Urgent BH terfing- write to your MP TODAY 5th May on the Data Bill

My conservative MP replied and is in agreement with Prof. Sullivan's review which I am pleased about. It's a shame he didn't attend the vote though.

Image separately in case we aren't allowed to picture letters from MPs (who knows??)

I got a snail mail response through the letter box today, which was a surprise. He wasn't able to vote as was out of the UK doing something else related to one of his parliamentary roles. Response was fence sitting but not terrible. Worth keeping on at him, I think.

Well, I got a reply from my newbie mp, and it was all quite positive and supportive. Very encouraging!

I shall be keeping the email for future reference.

@RNApolymeraseSolidarity. I wrote to my MP who didn’t reply and who was yesterday encouraging Parliament to support our city’s local drag queen and dragettes as part of our local Pride festival next weekend. Sigh.

My MP. I didn't bother writing to him, you can probably imagine the response I'd have got. Funnily enough though none of this formed part of his campaigning before the General Election - he managed to win the seat from our previous Tory who had been in place for ages.

x.com/tomgordonLD/status/1922722718924857509

All a judicial review can do - even up to the Supreme Court - is issue a ruling. If the government of the day chooses to ignore it, then there is very little to be done.

Alternatively the government of the day could just ask parliament to pass a new law saying that whatever it was the JR/SCOTUK didn't like is now perfectly legal and they can butt out.

I reiterate that in the UK, parliament is supreme. That isn't a slogan. It is a fact of jurisprudence. It always has been supreme. In fact, since 1688 there has never been an occasion when it has not been supreme by definiton.

Google says the new law takes precedence but can be challenged by a judicial review, or in court. Which wouldn't be a losers game in many situations. We're getting quite good at it.

Its just annoying that a bunch of women on Mumsnet have to do the politicians job for them. They are paid well enough.

If (and that's a big question) a new law contradicts an old law, the new law takes precedence. Parliament is supreme and cannot be bound by it's predecessors.

To be complete, parliament has always been supreme and never been able to bind it's predecessors.

So trying to point to an old law as somehow preventing a new law being enacted is a losers game.

Yay, my MPs a TERF

I wasn’t expecting a response but got a proper snail mail letter. He voted in favour of the amendment and is clear Public Bodies should be collecting data based on biological sex.

Welcomed Alice Sullivans review etc. and understands the importance of sex in the NHS.

I have no idea - and neither, I suspect, does he.

Also asking if the minister has experience protecting single sex spaces, then how come they’ve all been eliminated?

Intriguing, as so very different to the letter my lib dem mp sent.
How does the amendment risk undermining the rights of women, and who is "we", I wonder?

I received this response from my Lib Dem MP yesterday:

“I will state plainly that Liberal Democrat MPs voted against this amendment, along with MPs from the Government and other opposition parties. During the debate on the Bill on 7th May, Liberal Democrat Women & Equalities Spokesperson, Christine Jardine MP, expressed concern about the implications this clause could have on individual privacy. While fellow Lib Dem MP Vikki Slade spoke about how this clause could endanger the rights of transgender people at home and abroad. Something which would contradict the ruling of the Supreme Court on 16th April.

My colleagues and I respect the judgement of the Supreme Court, and will work to ensure the rights of women are protected at all times. This amendment risked undermining those rights and of individual privacy, and that is why we chose to vote against it.”

Plus a bit of wibbling about eliciting strong emotions and requiring respect and great scrutiny etc. At least he replied, I suppose.

The post I tried to link to upthread was a bar-chart, showing all the Sex and gender questions in surveys held by the UK Data Service, 1946 to 2023.

Pre-1969, all question were about natal sex. By 2023, natal sex was referred to in less than 20% of the data sets.

www.gov.uk/government/publications/independent-review-of-data-statistics-and-research-on-sex-and-gender/review-of-data-statistics-and-research-on-sex-and-gender-executive-summary

I wrote to my MP and earlier today received the reply below:

Thank you for taking the time to write down your thoughts on the Data use and access bill regarding amendment (NC21). I agree that this amendment would pave the way for more clarity concerning data collected regarding sex.

We must be mindful of the fear and worry this has placed in the trans community, but I’m sure you join me in providing assurances to the trans community across the country that Labour’s Equality Act is still there to protect them from discrimination and harassment.

