MPs demand withdrawal of a controversial consultation

[OldCrone]

www.consultationinstitute.org/closing-date-politics-mps-demand-withdrawal-of-a-controversial-consultation/

Finally, this week, Members of Parliament began calling for the consultation to be withdrawn. David Davies, MP for Monmouthshire was among those who alleged that the exercise was “fundamentally flawed”. He was quite explicit, demanding that the consultation be thrown out and restarted once parliamentarians “have had a proper conversation with women’s groups about their rights to protection”.

What the Government has done is avoided making any attempt at an impact assessment at this stage. In its own words; “It is therefore not possible to conduct a full impact assessment on what the changes to the Act will be, as they have not yet been decided.”

What this means is that the impact assessment – when it comes – will be when the Government has taken its decision, and will not be available to inform the debate and the consultation. Lawyers will surely seek to argue that this may invalidate such a decision.

The Government contends that an impact assessment cannot be prepared as it has no clear proposals in mind. Again, in a statement from the Equalities Office, “This is an open consultation – we are not putting forward any specific proposals for how we want the system to change”

Yet in the Ministerial Foreword to the consultation, the Minister talks of being “conscious of concerns about the implications of our proposals.” Maybe they are ‘unspecific’ proposals?

The author seems to think it is "a professionally-prepared and comprehensive consultation". Yet on his own admission, the government has not put forward any specific proposals, has said that they will make their decision based on the results of the consultation, and only then will impact assessments be carried out.

Nobody knows what is being proposed, so we were all guessing when we responded to the questions. No impact assessments had been done of any proposed changes, because nobody knows what the proposed changes are. How can this be described as "a professionally-prepared and comprehensive consultation"?

Interesting.

On the one hand, that consultation took me hours - and I put a lot of time into lobbying people I know to fill in the consultation and I helped them.

On the other hand - it's a shoddy piece of work for all of the reasons outlined. It was:
negligibly publicised;
negligibly translated,
difficult to understand for anyone irrespective of literacy level and education;
questionable in the partiality of the Easy Read Guide;
lacking in appropriate impact assessments;
a poor user interface for submitting responses.

Very interesting.

I wonder how many MPs are complaining..obviously they won't want to be named as they will be abused to fuck..but David Davies already gets the endless abuse so he can be named.

I pretty much used the phrase 'fundamentally flawed' in my complaint about the consultation.

I remember filling out the Scottish consultation on GRA reform for Scotland (last year?). It was completely different. Simple straight forward questions and I think a few multiple choice questions and spaces for "comment" and it was so quick.

WTF went on with this one, it was bonkers.

No impact assessments done? Doesn't sound like our current government 🤨

"We can't consult you on the massive constitutional changes we are not yet thinking of making during the consultation that we have initiated on these changes, because we are going to wait until the consultation is over before deciding what those changes might be and by then it will be too late to consult you"

Mind you, the Scottish consultation should probably be revoked too for completely ignoring women's groups and completing no impact assessment.

In fact - I'd like to have seen supporting documents for every question, where appropriate.

Demographic data, where relevant.

A summary of legislation and its impacts.

Potential intersection, conflicts, and implications for other groups.

I'm not expecting the government to address my concerns about totalitarianism but I'd like to have seen a full discussion of freedom of thought and freedom of conscience.

Given that most of the world still can't reply upon universal birth registration - a vital human right given its status as a gateway to human rights - what it means to be able to modify/revise a birth certificate in the absence of acknowledged error.

What are the implications for security or running background checks on people if it's possible to maintain legal identities as both male and female (as has been said about a very interesting lawyer)?

So many things I'd like to have seen addressed as part of the background to this consultation.

I bumped into my Conservative MP this weekend. I asked him about the GRA consultation. Before he replied, he checked which side I was on - I expect he does that with every issue! He then said the question hadn't come up much with him before - I didn't mention I'd emailed him last week!

After I had my say, he said that it was just a consultation, and not to read too much into it. His attitude was that there were lots of consultations, but few things made it into legislation, and they were very busy with Brexit, so it'd be unlikely to lead to anything. I suspect that's the general feeling - keep your head down, it'll blow over.

Obviously, I said MPs needed to speak up, as women were already being undermined eg Girlguiding, YHA. I'll email him later today/tomorrow with some info and links, including the one in the OP.

