A BILL to criminalise buying sex while decriminalising the act of selling it has been lodged at Holyrood.

Alba MSP Ash Regan’s Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill — dubbed the “Unbuyable Bill” — would also give those seeking routes out of prostitution a statutory right to support, and quash historic convictions.

Based on the “Nordic model” seen in Sweden, Norway and France, it faces opposition from Scotland for Decrim, which argues for full decriminalisation of the trade.

But Ms Regan said: “Prostitution is not a job like any other, as some lobby groups claim; it is a system of commercial sexual exploitation that targets the vulnerable, is driven by demand and is enabled by silence.

“Unbuyable is the first key step in tackling attitudes that have shamefully normalised inequality of the sexes and underpinned the scourge of male violence against women.

“It recognises what so many are afraid to say: that buying sexual access to a human being is a form of male violence.

“We must reframe shame. It does not belong to exploited women and men — it belongs to the men who buy them.”