In terms of protecting the recent Supreme court decision that comes with this data use and access bill amendment, we have a Minister for Women and Equalities with experience of protecting single-sex spaces, who ran a refuge for women fleeing abuse, who served on the APPG on Domestic and Sexual Violence – who knows the importance of these issues deeply and personally. The relevant people in the Government will always work to protect women's safety whilst also upholding the rights of Trans women.

This Labour government continues to have an ambitious agenda to advance the dignity and respect of trans people – with a ban on conversion practices, high quality NHS care and measures to tackle hate crime and we continue to have an ambitious agenda to advance the dignity and respect of trans people – with a ban on conversion practices, high quality NHS care and measures to tackle hate crime but women’s safety, privacy and dignity must be protected too.

I've emailed back asking why he voted against the amendment if he believed it would "pave the way for more clarity concerning data collected regarding sex". Truly baffling.

Every form that says ‘gender’ when it means ‘sex’ is a potential loss of sex data, plus many IT systems have been set up to conflate gender and sex, so data collected as gender will then be fed into a field for sex somewhere else.

An example of how this impacts women’s rights would be the police recording crime statistics based on the criminal’s choice of gender instead of their sex. This then leads to an increasing number of supposedly female sex offenders and even rapists, despite the fact this crime is male-specific (aside from something along the lines of accessory to rape, which I believe females can commit). Then, when women say “we need single-sex spaces because men are disproportionately likely to commit sex crimes”, people who don’t want to give us single-sex spaces can point to the data (skewed by sex criminals obviously wanting to transition for multiple reasons once they’re caught) and say “well, it’s not really a male issue as there are lots of female rapists too”, so single-sex spaces won’t actually help.

Similarly, if ‘men’ can get pregnant, then it’s hard for a woman to claim sex discrimination for being pregnant, as an employer could argue “well, men can get pregnant too, so I would have treated you the same if you were a pregnant man”.

Without accurate recording of the data in the first place, women have fewer ways to evidence the need for the sex-based rights we need.

[Post deleted because of poor formatting]

Can you give examples of data that is skewed? I think there are under 10k GRCs, and maybe 100k people who use a gender that doesn't match their sex. It feels like the skews should be in the noise- do I need to read the Sullivan report?

Yes, I am so looking forward to getting our sex-based data back (not yet, I know, but one day!) - I can’t wait until we can just pull sex data from the ONS to evidence a problem that disproportionately affects women without the data having been skewed by a load of self-identifying ‘women’ who don’t face the same issues.

I feel like these last few weeks where MPs and peers are actually talking sensibly about biological sex (for the most part, anyway..) and not treating it like a swear word is definitely a huge improvement on the past few years, so while it’s going to be slow, and several years of data will still be utterly useless for women, I’m hopeful that the Sullivan review will be implemented properly and we can eventually get things back on track, as the data loss of the past few years is an absolute travesty for women’s rights.

Thank-you all for this discussion, which I will return to if I decide to write to my mp next time the bill is in the commons (if I can ever find it again!).
I'm really interested in how the government is planning to implement the sullivan review. I wrote to my Labour mp about that and the data bill ammendments. I see she voted against (as a labour mp no surprise) but she hasn't replied yet.

I have had an interesting response from my Lib Dem MP. It requires me to read the bill and amendments in full and prepare a response based on my own professional use of data. So I'll be back in a couple of days.

But sometimes you just have to get your thinking done quickly because a genuine problem has arisen, and this is (in my view) one of those times.

I don't think this is the case. Women have been waiting at least 15 years for clarity on this matter. The sacred class of Transwomen, can wait a few months at least.

Meanwhile, you don't belong in women's changing rooms, you don't belong in women's sport.

That sounds like an improvement on previous Lib Dem stance, albeit not actually a good response.

Got a response from my MP. Says Lib Dems are pressing the Govt to provide further guidance & clarity on what the SC judgment means for people. This guidance must uphold everyone's rights and dignity, including women and trans people.

He feels the reporting of the SC ruling has inflamed a toxic debate which we need to get past, so we can have a good-faith conversation about ensuring everyone's safety and dignity.

So no explanation of why he voted against the amendment.