Sunak to drop legal plans to bar transitioning in schools?

I think that's the issue - which is you have a gap which needs to be filled by legislation to make it clear by operation of law that a child cannot transition (not inferred from other legislation as inference is not going to be sufficient for establishing human rights where the law asks for a very high level of review by judges because an individual's rights are said to be infringed) and the basis of that. Issuing guidance without this is mad.

This government has given up on doing things properly. You can see it in the incoherence of what backbenchers want. Either they really believe it or, which is more likely, they will use the issue to bolster their credentials. They don't know how to manage this and it shows. It's also a mark of how little authority Sunak has that there is this open position in the press. But it won't happen.

Issue guidance now before an election and then what? Lose the election, lose the judicial review which means that Labour have a good reason to do nothing or worse?

If the Tories pass legislation they give Labour a problem to resolve. If they issue guidance it will be withdrawn and not legally binding.

If I were s trans right activist I would issue a judicial review immediately if the government issued this guidance without supporting legislation.

This is for children not adults though. A shame a TRA needs to intervene to undermine children’s safeguarding but they probably would anyway.

We need to split out children so adults cannot continue to force their preferences

What is the legal position in terms of allowing children to do those things?

Does it exist? - ie we must allow it by law (which specifically).

Or is it more an absence of a law outlining what they can or cannot do, therefore posing a problem for extra guidance

It is very probably the law that applies I terms of how you make it.

It is a basic principle of public law that the issuing of guidance must be compatible and reflect the law as it currently is. The two must be the same. You cannot have guidance that goes further than the actual law. Otherwise the Government will be acting unlawfully, and will lose a judicial review.

If I were s trans right activist I would issue a judicial review immediately if the government issued this guidance without supporting legislation. I would expect to win.

That would be totally self defeating for clarifying the situation.

Which law are you referring to?

When you say violation

Does it refer to children as well as adults?

Well that's perfect. Get a bunch of Tory MPs with zero expertise to tell the country's senior law officer she is wrong and to do something by issuing guidance which is such a basic violation of public law that you can see it from space. Great.

Cates just reserved the right to whiffle on about guidance. No actual commitment there.

Rishi Sunak is told he CAN stop children changing their gender identity without having to change the law after the Prime Minister backed away from creating new legislation to ban 'social transitioning' in schools

• Tory backbenchers point to schools' legal obligation to recognise biological sex

Tory MPs have told Rishi Sunak he can stop schoolchildren changing their gender identity without having to pass a new law.

The Prime Minister is believed to be backing away from the idea of creating legislation that would ban so-called social transitioning in schools, to prevent pupils adopting new names, pronouns and uniforms.

But yesterday, as No 10 insisted it is still considering its options, Tory backbenchers said no such law was needed and urged Mr Sunak to take action immediately through long-awaited guidance for headteachers.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12494151/Rishi-Sunak-told-stop-children-changing-gender-identity-without-having-change-law-Prime-Minister-backed-away-creating-new-legislation-ban-social-transitioning-schools.html

So which leak is true?

Instead of speculating and endless repeating the same thing why not talk about how to lobby the Cabinet and MPs, and through them Sunak using the Sex Matters briefing

After all now is the moment whilst the Tories have a majority.

If he thinks it will be realatively easy to do he will slot it into a very busy agenda ie crumbling schools, Rwanda fiasco, and ...

Better to try now than wait for Labour to get in and at best ignore gender critical women and at worst push through self id for children.

I expect the PM's spokesperson lied to Miriam Cates to keep her sweet.

I do agree with you RealityFan about there being little difference in the overall (very low) level of interest in women’s issues between the main Parliamentary parties.

I think that for various reasons like free speech, safeguarding children etc there’s a low level GC movement building up in all of the parties (even the Greens!) as slowly things come to light like Isla Bryson and the pink leggings and as public concern builds, but all the political parties are still as divided and full of vested interests on this as the rest of society is. So none of them have a clear consensus for GC action. Nobody’s campaigning on this for the general election so no party feels it has a mandate to act either.

