House Of Communions, Early Day Motion tabled - Draft Code of Practice on Services, public functions and associations

Alex Sobel has posted this on Facebook:

"I was invited to attend the Women and Equalities Committee this week, in my role as a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, to question the Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) about the recently tabled Code of Practice. The session did not alleviate any of my concerns about the Code, and I am deeply concerned that the Code does not protect trans people from exclusion for which there is no proportionate basis.

I remain particularly worried about whether the rights trans people have long held under the Human Rights Act, the Gender Recognition Act and the Equality Act will be upheld. My questions to the EHRC centred on the vital need that trans people’s Article 8 rights, including the right to privacy and family life, are not undermined by this guidance

During the session, the Chair repeatedly struggled to provide clear answers to questions posed about the guidance's contradictions . Colleagues and I asked how the guidance would be applied by the police, in healthcare settings and in single-sex spaces such as toilets. The responses did not provide reassurance, and I left with even greater uncertainty about how the guidance will work in practice.

The EHRC exists to protect equality and human rights, yet many trans people are telling me they feel increasingly unsafe as a result of the guidance. Some of my trans constituents have told me they are now too anxious to use everyday community spaces due to increased levels of harassment towards them.

I cannot stand by and willingly allow this harmful guidance to be adopted. This is why I have signed Nadia Whittome’s Early Day Motion 240 to disapprove this guidance. In my view, the Code creates confusion rather than clarity, and does not strengthen protections for trans people.

As always, I will continue to advocate for the human rights of trans people in anyway that I can.

#EHRC #transrightsarehumanrights #transrights"

It's astonishing. MAS answered him clearly - women have article 8 rights too. Article 8 rights are qualified and there is a wide margin of appreciation where other people's rights will be affected. How is it that not a clear answer? The sheer dishonesty of these MPs is really pissing me off. He was always going to sign the EDM, as was Sarah Owen etc. But now they are trying to spin things to suggest they are signing the EDM because MAS didn't answer their questions? And that's putting aside the fact that the law is clear, regardless of whether the code is published or not.

How long more do we have to put up with this disingenuous, performative nonsense?

Believe me, I did.

My MP is a Conservative and I know from other correspondence that he is supportive of GC policies. From what I have seen so far I don't think any Conservative MPs have signed and I don't think they will, given Kemi Badenoch's views on the subject, but I will write anyway to thank him for resisting the call from other parties to erode women's rights.

Don't hold back @teawamutu 😄

My MP is a sexist twat of a TRA but I think he's got political ambitions. Hasn't signed yet.

My MP hasn't signed, probably because he doesn't even know about it, because he has zero interest in the concerns of women, as I found out when I've emailed him in the past.

My MP is a Starmer lackey, I'd bet money if Starmer told him to sign he would, so the fact that he hasn't might mean that Starmer has told him not to.

I'm grasping at straws I know. 😣

Have emailed my MP (she signed; I knew she would) but she never replies to me anyway so I'm not expecting one this time
How can they support this? Madness

Sex Matters are now asking us to email our MPs, whether or not they've signed - see
https://sex-matters.org/take-action/ehrc-code-write-to-your-mp/
I've done mine (preens).

130 out of 650 - that's not even a quarter.

Their backers, or rather masters, the TRAs have been really good at getting headlines about 100 signing etc.. ie creating fake news.

But the reality is that less that a quarter have signed.

New headline - a quarter of MPs are against women's rights.

Funny that papers dont ever put that forward as the reality.

Reading the Parliament website's information on EDMs I found this:

In an average session only six or seven EDMs reach over two hundred signatures. Around seventy or eighty get over one hundred signatures. The majority will attract only one or two signatures.

There is no rule whereby the number of signatures affects the likelihood of an EDM being debated.

So it looks like 130 signatures (so far) really is nothing out of the ordinary, however many MPs are virtue-signalling on X that they've signed.

https://www.parliament.uk/about/how/business/edms/

Apparently up to 130-odd signatures. Getting a little concerned that Starmer won't hold his nerve, but slightly cheered that Angela Rayner apparently refused to sign.

@SabrinaThwaite At the moment all I can hope for is that he might actually read my email where I pointed out that there are nine protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010 (not just gender reassignment) and service providers need guidance on all of them, which they will lose if the Code of Practice is disapproved.

I haven't even had that from mine, and I've been to see her at least twice. So probably just a massive eyeroll from her.

@NotAtMyAge I don’t know why they asked for my DOB - they only actually need to check that I’m a constituent and will have access to the Electoral Register.

Well, it seems he now does have an auto-acknowledgement, though he specifies only that he MAY need extra details if he is to help with my case. No mention of DOB, though.

@SabrinaThwaite My MP doesn't appear to have one of those. 🙄 He seems very disorganised, with no details I can find online of constituency surgeries across our very widespread rural constituency. His base is a 110 mile round trip from where I live.

@NotAtMyAge The auto reply was just to remind constituents to include their name, address, email, phone number and date of birth.

I have one of those, one of the early ones to sign and I have never yet had even an acknowledgment from him, let alone a reply.

I emailed my MP a week ago and apart from an auto reply I’ve had nothing in response.

I’ve just discovered that my local MP Josh Dean, who’s one of the very young ones, has signed the EDM. I have e-mailed him, but I’m very sad to see he’s signed, as he is doing a great job as a constituency MP, unlike the last one who did sweet FA.
I did say that I could never vote for a party that reduced women’s rights or did not prioritise their safety.

Ultimately you have to ask why we have so many hopelessly inadequate MPs who manage to get themselves elected.

Because Labour and others, especially the Greens, have prioritised selecting activists and putting them up for election and people vote for the party not the person.
People might be good at focusing on the one issue that they're interested but that doesn't translate into the bandwidth to understand anything outside their niche interest area.
None of them take any steps to increase their knowledge base when they get elected, they can only operate in their comfort zone, so we end up with hopelessly inadequate people in parliament.
Maybe. 🤷

Some of the trans orgs have been pushing it and have done templates for people to email their MPs.

I would hope that they are also getting emails from people who are unhappy about them signing it. I haven't email my MP as I don't want to draw her attention to it (she is very much Be Kind), but if she signs it I will be emailing her straightaway.

I imagine that there’s a lot of teamed omnicause activism going on behind the scenes from and to uninformed MPs who think adding their name signals their progressiveness whilst Nadia and Stella will be feeling smug and virtuous. What is the matter with these people? Why is the obvious not obvious to them?

And all of this posturing a) detracts from the real crisises in this country and b) adds further fuel to fire of division, pushing a conservative backlash towards Reform. If nothing else, you’d think they’d hesitate on this trajectory because of wanting to save their own seats. Can they not see what’s happened in the US? Or maybe they think the UK will go the way of Canada going further along the gender road but I think that’s less likely.

Ultimately you have to ask why we have so many hopelessly inadequate MPs who manage to get themselves elected.

It's sounds like the Wokey Blokey's are doing all the damage, imagine that, men in the Labour party being sexists.

A pessimistic scenario is that ultimately about 50% of labour seats the large majority of lib Ds and about 50% of seats outside the conservative party vote for it - that gets you to something like 250 votes or 35 - 40 %. That's a lot, and under ordinary circumstances would almost certainly result in an Alternate Debate. Under Starmer that still doesn't change the trajectory or the EHRC guidance. But it's quite possible that it would come under the environment of major leadership challenge to Starmer, and it's even conceivable that it would come in the first few days of a Burnham premiership. That's troubling.