The Equalities and Human Rights Commission: one of the roots of regulatory capture?

[theOtherPamAyres]

The EHRC says:
Our job is to help make Britain fairer. We do this by safeguarding and enforcing the laws that protect people’s rights to fairness, dignity and respect.

As a statutory non-departmental public body established by the Equality Act 2006, the Commission operates independently. We aim to be an expert and authoritative organisation that is a centre of excellence for evidence, analysis and equality and human rights law. We also aspire to be an essential point of contact for policy makers, public bodies and business.

Trans pressure groups have always relied on the interpretation of advice given by the EHRC. They relied on it during training for public bodies and businesses. The Government relied on it, when the Ministry of Justice out-sourced prison policy to Gendered Intelligence.

But the EHRC's advice was wrong. It has never hidden the fact that it wants to foster 'inclusion' and appears to have allowed that bias to cloud its judgement. In a nutshell it said that employers and service providers would be advised to allow a transgender person to access spaces and services "in their acquired gender" (sic).

Councils were persuaded that they would be guilty of discrimination unless they embraced 'inclusion'. Ditto girl guides, NSPCC, Womens Aid, the NHS, schools, Crown prosecutors and the police. It was no coincidence that codes of practice for these organisation began to talk about 'transgender identity' as a protected characteristic in both the civil and criminal law.

Trans people themselves were persuaded that they had a perfect right to be treated in their acquired gender and had no qualms about taking full advantage of those rights to enter toilets, short-lists and apply for women's jobs. "Transwomen are women" they proclaimed, under the illusion that the law was on their side..

It was only when organisations challenged the EHRC, that it revised the advice.

Even after getting it wrong, the EHRC pressed ahead with its inclusion agenda. In its written evidence to the Select Committee on reforms to the GRA,(2018) it recommended getting rid of the sex binary, saying:
....sex markers on administrative forms, identity documents and data collection forms should be reviewed to facilitate inclusion.

Today (15/06/2019) we learn in the Times that EHRC were keen to prosecute discrimination cases against schools and services, in collaboration with Mermaids. They are nowhere to be seen when it comes to the 'sex' protected characteristic. Funny that.

What sort of independent, purportedly neutral, 'expert' and 'authoritative' human rights defender gets the law wrong;
provides bad advice to trans people;
sets service providers and public bodies on a course to 'inclusion';
and wants to remove 'sex', in favour of gender?

There were many references to Maria Miller's 2016 trans enquiry which recommended that transsexual was outdated.

The EHRC agree with this and want to use the term trans instead.

What they don't say is that the definitions for these two things are very different. And replacing one with the other is catastrophic for women's rights. Trans has no status in law. And yet still the EHRC are pushing ahead, knowing full well that this opens up single-sex spaces to anyone who merely claims to be trans.

They really need to be held to account over this.

If they are confident in their position, they should be able to explain it. Those emails suggest otherwise though.

I wonder if this influenced his appointment?
p6 "...He also worked with the Cabinet Office to deliver £2 billion savings from the Government’s major suppliers."

If you read the document he should never have been appointed. Serious concerns about conflict of interest which he did not appear to have identified himself before applying.
publications.parliament.uk/pa/jt201516/jtselect/jtrights/648/648.pdf

p7 He is also “involved in driving diversity in the City of London”. I wonder what form that takes and with whom he networks?

FreeFreesia that document is astonishing and an excellent find.

Wonder if Shami Chakrabarti will need to return her ermine once the EHRC complete their investigation into Labour anti-semitism.

The proposed guidance for schools has still not been published - it must be well over a year late. I bet the reason is that the EHRC still can't work out how to skew the guidance to remove the rights of girls to sex segregated changing rooms, showers etc. Now that women's groups have successfully made them change their inaccurate guidance to reflect the actual law, they're in a quandary.

They really do need challenging about their provable bias and their actions (especially now we know they've been colluding with lobby groups to target individual schools). The trouble is, there is so much illegality and disgraceful things to challenge at the moment, it's hard to know where to focus attention most effectively.

It reminds me of the 'cake case' where the Northern Ireland Equality Commission were, I think, criticised for essentially taking sides (keen to support the purchasers right to support homosexuality but not the bakers right not to be compelled into speech.)

Copying the following post which I made on the Mermaids data breach thread:

From The Times article:

The emails also show co-operation with the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), another official body with a public stance of neutrality in the transgender debate. In the correspondence, the EHRC appeared to seek trans test cases against schools and service providers.

Stephanie Davies-Arai, of Transgender Trend, a group concerned about the rise in the number of children transitioning, said: “The EHRC has demonstrated clearly that it is not impartial.

“There needs to be a full investigation into the activities of Mermaids and the influence of the transgender lobby on a public body mandated to protect the rights of everyone.”

The EHRC is chaired by David Isaac. He has been in the role since 2016.

