Reporting problems with the GRA consultation

[Oldstyle]

Baroness Nicholson who invited WPUK, FPfW, TT to run a session on the GRA at the House of Lords) suggested that problems with the consultation - content, language, focus, process, publicity etc - should be reported. Apparently we can do so via members of the Women & Equalities Committee. Worth doing. This is so very important.

Here are some of the problems people have raised... sure there are more.

Consultation advised by TRA lobbying organisations. No women's groups or women's services consulted.
Poorly publicised (except within trans community). No public meetings arranged by govt / local govt.
No support for women who attempted to organise meetings to discuss the GRA. No condemnation of attempts to silence them or prevent them meeting, often by violent means.
No clear information available from govt, either about the GRA or the related EA. Contradictory/incorrect info supplied when specifically requested.
Focus almost entirely on the impact on trans people - few opportunities to explain the impact on women & girls who will be directly affected.
Language complex/academic & hard to understand. Frequent confusion with terms 'sex' & 'gender' - misuse is significant given the implications of the GRA.
Consultation has not been translated, further excluding those religious/cultural groups who rely on women-only spaces.
Govt Minister Penny Mordant began consultation by stating that TWAW and has met several times with Stonewall who are promoting the GRA change. She has not met with women's groups.
The collection of the data is suspect. Anyone from anywhere can complete it as many times as they wish.

Would this include issues with unions?

My union have emailed me to confirm that , prior to being party to the TUC giving their unanimous support to self-ID, they consulted with the LGBT group within the union but no other groups including women's groups.

Yes, definitely worth including I reckon. Arguably, if the govt had acknowledged that the proposals impacted on women & girls, and that these voices needed to be heard, the unions would have been much more likely to have consulted their female members. And their female members would have been much more likely to have insisted on it.
From start to finish the whole thing is a travesty. Fair, balanced, accessible my arse!

re language - presents not widely accepted or evidence based concepts as agreed fact - I'm thinking of that non-binary waffle

This is an excellent idea.

Does anyone know if there are any particular members of the committee who might be more inclined to take the complaint seriously?

Mrs Maria Miller (Chair) Con
Tonia Antoniazzi Lab
Sarah Champion Lab
Angela Crawley SNP
Philip Davies Con
Vicky Ford Con
Kirstene Hair Con
Eddie Hughes Con
Jess Phillips Lab
Mr Gavin Shuker Lab (Co-op)
Tulip Siddiq Lab

Young Children were encouraged to fill it out....

Consultation has not been translated, further excluding those religious/cultural groups who rely on women-only spaces.

Am travelling ATM so not able to look it up (could someone please check?) - was it made accessible for disability requirements too? Large print, braille, etc? I know there's an "easier version" or something, but I hear that wasn't very good. Given disabled people may also be at risk of losing facilities and encounter a higher level of violence, surely they should be counted as stakeholders.

The lack of translation appalls me. Was it even offered in Welsh?

Silentcrow I think it was translated into Welsh - a friend tried to complete that version but said that the translation was entirely incomprehensible. Often the case when the starting point is confused / inconsistent / filled with jargon. And muddles the terms 'sex' and 'gender'.
Critical I believe that Tonia A. is willing to listen at least. Philip D. is not interested in women's issues at all but is hyper conservative so I suppose he could jump randomly either way. My inclination is to send a copy to each of them, and cc Baroness Nicholas.

The online format and lack of publicity means that the older generation will not be widely aware of the consultation. And less likely to be able to complete it.

And this is the group most likely to experience mixed sex hospital wards and/or intimate personal care from someone of the opposite sex.

The ‘Fact’ Sheet that accompanies the consultation is very partisan to my mind and quite misleading

www.gov.uk/government/consultations/reform-of-the-gender-recognition-act-2004

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/721642/GEO-LGBT-factsheet.pdf

In the context of a consultation about self ID even the definitions are misleading- in the first para:
‘What is Trans?
‘^Trans is a general term for people whose gender is different from the gender assigned to them at birth. For example, a trans man is someone that transitioned from woman to man. Trans people do not feel comfortable living as the gender that they were born with. They take serious, life-changing steps to change their gender permanently.’

The definition of a trans person could be a lot shorter under self ID. It’s ‘anyone who says they are..’ and making a permanent change is certainly not a typical definition of trans. It’s not what

The fact sheet isn’t very clear on ‘sex’ vs ‘gender’ either these definitions are central to understanding what the consultation is about. Good practice in a government consultation exercise would surely be spelling out definitions very clearly?

Hardly anyone knows about it. What steps did the government take to make the public aware that they were being consulted?

*’its not what Stonewall etc are lobbying for’, that should have read. (The ‘permanent change’ definition of trans.)

Completely agree that hardly anyone knows- making it scandalous that women’s groups have not been actively sought out to give views by the government on this issue, when they were planning this public consultation.

What a great idea. Although they aren’t going to be very pleased to hear how pathetic we think they have been!

The speech Dr Stock gave at the HOLs meeting, is full of examples of problems with the consultations and the whole process of the Equalities committee “evidence gathering.”

