Plans to create "tolerance zones" for street prostitution have been criticised by the police.

The Scottish Police Federation said opposition to the plans put forward by the Scottish National Party's Margo MacDonald was based on operational and not moral grounds.

Consultation ends on Friday on a draft bill that would allow local councils to establish a zone where soliciting would be permitted.

Supporters of Ms MacDonald's plan said the zones could be monitored by police, helping to prevent under-age prostitution and to keep away pimps while protecting the women, their clients and the general public.

This year, we've already had one 14-year-old involved in the street scene

Ruth Morgan Thomas Scotpep

But Doug Keil, general secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, said: "We're interested in general public safety, the safety of women working in the street and the maintenance of good order, and we don't think tolerance zones are the way forward, whether they be legalised or not."

He said by-laws were generally used to prohibit activities, while Ms MacDonald's proposals would permit councils to make an illegal activity legal in a specific and limited area.

Mr Keil told the BBC: "We would actually question whether that's lawful.

English trade

"We certainly couldn't advocate legalising and licensing prostitution within premises, but... that might prove safer for the women."

He also said there were fears the zones could attract prostitutes from other parts of Scotland and northern England, as well as drug-dealers and other criminals.

But Ruth Morgan Thomas, of the Edinburgh-based prostitutes' support group Scotpep, insisted the capital's tolerance zone in Leith had brought "phenomenal benefits" to the community.

Margo MacDonald: Introduced bill

She said a girl aged under 16 had been identified working on Edinburgh's streets for the first time in two years following the scrapping of the zone in 2001.

Ms Morgan Thomas said: "One of the achievements of the Edinburgh zone was that we did not have drug-dealers, we did not have pimps or the extortion racketeers that you find."

"If you operate the system Edinburgh operated for almost 20 years, you find that those individuals no longer feel able to bring these young people in so you're not confronted with under-16s.

'Gentrified' area

"This year, we've already had one 14-year-old involved in the street scene."

Ms MacDonald lodged the Prostitute Tolerance Zones (Scotland) Bill last November, only days before the scheme in Edinburgh was scrapped.

The city's red light area was moved from Coburg Street to Salamander Street in Leith last August.

Leith became a magnet for prostitutes

The switch was prompted by complaints from residents following the gentrification of the area in the late 1990s.

However, the Salamander Street experiment also met local opposition and ended in November.

Police had unofficially tolerated the activities of prostitutes who gathered in Leith since the early 1980s to make it easier for health agencies to regulate the spread of HIV.

The prostitutes were given strict guidelines, such as when they could congregate and how many people would be permitted in the area.

Ms MacDonald said the number of prostitutes in Edinburgh had actually fallen during the operation of the tolerance zone.

'Not a magnet'

And she suggested many frontline police officers had been broadly supportive of the measure.

She said: "Most of the officers on the ground, who I have spoken to, think it's a very sensible way to manage street prostitution."

Ms MacDonald added: "The tolerance zones do not act as a magnet. That's because they have always been a policy not just a geographical area, and when women want help to get out of prostitution Scotpep has been there to provide that."

In January this year police in Aberdeen confirmed it had set up its own tolerance zone in the harbour area of the city.

Sited in a mainly industrial and commercial area, it was aimed at protecting prostitutes from violence.