Prior to that, he was chair of Stonewall, 2003-2012.

He was also a trustee of Big Lottery Fund, 2014-2018. They fund Mermaids.

He is a lawyer. His firm has been named by Stonewall as the UK's top LGBT+ employer 2019.

Isaac has been named regularly as a top LGBT influencer in the Stonewall awards. Including in 2019.

Isaac was chosen by Nicky Morgan (Education Sec at the time) after having been put forward by a Whitehall select committee.

He has not given up his personal legal role whilst chairing the EHRC. Questions were asked at the time of his appointment about this potential conflict of interest. Harriet Harman (Parliament's joint Committee on Human Rights) in particular was concerned that he could not avoid conflict with his business interests, and questioned why these interests had not been raised as an issue prior to his appointment.

Chairwoman of the Women and Equalities Committee, Maria Miller said: “The public appointments process needs to command the confidence of members of the public. MPs have been given a central role in scrutinising that decision-making, yet some aspects of this are opaque. In this case the appointments panel did not document any discussion as to how Mr Isaac would balance his role as a senior equity partner in an international law firm with the role of chair of the EHRC despite potential and perceived conflicts of interest and possible issues with the Nolan Principles. Records of further conversations between Mr Isaac and the Cabinet Office were also unavailable to the committee. To scrutinise important appointment decisions House of Commons committees need basic facts. In this case these were not forthcoming. In our report, we recommend that the pre-appointment scrutiny guidelines be reviewed."

Harriet Harman also said at the time:

"What you should be having for the EHRC is someone who is a champion for human rights … You have to be fearless against the vested interests. The lion’s share of his income will be coming from an organisation that has a vested interest. As they say, ‘he who pays the piper calls the tune’.”

Sources for the above: Isaac's own profile page and reporting from the Guardian.from 2016

There was much discussion at the time about whether his business interests would put him into conflict. Did anyone ask whether his connections with Stonewall would put him into conflict? There's no suggestion that he is personally involved with the EHRC requests for test cases from Mermaids. However, surely the buck stops with him and his fellow board members. The following is is stated on the EHRC commission and governance web page:

The Board has a strategic oversight role. It does not directly manage the Commission's operations, but delegates that role to the CEO and the Commission’s staff. It holds the CEO and the staff to account by monitoring performance against the Commission’s strategic priorities and ensuring that resources are being used to good effect.

Really interesting, FreeFreesia

it's hard to know where to focus attention most effectively.

The top. While we're in the trenches, they're having secret dinners with UN leaders. It's time to stop fire fighting and get ahead of this thing. We need to cut it out by the roots.

Mr Isaac sits on a number of charitable and not-for-profit boards. He is Chair of Modern Art Oxford, a Director of the Big Lottery Fund, a trustee of the Human Dignity Trust and of 14-18 Now. He is also “involved in driving diversity in the City of London”

And that brings us back to Mermaids...

Excerpts from David Issacs CV (bold mine):

In the LGBT context, I was directly involved in devising and delivering legal equality in my role as Chair of Stonewall. I am now involved in promoting other equality strands in the legal profession, the City of London and in my own work place - especially gender, race and social mobility.

Connections to Edward Lord perhaps?

^These skills are also important in my NGO roles - especially those that involved communications with parliamentarians and opponents of equality in the early days of working to introduce LGBT legal reform. At that time we faced huge opposition but a
combination of successful legal challenges, the advancement of sound argument and the ability to build coalitions delivered successful outcomes.^

Sounds like someone who likes looking for test cases.

Interesting about Nicky Morgan going to bat for David Isaac.

services.parliament.uk/bills/2016-17/companiesdocumentationtransgenderpersons.html

Nicky Morgan tried to get a Private Members Bill through for transgender people to be able to hide their prior details at Companies House. We've seen a number of compulsory strike-offs for people prominent in the trans movement. Also lots of debts not being paid.

It was only delayed because of Brexit.

www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/women-and-equalities-committee/inquiries/parliament-2015/transgender-equality/publications/

Nicky Morgan was also part of the Transgender Enquiry of course. She was Minister for Women and Equalities and Secretary of State for Education at the start of that.

Gosh, you'd love to clap eyes on these people's bank accounts, wouldn't you?

Nicky Morgan was also part of the Transgender Enquiry of course. She was Minister for Women and Equalities and Secretary of State for Education at the start of that.

It's amazing how everyone concerned with women's rights has decided that they're not very important compared to men's.

What makes me absolutely fume is that, having been alerted to the harm their unlawful policies have been causing to women and children, both ECHR and Stonewall staunchly refuse to make good. Even by stealth. Are they waiting until we get worn out and give up before quietly amending their policies?

They could actually do a lot of good by undoing the harm they've already caused. But no. Power does as power is. If we desperately want recognition of our rights, they'll withhold it. That makes them abusive, their conduct beneath contempt.