To suggest we don't know what is being proposed is odd. We know exactly what is being proposed.

There are seven pages of recommendations in this report published as a precursor to the consultation. Starts on page 79. A lot of this is based on adoption of self identification already happening without any legal requirement to do so.

This includes the recommendations to remove the EA2010 exemptions (which apparantly never happened) and to replace gender reassignment with gender identity in the EA. Maria Miller and Jess Phillips tried to push that through as a Private Members bill in 2016. (Also never happened).

publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmselect/cmwomeq/390/390.pdf

What are the implications for security or running background checks on people if it's possible to maintain legal identities as both male and female (as has been said about a very interesting lawyer)?

Jane Fae reported on this at length to the commission:

data.parliament.uk/WrittenEvidence/CommitteeEvidence.svc/EvidenceDocument/Women%20and%20Equalities/Transgender%20Equality/written/19486.html

An interesting sentence:
4.1.3 “fraud” is a common transphobic slur and is seriously derogatory towards trans people.

That bloody thing took me hours. Half the questions were about the GRA and the EA, which mostly had the same answer as I read it. I’m not sure what the questions meant though because all the guidance was in PDF form, and everybody who knows the first thing about accessibility knows that speech screen readers don’t cope well with PDFs. So I had to guess what the questions meant, guess how to answer them, and I had no help from the govt’s own guidance or any of the other guidance published to aid filling it in. I’ve probably given completely different answers to everyone else. Who knows.

To suggest we don't know what is being proposed is odd. We know exactly what is being proposed.

The Equalities Office said
“This is an open consultation – we are not putting forward any specific proposals for how we want the system to change”

also:
“It is therefore not possible to conduct a full impact assessment on what the changes to the Act will be, as they have not yet been decided.” (per Pre-Consultation Equality impact assessment for the Gender Recognition Act 2004 – Paragraph 3)

So have they decided or haven't they? And if they have, why didn't they do the impact assessments?

I thought there was a pretty explicit but at the start of the consultation about them wanting to relax the requirements for applicants 🤔.

^bit

Interesting overview of the legality of the consultation from the (independent) Consultation Institute. www.consultationinstitute.org/closing-date-politics-mps-demand-withdrawal-of-a-controversial-consultation/.
"A legal challenge is more than a possibility. The impact assessment which accompanied the consultation will certainly not be sufficient to prove that the Government will have met the Equality Act S.149 ‘due regard’ principle." So I guess that's the next step in this distressingly unequal fight to retain women's rights.

Is any group currently considering a legal challenge?

Is there scope for someone like FairPlayfor Women to commission a QC opinion or similar, from a reputable expert, to look at the extent that the Government can use the consultation as the basis for legislation. Could this (I am not a lawyer) provide a quick strike, so cheaper and quicker than a judicial review?

I would be happy to contribute to a crowdfunder.

Crap consultation. Especially because the media were intimidated into silence and because women were intimidated out of talking about it.
Not to mention that it was an incredibly biased, incomprehensible load of twaddle that did not even attempt to investigate women's concerns.

I thought there was a pretty explicit but at the start of the consultation about them wanting to relax the requirements for applicants

Here's what the Consultation document says about the proposals:

49. The Government wants to make it less intrusive and bureaucratic for trans people to achieve legal recognition of their gender. This section of the consultation discusses our proposals in more detail.

50. In helping to determine what action we should take, we are interested in hearing more from trans people about their general experience of the GRA process. The LGBT survey provided useful quantitative information on the reasons why people who might want to apply had not applied. The survey did not, however, go into detail. Nor did it provide us with much information on what having a GRC means or might mean to a trans person. We are therefore asking the following two questions.

And that's the end of the section where they discuss their proposals 'in more detail'. It looks almost like they were going to say 'we propose to let everyone choose their legal sex', then changed their minds and had an editing failure.

Not to mention that it was an incredibly biased, incomprehensible load of twaddle that did not even attempt to investigate women's concerns.

Sums it up nicely.

This is so bloody infuriating.

I'm happy to donate £, time, and the use of the badge making machine I'm probably about to buy.

Can we just set up a political party though? Is there a benefit to that versus being a charity / pressure group / lobby group?