So progress through Parliament will be very slow for lack of interest and respect for women. And sadly I think that means we will have to keep crowdfunding legal cases and using judicial legal routes to challenge public bodies etc to get anywhere to protect vulnerable kids and uphold women’s basic rights, rather than using Parliamentary lawmaking which is the optimal much more robust, direct, far reaching and democratic way to do it.

As a GC woman i feel like I don’t owe any politicians any favours at the next GE because they haven’t done women any favours, and so I can feel free to cast my vote on other issues that I really care about like child poverty and the climate crisis. I am expecting women to have to start again to try to influence whoever wins the next GE on key issues, including GC issues. It would be great if we can work in a cross party way with a public face to it as that is the most effective way to influence politicians.

The PM’s spokesperson has confirmed that the source for this story is incorrect. No decisions have been taken. I continue to push for guidance that will make clear that schools do not have the authority to ‘socially transition’ children.

Sorry - as this report has been identified by a Conservatie MP as inaccurate why is everyone going on and on about it.

I believe it is. Keegan has been very canny with her PR drive, all that self made businesswoman/I'm the new Thatcher, her flipping the RAAC story with her sweary outburst, and her hosting of a Women In Business event. She's right now the most visible person in the cabinet, and a massive ego.

Sunak moves her at his peril. But if she stays, we can guarantee that the poor status quo remains. And there'll be a cigarette paper's worth of difference between the main parties here.

Two things that come to mind initially

This legal stuff is huge. On that I agree with pp. none of this is fast. Look at other countries when thinking about U.K. how much more captured are they, how and who by. This is not just a U.K. issue. It embeds, spreads and stops challenge.

I’m not sure any country can fight it but if they do it will take a lot. This legal stuff is a quagmire and a bind. There are so many people invested in this who will fight it.

Including civil servants who may be on the thread who have already hitched their work wagon to Starmer and Labour

Secondly - wasn’t there just a mini reshuffle? Is the conference one definitely happening?

@RealityFan

Its all a shitshow. Your only choice is what shade of brown.

Labour are going to walk it. If the Tories really don't want to make it competitive, they should carry on the way they've been carrying on.

Sunak will now know all about the subject, about Keegan's procrastination (imho she's proving her TRA inclinations, and will be the TRA wing of Tory party choice for party leader vying with Mordaunt, she's going down extremely well with the Millar/May contingent), and opposing Badenoch/Cates takes. They will be fully briefing him on Sex Matters advice.

So, he can't say he's uninformed on the issues, or unsure of the anger out there, or new to all of this. He's up to speed. Badenoch and Cates will have fully appraised him on the law, and Keegan's obfuscation.

Sunak has a very simple task. Starting with Keegan being moved. However her PR has been pretty interesting ("I'm doing a FUCKING ace job, everyone else sitting on their ARSES!"), she's very visible, I believe she's building to being a main contender in the race to replace Sunak post GE, and she'll fight her TRA cause tenaciously.

This will be a big part in the civil war that will engulf the Tories as recriminations for losing an 80 seat majority and the Red Wall erupts next year.

Sunak knows the game's up, but instead of being principled or gambling, he's going down at the worst technocrat ever, happy to never have been principled in so many areas.

So much for his "my two daughters" schtick, it was as fake as his pledges, and everything about him.

"At least I wasn't Liz Truss" will be his slogan on the way out of No.10.

I'll take great delight in seeing them self destruct in 2024

Will that delight carry over if Labour make things worse for GC women?

I dread it. And I’m not an ‘anything’ when it comes to voting. Not loyal to any party, policy first, but deeply depressed by how things will end up.

People will say how, at some point, how did it get voted in. Right now women can’t meet together. If it gets worse then what? Still delight?

Undeniable. I know it's deeply unfashionable to admit you're a conservative these days, but one of the saving graces of the movement, at least prior to the current comedians, was some semblance of wishing to conserve, to provide some leadership on the issues of the day.

Right now, a combination of lack of ethics, a loss of any desire or aim to conserve, and a capitulation to the very forces that should make any true conservative very wary (over a decade of Stonewall and related lobbying ingress), means that the party is not only not fit to run the nation on pure economic and competency grounds, but is unfit on conceptual and moral grounds.

