International Women’s Day Q&A with Penny Mordaunt MP, Secretary of State for International Development NOW CLOSED TO NEW QUESTIONS

[JustineMumsnet]

[EDITED BY MNHQ: Questions have now been collated and sent over - new questions may not be answered]

Hello all,

We’re very pleased to announce a Q&A with Penny Mordaunt MP, Secretary of State for International Development and Minister for Women and Equalities.

Please post your questions on this thread by lunchtime on Wednesday March 6. We’ll send on a selection to the Minister and we will post up written answers from Penny on this thread this coming Friday (March 8), International Women’s Day.

In her role as Secretary of State for International Development, Penny Mordaunt oversees DFID’s work ending extreme poverty overseas, including programmes focused on girls’ education and women’s health. DFID has been in the news recently, facing calls for its budget to be spent partly on encouraging projects that would aid British business overseas, and for it to be folded into the Foreign Office instead of being a standalone department.

In her role as Minister for Women and Equalities, Penny is also responsible for work including gender pay gap reporting and possible changes to the law concerning gender recognition.

Penny campaigned for Brexit in the run-up to the 2016 EU referendum and is a Royal Naval Reservist. She has previously been Minister of State for Disabled People and Minister of State for the Armed Forces.

Please add your questions for Penny here by Wednesday lunchtime. And although it’s not a live webchat please stick to the spirit of our webchat guidelines and keep it civil.

If one topic is overwhelmingly dominating responses we might request that people don't continue to post what's effectively the same question or point. Rest assured we will ALWAYS make the recipient aware that it's an area of concern to multiple users and will encourage them to engage with those questions.

Thanks
Justine

Nb existing members will be able to post on this thread. Thanks.

That. Was. Derisory.

The tide is turning, everyone else is starting to get it. Tough questions deserve thoughtful answers.

That was contemptible.

The only silver lining for me is that if she'd answered those questions properly, I'd have had to seriously contemplate voting Conservative, which would've required some serious nose holding but hey, currently I'm a single issue voter. I'd have gone there.

That's now not an option.

How awful & embarrassing for her. Shame.

"Not my question, but WTAF? It was pretty clear the question related to predatory MLMs like Forever Living etc, which are NOT illegal since they ostensibly involve selling a (shit, overpriced) product, but are extremely damaging. Yet no acknowledgement of them. "

It was my question and I thought it must be me, so I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one who thinks the question wasn't answered. Perhaps Penny doesn't know the difference.

I wasn't impressed with the answer to the question about childcare, either. I don't need to know what the Government is doing - I know all too well, working as I do in the sector. I'm also well aware of the devastating effect Government policy is having on childcare settings around the country. Penny's response did not address these issues at all.

Oh dear.

Penny's answers in that webchat felt a bit like Joey Essex explaining dark matter to Professor Brian Cox.

But with less success.

It was my question and I thought it must be me, so I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one who thinks the question wasn't answered. Perhaps Penny doesn't know the difference.

That’s the only explanation I can think of. It’s a safe question, not about trans issues, relatively uncontroversial, so you’d expect a much more expansive answer, not... that.

She doesn’t know what MLM companies are. She doesn’t know how they work or how they prey on women.

I’m trying to get my head around that, tbh.

popchyk’s comment about Joey Essex seems pertinent here.

Just so I’m clear- the Woman and Equality’s Minister has just confirmed that all single-sex based rights and protections are rendered completely meaningless as anyone can identify into being a woman?

Looks like that to me.

Just wanted to say ta to tanith asking the MLM question, friend just got into forever living or whatever shite it's called, you deserved a better response than that. Though I suspect she moves in circles which are not being swamped with these businesses and perhaps had no clue what you were referring to.

Well, it sounds like questions have been answered by those in the Government Equalities Office, which, as we are learning, is nothing more than a sub-branch of Stonewall.

Well that was... um... unedifying.

I understand people are worried, but I want to reassure them we are absolutely committed to maintaining protections for single sex services.

Penny, or your staff, I BEG you to read the following we need to make it very clear to you that self ID in and of itself makes this impossible. That allowing men to be included in the sex class of women makes this impossible. If you allow men to be classed as women in ANY way legally it nukes sex based protections. please THINK about this. it is not possible to have any mechanism to put men into the legally category of women and maintain sex based protections.

What you’re doing is destroying all the legal protections women and girls have. There is no way to retain them if men can be classed as women.

I would like to think you’re just ignorant of the facts, rather than cognisant and pushing this through anyway.

Would I be right in saying all non-gendered issues were answered, regardless of where they appeared chronologically?

I was beginning to think none of the others would be!!! But many of the others weren't.

well 80% of those answers weren't actually answers were they?

They identified as answers and that was enough

She absolutely understands the issues. No doubt at all. Those answers were worded in just such a way that I believe make it clear this isn’t about ignorance of the facts.

This thread is so astonishing to look back on though, because all these questions together really capture where the big issues are for women’s rights and in particular how wide ranging the impact of self Id has been already. It’s all here.

Do we believe that she actually answered these questions rather than passing them over to the straight from university young woke work experience person?

Penny: assuming you actually think enough of women in this country to assign one of your assistants to read the reactions to your responses here - although I realise this is a vanishingly unlikely prospect - I will be clear.

This was you auditioning to 50% of the voters in the UK.

One of them is me.

I will not cast a vote for any party that does not have full-throated pro-woman and pro-child protection policies. Until that party appears, I will not be voting other than to register a protest. I am not alone. More and more women join me every single day.

Labour is clearly lost to women. You had an opportunity here. You blew it. And I will be telling every woman I know just how badly you blew it.

Whoever answered them, they represent her. She's not getting off the hook, she's responsible. The buck stops with her, end of.

ewesurname best comment ever

You did make me spill my coffee though I was laughing so loud.

I would appreciate hearing @JustineMumsnet comment on this façade, and how this will affect any benefits of discussions going forward.

I don't think Penny (or her SPAD) read the room very well!

Do we believe that she actually answered these questions rather than passing them over to the straight from university young woke work experience person?

The GEO civil servants steering on this are pretty blatantly biased on this issue which is quite bad from the point of view of stuff like democracy.

Yes I do. I think it is important here to explain what it means to change your legal sex marker. When someone goes through the process of applying for a Gender Recognition Certificate to change their legal gender, they then use that certificate to get a new birth certificate.
This means their new birth certificate will show the name they are now using and the sex marker on the birth certificate will change either from male to female or female to male. There is no box for ‘transwoman’ on a birth certificate. We are operating within the confines of a system that only recognises male and female on birth certificates, and so trans people must, in order to legally be recognised in the gender they live their life in, change the sex marker on their birth certificate.

Dear Penny, how completely out of touch and ignorant you are. No one believes these men are female or that their TW gender identity means that they are actual women without "sex change" surgery which is in itself misguided. We will continue to fight this bullshit.

She has no idea of the damage being done to autistic young people whose gender non conformity is being diagnosed as being transgender online, in schools, by activists LONG LONG before they get near The Tavistock or an adult gender clinic. And ending up sterilised and surgically altered as a result.

And the rest of the answers - well that's what we are up against. Our elected politicians, totally out of sync with real people, being advised by elite niche experts, whilst we get screwed over and our children get surgery on the NHS to conform to stereotypes.

Penny's answers in that webchat felt a bit like Joey Essex explaining dark matter to Professor Brian Cox

Thank you, Popchyk, for a smile on a dark day.

Was just going to quote her too

I know a few people in your constituency Penny. You can be sure that I'll be raising your incompetence and craven adherence to this ideology with them.

Good idea, Eresh.