To think that Labour have just shot themselves in the foot?

[Redrosetat]

https://twitter.com/KemiBadenoch/status/1768647056111861760?s=19&t=wqgtbWPG_X1xZDMhuF871A

‘Just now Labour MPs prevented debate on a new law to protect children and single sex spaces.

Instead they used parliamentary time to discuss ferret name choices.

@Keir_Starmer is terrified of debate on safeguarding & his MPs actively work to ignore the concerns of constituents’

@lifeturnsonadime / legal advice is obtained rather quickly in practice. Let us assume that the government has been able to get the best advice available (they can).

Once that has been done, the Minister must decide to press ahead. Not a lawyer. No lawyer worth their salt will be a decision maker for the Government. Only a fool would do so.

Ministers are law makers. If they choose not to, then they should be assessed on that choice.

@lifeturnsonadime - you will forgive me but I do not recall many times a government disclosed the basis of its legal position unless it was sued or there was s parliamentary requirement. The obligations are even less on opposition parties.

Bombastix, I have no idea what you are talking about.

I didn't say lawyers were decision makers??

Ministers are law makers. If they choose not to, then they should be assessed on that choice.

Agreed, that's why I look bleakly at both the government AND the Labour Party on this issue.

Women just don't matter. How awful that the opposition party has seen the harms done to women and just don't care enough to even have a conversation

@lifeturnsonadime / thus you prove my point. Your anger is political. Reasonably so.

But legally, @ThatQuickFinch explained the issues well. Your political disagreement with government policy is respectable but you dealt with her unfairly by conflating your political view with the law. You are a lawyer, you can and must every day separate those two things.

This is on the front of today’s Telegraph.

BRITAIN’S diversity drive has been “counterproductive”, Kemi Badenoch has said as she warned that inclusion policies must not come at the expense of white men.

Going back to the op the best thing for Labour to do is avoid the issue

Posters on here, MPs on the doorstep, parliamentary debate and reinforced by half the media the push is to squash any talk

Now puberty blockers have been stopped and harm shown this and other more aggressive tactics will increase

Given 73% voted yanbu but these threads read similarly to any Labour thread with pro posters higher than that I’d say do post, I know the tone of those who will attack is likely off putting but I’d be interested in hearing from more yanbu

In the interests of factual accuracy I would like to point out that the PMB that was perfectly normally debated was brought by a Tory MP. If the Tory party or its individual MPs had wanted to debate Truss' bill they could have done.
Either by making sure there was no debate on the earlier PMBs, or by making Truss' bill a government (of which there are very few this parliament). Indeed if Truss cared so much about it she would have introduced such a bill in her time in government.

If the lawyers Labour uses have an ideological viewpoint, is it possible that other lawyers, for instance those who post as experts on social media are actually also doing so from their own particular ideological viewpoint?

On another thread it’s ‘this can be fast’ but on this thread @lifeturnsonadime is ignoring the process?

Why do you only highlight the process here

And I’m aware of the risk argument but your stance looks contradictory and appears to change depending on whether the poster is pro Labour or not

Thank you, that goes some way to answer the more important question on this thread as to why the current Equalities Minister has not taken on this legislation.

Said Equalties Minister is one of these people that posters have been warning about who want more rights for men than women.

Her inaction and their warnings are starting to make more sense.

Well I disagree with your assessment of @ThatQuickFinch 's explanation of the legal issue and it's impact on the ability of politicians to do the right thing by women.

But that's OK we don't all have to agree on everything.

The fact that laws and politics are separate entities is indisputable but it is politics (or rather ideology) that has led to current interpretations of the Equality Act being quite different from how the Act was intended to be drafted. So look at the laws with out regards to the political circumstances in which they stand is not looking at the entire picture.

Ah. St. Kemi, trying to win back the Reform UK defectors.

Does that suggest that Reform UK is a larger group of potential voters than those who care what a woman is?

I acknowledge that Labour have not specifically pledged to amend the Equality Act.

If the poster who follows to interject with gifs is still
following here you go.

If you are referring to me, then yes I do have an ideological view point. It is one that is grounded in the reality of biological sex and the original intention of the Equality Act which was to provide a protected characteristic of sex for women who are subject to discrimination due to perceptions of others wrt our sexed bodies and which has been the cause of discrimination against women throughout the millennia.

Another of my beliefs, also grounded in reality based on ample evidence, is that women are harmed by the inclusion of males in what should be single sex spaces provided for under the same Act by the single sex exemptions. This includes males who identify as trans women.

Finally I strongly believe that children should be protected from harm, especially vulnerable children who are disproportionately gay/ autistic or care leavers, I am very concerned that labour intends to make talking therapy unlawful for these children when it talks about banning 'all forms of conversion therapy'. I have a particular interest in protecting these children because I am the mother of an autistic girl who was gender non conforming pre-puberty but desisted post puberty. What is happening to vulnerable young people, particularly girls is inhumane.

So yes I do have an agenda and am happy to disclose it fully.

That’s one interpretation, isn’t it? It will be interesting to see what “principles” are jettisoned in the coming months as the Reform voting intention grows. They’ve got 21% of the grey vote now.

@lifeturnsonadime / agree. All I am saying is for purpose of debate that these points are clear, and you have clarified.

An excellent response

@JessS1990 of course! The government cannot do that. It is the duty of ministers to consider the risks. Their political aims may not be supported by the advice they receive. That does not make the advice wrong; it just means that it should be balanced against all other considerations. In recent years, we have seen a government with a high risk appetite on immigration for example.

Then it is on that Minister to take things forward if they want.

Lawyers who are ambitious outside of government are ten a penny. If they are that good eventually they will be brought in to advise.

I remember the legal analysis around when the Equality Act was introduced. It was quite ground breaking in that it pulled together several individual acts of parliament , e.g. the SDA and the DDA the RDA as set out the protected characteristic, introducing a new one of gender reassignment.

Not one commentator could have predicted what has happened to the interpretation of the PC of sex.

It’s interesting to look back at the GRA too

This thread covers some objections which were sadly ignored as they turned out to be where we are

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5015686-5015686-gender-recognition-act-2004?reply=133844572

There are also fundamental issues of human rights in the Bill, affecting individuals who have not themselves undergone a change of gender but may have their rights compromised by a person who has changed gender. For example, it will be possible for an individual to change their gender without undergoing an operation for a sex change. That person will then be quite within his or her rights, as we understand it, to, for example, share a prison cell, nurses' quarters or sports changing facilities with others of their chosen gender. Even though there is treatment to modify sexual characteristics, should we not consider the feelings of those with whom that person shares very private areas? Whose human rights take precedence? How does one judge in individual circumstances what is balanced and proportionate?

On men cheating in women's sports:

When a six foot eight inch, 22 stone lady turns up to join the hockey club and denies that she has changed gender, who can attest to the contrary? Her birth certificate will have been altered and it will be a criminal offence for anyone to reveal that fact. Just how do we proceed in that matter? It is no good saying that we can leave it to people in the sporting associations. We cannot. That is impossible.

Someone did respond

Let me make it clear that it will not be possible for a man simply to declare that he is of the opposite gender and then compete in women's competitions

That person got it wrong