Parents force council to suspend transgender advice (Times article)

All the impact assessments that looked only at trans people and no other group

Agree. They don't seem to understand what an EIA is actually for. It's a tool to check you're not inadvertently discriminating against one or more of the 9 protected characteristics, irrespective of whether the policy is intended to promote equality for a different one.

Or bravado: they're unlikely to release a statement along the lines of 'ah shite we fucked it up and now they've got us bang to rights'.

Yes that was my thought. At the moment, they have nothing to lose by this.

Hopefully it will also come out during this that the head of the EHRC was previously the head of Stonewall, and how much their advice and guidance to LA legal teams for example has been Stonewall law instead of actual law as it has been in so many other contexts.

It needs to be made very clear to this government that this niche political lobby group reinterpretation of law to their personal agenda and dissemination of this imaginative interpretation allowed to form local policy on the ground has been allowed to happen on their watch, and has effectively usurped parliamentary authority. Because what other lobby group could now effectively walk in and take over policy on the ground like this without the government noticing?

I'd be willing to open a book on the legal team looking - as all LAs etc have looked when making trans based policy - solely at trans people when they checked the legalities. All the impact assessments that looked only at trans people and no other group, because they weren't considered relevant, all the lack of impact assessment because no other group was relevant. I bet the legal team checked very carefully around everything in law to ensure that the legal requirements for trans people were complied with, but I very much doubt they thought equally and thoroughly about girls. FOI requests repeatedly show this. There is never evidence of fair and equal consideration; the Welsh parliament can't even find minutes of meetings or emails where impact was considered at all. Not a single line.

It's quite likely in a captured organisation this didn't even occur to them.

A spokesman for Oxfordshire council said it was confident that its Trans Toolkit would be found lawful in court.

Its a badly advised comment, uneccessarily defensive & will not age well. The complaints about the toolkit concern the Safeguarding of girls.

Oxford LA should be more open to considering potential breeches of its Safeguarding responsibilities.

Looking at the comments so far, literally all they have is that its the girls fault if a boy beats another boy up.
Once again the very articulate regulars putting them straight..

I'm not surprised they said that. They would look like total numpties if they saud anyrhing else. The Director of Education and Head of Legal at OCC have both left apparently. Baling out before the shit hiits the fan.

Where is this confidence coming from? Are they banking on the fact that the lobby groups pushing this so called Trans toolkit are being genuine with how they've presented the EA in their toolkit? Or are they really this stupid?

I spoke to someone at my local council about some similar guidance to this. They assured me that it had been checked by the council's legal team and was found to be legally compliant. My assumption is that their legal 'experts' don't have a good understanding of equalities legislation.

Or bravado: they're unlikely to release a statement along the lines of 'ah shite we fucked it up and now they've got us bang to rights'.

Brilliant news

I’m guessing from that ‘confidence’ the answer could be ‘really this stupid’

A spokesman for Oxfordshire council said it was confident that its Trans Toolkit would be found lawful in court.

This bit in the article had me wondering a bit. Where is this confidence coming from? Are they banking on the fact that the lobby groups pushing this so called Trans toolkit are being genuine with how they've presented the EA in their toolkit? Or are they really this stupid?

I'm a regular Times commentator. On trans issues there is no support whatever for the TRA position.

Can't be, surely? But if it is.

Do wonder how many of those excellent comments were left by MNers.

Heres the comment from 'Dominic Cummings' under theTimes article. No idea if it's the real one although the back handed compliment sounds like him. If its the real deal then well done ladies!

"Fightback and the decisions by Liz Truss were initiated by Mumsnet. For once they did something useful."

Yes and that’s exactly how regulatory capture takes hold. Organisations don’t resist political lobbying because they don’t want to risk not being in control of their own narrative. PR issues and stakeholder relationships then shape their policies, as you say, regardless of the law.

Agree, press and publicity is far more important to council’s than, say, the law.

Maybe next time stop relying on the public to do your job for you and look onto stuff before you endorse/link to/publish etc

I suspect rather than a 'whoops, we cocked up there' response, this is more a 'oh damnit they saw it and now the press are all excited and telling everyone. Ok, we'll put it aside for a bit and sneak it in later when they've forgotten' response.

I've seen too much of this kind of thing. These people believe they know best, it reminds me of the meeting where I was once told that the Baby P case 'escaping into the press' was a disaster and failure for the local authority, this sort of thing happens all the time and you don't let it escape because then people kick off and you end up under unwanted and public pressure to be accountable and do stuff differently.

That's not THE Dominic Cummings in the comments section is it?

Of course, Warwickshire are the council that have been 'educating' and celebrating extreme porn with 13 years old aren't they? So many levels of regulatory capture by undesirable influences.

It has formally suspended the advice for 300 schools and placed it under review after parents complained that the document breached safeguarding duties and equality law. It was issued in January 2018 and withdrawn last summer.

The article says that the guidance was withdrawn last summer, so why is it only in the news today? Is there a distinction between being 'withdrawn' and 'suspended'?

Oh Warwickshire you arent doing too well are you. This is the second d time you have had to remove stuff.

Maybe next time stop relying on the public to do your job for you and look onto stuff before you endorse/link to/publish etc

You are paid for that. We arent.

Truth Truth and it will hopefully prompt a lot of further sunlight and fresh air and policy reversal on related points.

Agreed ChattyLion The extent of regulatory capture has been terrifying. Hopefully if the Oxfordshire case is found in favour of child safeguarding etc then the Crown Prosecution Service's toxic trans guidelines for schools will need to be withdrawn as they are breathtakingly anti child safeguarding and completely inappropriate for schools.

Excellent posts Michelle and everyone this stuff makes me hopeful.
Regulatory capture is what is stopping the reversing of existing encroachments by men’s sexual rights activists and making new gains for safeguarding women and children.

These are so many public sector organisations that have outsourced their policies (and basic political thinking) to external groups who lobby them. These public sector organisations will do an awful lot of compromising to avoid negative perception of them. That has been terrible for women’s rights as we moved into a social media age, which the austerity-starved public sector has no resource or nowse or political confidence to keep up with, let alone successfully resist politically-driven boundary-pushing.

And post COVID those resource pressures on public sector organisations will get worse.

That’s why I see Parliament (and the various legal cases currently being brought) as the political and legal way to ultimately sort this out if it can be done, from the centre. rather than tackling each individual organisation’s policies at a time, which feels like the painting the Forth Bridge. Not that it isn’t a great boost every time an individual organisation sticks up for women and children. Sorry if that sounds critical or negative, I just find the ubiquitousness of regulatory capture daunting since I started to really notice it.