AN SNP minister has voiced her “significant and deep concerns” about a new Bill that aims to quash past convictions of those involved in prostitution.

The Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill, tabled by Alba MSP Ash Regan, seeks to criminalise those who buy sex while enshrining in law greater support for those selling sex.

A key plank of that additional support is overturning any convictions they have accumulated, with Ms Regan saying that since 1982, as many as 10,459 women have been convicted of soliciting.

Community safety minister Siobhian Brown has said this is “not a step that can be taken lightly,” and queried the accuracy of Ms Regan’s claims.

She argued that Police Scotland only “holds 2,773 case records involving 791 individuals,” and that the estimated cost of the process — £250,000 — is wide of the mark, noting that the process to quash the Scottish convictions of those caught up in the Post Office Horizon scandal was “estimated to be £804,000 based on 200 people.”

Ms Brown’s comments, made in a letter to Holyrood’s criminal justice committee as it prepares to scrutinise the proposals, come just days after the Scottish government published a paper arguing evidence was “limited” on the impact of these “challenging demand approaches.”

As she launched the Bill in May, however, Ms Regan insisted: “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.

“Commodifying human beings has consequences.

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