Ever since the Women and Equalities Committee (Chair Maria Miller) published its report on "Trangender Equality" in Dec 2015, we've been watching a car crash in slow motion. The enquiry took evidence overwhelmingly from pro-Trans organisations. The recommendations are a list from the Trans lobby. The truth is that "Trans" is a very, very uncomfortable and fundamentally intractable issue. Back in 2003 when the original Gender Recognition bill was being discussed the main concern in all the debates was to avoid same sex marriage. The legal fiction of changing "gender" was thought to be the lesser of two evils. The mix-up between "sex" and "gender" was deliberate. As Lord Tebbit and Anne Widdecombe noted it was a "very bad" bill and Lord Moynehan tried very, very hard to point out the consequences for all sport. A number of prominent thinkers, including the gender-critical transsexual Miranda Yardley (see his webste), believe that the GRA is no longer needed, and should be not amended but actually repealed. At the very least the GRA should NOT be changed, but single-sex protections for women should be strengthened. Fair Play For Women have a "quick and easy" response button on their website as we approach the end of the consultation on 19th October.

What steps did the government take to make the public aware that they were being consulted?

I'm sure we've been going round with our eyes closed and missed the billboards, TV and radio adverts, newspaper adverts, leaflet drops etc.

That and the extensive , informative, balanced coverage in mainstream media such as respected current affairs programmes.

This might be wise but it seems to me the select committee has been utterly complicit in this shit show and will be anxiously arse covering.

I wonder if there’s anyone we could report to who is responsible for standards of investigation and consultation. I would have thought that a minister publicly coming down on one side of a debate half way through a consultation is in breach of the Ministerial code. Who oversees that ? Please god let it not be the Speaker....

You have not missed any Gov advertising. They really did NOT want you to know. They thought that the proposals were just "a little extension" of the rights of "trans" people. Astonishingly for such expensively educated people they lack the common sense to understand that Women were very much affected by the proposals.

MPs, ministers, the PM herself are all in an "equalities bubble"...

Rightreckoner: well, the Speaker was responsible for stopping David TC Davies MP from asking an urgent question in the House of Commons about the presence of a fake Trans-identifying male prisoner called Karen White in an all-women's prison (James Kirkup wrote about this in the The Spectator on 14th Sept). The MoJ apologized. But heads should roll for the stupidity by all concerned. Back to the Consultation: ALL parties are equally complicit in hushing up this Consultation and leaving women in the dark. Only David Davies, MP for Monmouth, Liz Truss and maybe one other MP have had the courage to take on the "trans taliban" in full attack mode.

There's no requirement to be in the UK, a UK citizen or to hold a UK passport.

I actually made a complaint about refilled forms and lack of publicity earlier. It was to a general email though.

I hope that the high number of MPs who are anti these changes (see Times article thread), plus the high number of responses via the FPfW one-click option (26,000 and counting), plus the numbers of people contacting their MPs, plus the increasingly critical media coverage, plus Karen White might just give us some leverage. If we bombard the W&EC with legitimate complaints about process and content that maybe makes it just that bit harder to push the proposals through. Got to be worth a try. And thanks for all these additional reasons why the consultation is flawed. The incompetence and lack of oversight is astonishing.

Further inaccuracies in the ‘factsheet’ provided to accompany this impartial government consultation include that:

’There will be no change to the provision of women-only spaces and services’
The Government is clear that there will be no change to the Equality Act 2010, which allows service providers to offer separate services to males and females, or to one sex only, subject to certain criteria. These services can treat people with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment differently, or exclude them completely, but only where the action taken is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. Importantly, a service provider’s starting point should be to treat a trans person in the gender they identify with, and to allow them to access services for that gender unless by doing so they would be unable to provide that service to other service users. This means it can’t be a blanket ban, or done on a whim. It has to be for a real reason, on a case by case basis. For example a female only domestic violence refuge may provide a separate service to a trans woman if it can be shown there is a detriment to other service users from including the trans woman as part of the regular service. If they then have to exclude that trans person, they ought to consider what alternatives they can offer to the trans person. This has been the law since 2010 and will not change’.

This is wrong surely. See my bolding. They have misrepresented how the equality Act works, from what my understanding of it is (I’m not a lawyer- hopefully someone can correct if I have this wrong). You CAN have blanket bans for men in women’s spaces. You do NOT have to take as the starting point that he IS a woman. You do NOT have to consider the man in that equation as though he was a woman because he is NOT a woman. You do NOT have to offer him an alternative service, because you are a service provider for women. The standard for not offering him that service is NOT that doing so would be impossible for you to do, but that doing so would massively compromise the service for the intended users, ie WOMEN.

This fact sheet is surely misrepresenting the Equality Act?

It’s here: assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/721642/GEO-LGBT-factsheet.pdf

Oldstyle I looked up Philip Davies because I was puzzled about what you said about him not being interested in women's issues (wondered why he was a member of the women's and equalities committee) and I was like at what I read. This man isn't just a hyper conservative he is a MRA and consistently voted against equal gay rights.

I found this article by Laura Bates to be particularly enlightening www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/feb/02/is-philip-davies-fit-to-be-an-mp. It's making me question these so called parliamentary committees and why someone like this is on the Women's and Equalities committee! How do these MPs get to be on them and why are they not vetted. I'm also assuming by the date of this article that he was able to get on to the committee again after being re-elected as MP in the 2017 snap election.

I just don't know how this is allowed to happen!

There was no accurate unbiased information for people with disabilities.

Hornets yes Davies is reprehensible isn't he? Apparently he got himself on to the committe specifically because he is anti women's rights / positive discrimination. But he's also anti-gay as you point out so I've no idea which bit of bigotry will win out in this case!
Chatty this is so confusing - and worrying. Dr Stock and Julian Norman have (I think) clarified the legal position recently. I'll go and have another look. Thought I'd understood it but the 'factsheet' has bewildered me. I'll report back.