Green Party Gender Recognition Act survey

[poopsqueak]

I am not sure if this has been posted before, but since the AC debacle, I have been researching the Green Party's position on a number of things so that I can make up my mind on wether to vote for them.

I came across their survey on the Gender Recognition act (posted by AC on her Twitter feed)

twitter.com/LGBTIQAGreens/status/1031505576940003329

And I thought I'd fill it out, giving fair and reasonable answers. Well, turns out they dont want fair or reasonable answers. They have actually pre-filled out answers and pre-selected answers in the favour of the answers they want you to give so-to-say, so that you are encouraged to answer in the way they want.

AIBU to think this is outrageous (although not unsurprising)? It's not in the least bit unbiased and puts words in the mouths of people filling out the survey.

(Image attached with pre-filled answer in - not my answers)

Why is any of this necessary? I mean even if you took this offer from the Greens at face value- how is a political party pre-filling a form, which then you add your details to, then the Party, what, submits under your name, to the GRC consultation? How is that saving anyone any hassle? Least of all for the Greens themselves who have to police the forms and then submit them? I don’t get it. How does the party member know the party are representing their views correctly in the consultation, or that the party has submitted the member’ own views at all?

Surely a normal political party response in this scenario is to write to members saying there is a consultation which we think is important for members to reply to, giving the link to the consultation plus the Green party’s approved crib sheet for how to fill it out? That would be fine and above board.

Is it even acceptable in a government consultation for political parties to solicit responses from members and then to ‘submit them on members’ behalf’..?

Surely the Greens can submit their own official party response if they want. Then everyone else who wants to respond has to do so as an individual, ie do it themselves?

I’d say the government consultation team for the GRC consultation may need to clarify on that.

They may not be aware they will be getting however many responses from Green Party members that haven’t actually been filled out by those members named.

Also far be it from me to suggest there could be any abuse of process but how can anyone know that the submissions sent by the Greens to the GRC consultation, do actually correspond to Green Party members who genuinely did want the party to make a response for them?

Or that the response made says what the Green Party member actually intended by the time it gets submitted to the govt consultation.

Sorry if I have misunderstood something here.

Bumping this thread. Seems important that the Greens have some response to this.

Bumping. Hello Green Party? What have you got to say about this?

After what happened to Caroline Lucas being blocklisted for saying she would speak to women, I really would not feel comfortable sending a gender-critical response to this GP pre-filled survey.

Bumping this thread.

This is shocking.

I think s second round of contacting the people suggested in this thread - but highlighting how worrying it is that this automatic response form was created in the conditions that have been revealed by recent developments in the Green Party.

And definitely contact bothe the GRA Committee and the new Leaders of the Hreen Party.

Right. Pencils suggested that we email [email protected]

I also suggest anyone on Twitter directs an enquiry to all senior Greens and to the investigator Verita (@VeritaUK).

Ask:

Whether or not any completed "surveys" have already been submitted to the consultation?

Who wrote the suggested answers?

Whether or not it is appropriate to use a Challenor publication for this purpose in light of recent events?

And more, from TheOtherPamAyres

The question was: who to alert about the Green Party's pre-filled in submission forms?

In short, Hilary Spencer, director of the Government Equalities Office

GEO Twitter account "We are the UK Government Equalities Office (GEO), responsible for gender & LGBT equality."

<a class="break-all" href="http://go.mumsnet.com/?xs=1&id=470X1554755&url=twitter.com/WomenEqualities" target="_blank">https://twitter.com/WomenEqualities

Government Equalities Office
Sanctuary Buildings
16-20 Great Smith Street
London
SW1P 3BT

Email
[email protected]

Enquiries
0300 200 3343

@Langcleg Hi there

There's another issue with the form - a very dodgy process.

All organisations direct people to the actual form and offer guidance on what to say. These Green forms go to a middleman.(sic)

That, in itself, is suspicious. The forms may be altered. Or duplicated. Or censored. Or not submitted. What guarantee is there that the middleman (ie the Green Party) is acting in good faith?

I would want those forms to be set aside for further investigation, along with questions addressed to the Green party. I would want the Green party to either stop the middleman process, or explain it.

Thanks, Pam. Yes. Ask that, too!

I'll be shooting off an email in the morning.

I like it when we take direct action!

Is there a body in charge of consultations and their formatting/legalities?

Wow, I missed this thread. Good work.

I can't see how the Green Party's response to the consultation can have any credibility at all, given this approach: "I'll pre-draft your response, intercept all responses, curate them, forward on your behalf and then delete your original response".

That and the person in particular who is the architect of that process.

Unbelievable that this was ever sanctioned.

Actually also very, very concerning that said person has now had sight of names, contact details and gender critical views of respondents. That data is not in safe hands.

I was completely unaware of this. Very dodgy indeed.

Bump.

I would hope that if the government receive a lot of forms with exact same wording and such, that they will be discounted as spam. Pathetic, that this has been done, its a bit different explaining and such and helping people fill it in, but actually prefilling it and only wanting people to put their name and such? Ridiculous but not surprising.

I have asked my sister in law to fill this out and get back to me. She is a member of the green party, and is also transsexual, plus gender critical so will likely change all of the answers. I am curious to see if they actually send her response or not. I suspect they filter out anything thats not just spammy nonsense.

It has already been said earlier in the thread, but it's worth repeating.

If you want to respond to the GRA consultation, do it directly here:
consult.education.gov.uk/government-equalities-office/reform-of-the-gender-recognition-act/

You have no guarantee that the Green Party will submit your answers without changing them if you go through them, plus there is the issue of them having your details.

Lots of useful info here: fairplayforwomen.com

If anyone has sent the survey back to the Green Party (ie Challoner or Green LBGTQWERT) you might consider raising concerns with the help of a template letter, available from the Information Commissioners Office

ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/raising-concerns/

I see that another MNetter has used the letter to raise concerns about Terfblocker. If there is no joy from the suspect organisation (Green Party) the ICO will review the case.

I don't know if anyone else has mentioned this - but aren't Stonewall doing much the same thing?

I know that's different from a political party doing it - but it's dodgy nonetheless.

Hi @Vickie

Green Party's system asks respondents to send the forms back to Green LBGTQWERTY. Stonewall asks respondents to go to the consultation website and fill in the form themselves.

theOtherPamAyres

Fair enough - they popped up on my Facebook timeline about this yesterday and I have to say I didn't interrogate what they were saying all that closely.

There’s a note at the foot of the screen: Published and promoted by Aimee Challenor. Don’t know if this refers to the actual responses though.

Has anyone got a screen shot of this? Looks like they've changed it:

@owlonabike did you take a screenshot by any chance?

I'm guessing it was here, where it now says This form was created inside Young Greens?

aren't Stonewall doing much the same thing?

Stonewall are doing a questionnaire, where there is text above each box, with suggested answers. It's not actually inside the box though, you would at least need to copy and paste.

Other organisations have model answers also.

But no one, as far as I know, actually fills it out for you so all you need to do is click through it.

Sorry, to be clear - the other orgs who have model answers have put them out as PDFs or guidance on their websites.

As far as I know, Stonewall is the only org other than the Greens where you can actually open a questionnaire and the answers are right there as you go through the form (Greens = filled in, inside the box; Stonewall = suggested text above the boxes)