I can't see us rapidly establishing bodies with the same political clout as either of those institutions, so we are really depending on them to just acknowledge their grave error, make the corrections, and disseminate the new, safeguarding and sex-based rights-compliant, policies.

As for government silence on this - and still no report on the GRA reforms! - words fail me. It's not enough to just say "we're not going to abolish the single sex exemption." They need to speak up on behalf of half the electorate. They would actually get some support that way, but it's a step too far for them. Pathetic.

I daydream about a National Organisation for Women, but in the current climate it'd go the way of the Women's Equality Party, so it's a non-starter. We're left with trying to make enough noise to hold these selfish, cloth-eared no-marks to account.

Rant over

It's amazing how everyone concerned with women's rights has decided that they're not very important compared to men's.

Isn't it just?

Nicky Morgan tried to get a Private Members Bill through for transgender people to be able to hide their prior details at Companies House. We've seen a number of compulsory strike-offs for people prominent in the trans movement. Also lots of debts not being paid.

This sounds like a very inclusive and necessary thing to do with no risk of negative consequences whatsoever. What a rights champion she is.

Trans pressure groups have always relied on the interpretation of advice given by the EHRC.

TRANS PRESSURE GROUPS HELPED WRITE THE INTERPRETATION OF ADVICE GIVEN BY THE EHRC
(Sorry for shouting)

EHRC is the absolute epicentre of regulatory capture.

They write lots of different guidance including statutory code which is not the law but which carries a lot of legal weight. If you go against statutory code you need an extremely good argument to win if it goes to court.

In 2011 they consulted with lots of different organisations including trans pressure groups Press For Change, GIRES and a:gender, on their draft Equality Act statutory code:

www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/publication-download/equality-act-codes-practice-post-consultation-report

vii. Various transsexual stakeholder groups responded to the formal consultation and also participated in the parallel consultation events taking place on the non-statutory guidance.

Feedback from the consultation events was incorporated into the employment and services codes where appropriate, particularly on issues of confidentiality, use of single sex services and the legal definition of transgender.

and …

e. Services, public functions and associations
• A number of concerns were raised about the exceptions, in particular the exceptions for charities, single sex services and separate services.
These sections have been revised as a result.

What these TRA organisations managed to do was write 'case-by-case' into the code. It's not there in the legislation. They added it. This is on top of having to show that your female only space/service/job is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.

Page 198 of the statutory code for service providers:

13.60 - As stated at the beginning of this chapter, any exception to the prohibition of discrimination must be applied as restrictively as possible and the denial of a service to a transsexual person should only occur in exceptional circumstances. A service provider can have a policy on provision of the service to transsexual users but should apply this policy on a case-by-case basis in order to determine whether the exclusion of a transsexual person is proportionate in the individual circumstances.

The effect of this additional requirement is that if a women-only service wishes to use this exception and is legally challenged by a tw, the case becomes personal.

The test is no longer whether it's justified and proportionate for women to have female only space in a specific circumstance. The test is now whether this particular tw is 'woman enough' for female service users to be expected to turn a blind eye to their maleness and accept them personally into what was a female only space.

'Case by case' means that no-one has the right to run women only services any more. You can have it as a policy but 'case by case' overrules your policy so you can never guarantee female only space to your service users. Little wonder that women's organisations are afraid to use this exception.

Karen Ingala Smith mentioned the difficulties of 'case-by-case' in her brilliant testimony to the women & equalities committee.

'case by case' needs to go.

It has to be OK for women to say 'this is a female only space/service/job. No exceptions.

twelvecolourfulbirds thank you for joining those dots regarding David Isaac, it makes clear how regulatory capture is achieved by individuals strategically positioning themselves over time.

There's been a fair bit written about the cosy relationship between Mermaids and EHRC over the past few days. Part of the EHRC's role is to bring strategic litigation but this should be done impartially and with the aim of clarifying the law, not in order to pursue a woke agenda.

They've spent their time trawling for trans people, including children, who they can use to pursue test cases which crap all over women and girls. If they were doing their job they would have also pursued cases where women are trying to secure our own rights and our children's rights. They'd have supported Jennifer James' legal challenge to Labour's dodgy 'all women shortlists' policy. That went straight to the definition of woman and sex throughout the EA.

The 'enforcing the equality act' inquiry page says:

The deadline for written submissions was Friday 5 October 2018. If you wish to submit evidence please contact Committee staff.

And there's a link to get in touch and submit further evidence for anyone who has had further thoughts in the light of recent events.

Does anyone want to see Maria Miller tear David Isaac a new one?

Maria Miller is not a friend to women and this is possibly off topic but it's quite good:

parliamentlive.tv/event/index/0e490cbe-e2fa-4735-a281-9e94c2d9307a?in=11:30:06&out=11:32:58