I'll take great delight in seeing them self destruct in 2024. If an 8x Tory voter is saying that, they're in the worst trouble they've ever been in my lifetime.

The fact Sunak put Keegan at the head of Education in the first place should tell you all you need to know.

In the Spring, Gillian Keegan, Sec of State for Education said guidance would be provided to schools within a fortnight. Then it was "before the summer term". Then it was "in time for schools going back" Then she announced there would be no government guidance to schools at all.

Now Sunak has said the same. They don't give a shit about safeguarding children. Or women. It's not a priority for them. It never has been.

We'll all know a lot more when the identity of the Education Secretary is revealed at Sunak's reshuffle after Conference. Keegan keeps her job. She's moved on for a GC like Cates or Badenoch. Actions will speak larger than words.

I think you've misunderstood me. Right now the govt have one policy to get right to pull me back to voting for them. That's to apply the Badenoch-Cates approach to gender issues in schools. I have so many reasons now to never vote Tory again, and despite many reasons to vote Labour, I can't trust them either on this.

This Times piece may be so much fluff, or may really have it's finger on the pulse of what's (not) happening.

Sunak has one opportunity to get my vote. But that won't be if he simply promises to get this sorted if he's voted in again. If so, I won't be helping that.

At the 2019 election?

It wasn’t a major talking point. Can you recall what they were?

Have we not? I'm in NI, so have no horse in Tory vs Labour.

I have been reading at least the Tories know what a woman is for years. I have read posts from Mnetters who gritted their teeth/cried voting Tory, but did it for their daughters and granddaughters.

Instead of doing the bare minimum for our children, this Tory government are inflicting 5 more years of genderwoo in schools.

I actually think that Sex Matters should lobby, that's their goal, and the rest of us should discuss safeguarding law and how it's being broken as widely as possible but ALSO I hope there is some way to ensure that parents can take the Dfe / schools to court.

Not individual parents because that is too harmful to those families and the children within them (the risk of press intrusion and TRA threats, the stress, the financial cost) but groups of parents. Because not only are quite a fair number of schools breaking the law (e.g. on single sex toilets over age 8) RIGHT NOW but also the approach between schools is like night and day so children in UK schools are having wildly different experiences. You have some schools where girls have single sex toilets and others where they don't, or not adequate numbers which are accessible for the girls who want to use them. You have some schools which are compelling the use of wrong sex pronouns with no consideration of the impact of this on other children and other protected characteristics, others which are not.

I bet, if anyone bothered to look at it, that attendance rates for girls would be much better in schools with single sex toilets. Who wants to deal with their periods at age 12 in mixed sex toilets?

Given DfE is seemingly obsessed with attendance, this data should be easy to obtain and yet no-one's analysed it yet.

Everyone is in a real mess with this

There’s a thread running where a female rape survivor can’t meet in a support group with other women due to male death threats

You’ve got politicians said to be ‘pulling a blinder’ if they don’t talk about it

Plus a general unwillingness to see it voted on by some for whatever reasons

It’s a ludicrous mess.

The government are in a real mess with this. The DfE funded and promoted all kinds of dodgy groups and adults to schools - openly encouraging schools to abandon political impartiality and to work with groups for whom safeguarding children is a meaningless phrase.
Just as Ofsted were Diversity champions until the intimidation used against them was made public and they dumped Stonewall, the government are hopelessly compromised. Whatever they say, they'll want to ensure that the blame for encouraging adults involved in a niche sexual ideology that should never have been near children and schools ,won't be laid at their door.

The PM’s spokesperson has confirmed that the source for this story is incorrect. No decisions have been taken. I continue to push for guidance that will make clear that schools do not have the authority to ‘socially transition’ children.

The PM's spokesperson would say that, though, wouldn't he/she?

It all depends on who the Times's source is - is it someone from inside number 10 who actually knows what's going on? Or is it someone who pretends to know what's going on? Or is it someone testing the waters to see what the response is?

I'm quite prepared to believe that Sunak's spokesperson is willing to lie to Miriam Cates to keep her quiet.