The Community Safety Minister insisted that quashing convictions was an “exceptional” measure and “not a step that can be taken lightly”.

Siobhian Brown – the cost of this was “estimated to be £804,000 based on 200 people”.

While Brown acknowledged Holyrood had passed legislation to quash convictions of those caught up in the Post Office Horizon scandal, she said the cost of this was “estimated to be £804,000 based on 200 people”.

With these documents also indicating that Police Scotland “currently holds 2773 case records involving 791 individuals”, Brown said this “raises some concerns about the accuracy of the associated costs – around £250k – detailed in the bill’s financial memorandum”.

Her comments came in a letter to Holyrood’s Criminal Justice Committee, which is due to scrutinise the legislation the Alba MSP has put forward.

Brown went on to state there was “insufficient detail” on how proposals to provide support to those involved in prostitution to help them change their lifestyle “would work in practice”, including how long such measures would be available for, and what the costs would be.

Regan’s member’s bill also sets out to criminalise those buying sex while decriminalising those selling it.

Ash Regan MSP wants to tackle commercial sexual exploitation.

Under the proposals, those convicted of buying sex could be fined up to £10k if the case was prosecuted in the sheriff courts – with these courts also able to impose jail sentences of up to six months.

Her comments came after a paper published last week by the Scottish Government said evidence was “limited” on the impact of these “challenging demand approaches”.

In the wake of that, sex worker safety charity National Ugly Mugs urged MSPs to “pull the plug” on Regan’s “misguided and dangerous” bill.

Chief executive Lynsey Walton said: “Sex worker groups, alongside leading NGOs like Amnesty and the World Health Organisation, have long warned that criminalising the purchase of sex only serves to make life more difficult and dangerous for sex workers, while having no impact on trafficking and exploitation.

“We are pleased that the Scottish Government has now accepted that the international evidence backs this up.

“MSPs now need to pull the plug on Regan’s misguided and dangerous legislation, and focus on supporting sex workers’ rights to work safely and free from stigma.”

The Alba MSP added that the Scottish Government report “did not evaluate legal models, such as the Nordic Model (which criminalises buyers and decriminalises prostituted persons), with the authors explicitly stating that this was “out of the scope” of the review”.

Regan said: “Unlike my small team, the civil service and the Government did not attempt to conduct comparisons across legislative models. The review does not assess how the Nordic Model performs relative to legalisation or full decriminalisation.

“No critical appraisal of evidence quality was undertaken, with the authors admitting that they lacked time to assess whether the included studies were reliable or robust.”

She added:  “Where concerns are raised, they are about implementation — not the model itself.”

Regan said: “The debate on commercial sexual exploitation is now out of the shadows and into the Scottish Parliament, and I welcome scrutiny of all evidence to ensure Scotland becomes a nation where there is equality of the sexes.”