stage three, so to say that a bill needs amendments, and that’s a reason not to support it – quote frankly, it’s nonsense.”
Regan was suspended from parliament for two days over a social media post about Greens MSP Maggie Chapman just prior to the bill’s stage one vote.
At the time of the bill’s rejection, the Scottish Government said that bill had to be rejected because of concerns with its drafting, and fears that there would not be enough time in the parliamentary session to amend it to deliver its aims.
Siobhian Brown, who replaced Regan as Minister for Victims and Community Safety after Regan’s defection to the Alba Party in 2023, expressed regret at having to reject the bill, but stated:
“Whilst the Scottish Government strongly supports the principle of criminalising those who purchase sex, the bill’s aims to protect women, legislation in principle alone is not sufficient to ensure that we deliver that aim.”
Following a question from Ross Patterson, the eponymous Scottish journalist who runs the podcast, Regan explained: “I did engage with the government a number of times over the last year, and I can’t honestly say they gave me one solid, constructive reason.
“As a member in charge of the bill, you’re able to change the bill, so if they government had come to me and said, ‘we’ve got a real problem with this part of it’, I could have said to them ‘right, okay, let’s work together to get this to a place where you feel you can support it’.
“The problem is, we never had any conversations like that, they just kept repeating things like ‘oh, well, we don’t really know’ – it was very woolly.
“That’s when you start to think that maybe there’s another reason why they wouldn’t support it.”
Regan’s bill would have criminalised the buying of sex, rather than the selling, to shift the criminality onto the buyers, rather than the mostly female sex workers.
Critics of the Nordic Model of criminalising the purchase of sex claim that the law does not actually reduce demand, and rather simply pushes the industry underground – leading to unregulated, unsafe working environments.
Regan went on to discuss the release of the Epstein files and the impact that had on the discourse surrounding exploitation and prostitution, before suggesting that there may be members of the Scottish Parliament who are buyers of sex.
