Welsh Assembly and the lost equality impact assessment

[thatdamnedwoman]

The Welsh Assembly produced a 'Welsh Government Action Plan to advance equality for transgender people' in 2016

gov.wales/atisn13028

and said that an impact assessment had been carried out.

A Freedom of Information request was issued on March 2019 asking to see the impact assessment. The Impact assessment appears to have been lost. No trace of it anywhere — even though the Action Plan to Advance Equality for Transgender people mentions the importance of Impact Assessments. Here's the correspondence:

tinyurl.com/y6kxt29n

(I've had to do tinyurl as the original link was so long) It links to whatdotheyknow.com

If anyone here is sitting around at home today with nothing special to do you could check your local council (and possibly also town council and even parish council) on line and find out what resources/ action plans/ policies they have relating to transgender issues. If you find any, you could then use the letters in the whatdotheyknow link above as a template for making an FOI request asking about impact assessments.

My guess is the Welsh Assembly won't be the only body pushing change through without considering the impact on half the population. Let's help reveal this as the scandal we know it to be.

At best it's a careless disregard for women's rights and women's lives. But given everything else that's happening, not just here in the UK but internationally, it's hard not to see it as a deliberate attempt to replace sex-based rights with gender-based rights. Which in practice means replacing women's rights with men's rights.
The trans Action Plan is essentially a framework for that without requiring any change to the GRA. In every sphere - sport, education, the workplace, domestic violence refuges & rape crisis centres - trans rights are prioritised. Women's rights to single-sex spaces, services and opportunities are simply ignored. Not even mentioned. It's as if we don't exist.
I agree it's scary. I'm bloody terrified.

Updating. I asked friends who live in the constituency of Tonia Antoniazzi, who is on the Women and Equalities Committee, to raise this issue with her in her WEC capacity. I understand that she is going to follow it up with the Welsh Assembly. No idea if it'll help get a response out of them but who knows.

Nice one thatdamnwoman. Worth a try.
Helen Mary Jones said that she'd do the same (on Twitter) but only tumbleweed since then.

I've just received a response to my second FOI request to Welsh Government.
www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/documents_relating_to_the_equali

Their response consists of two documents:

1. The Transgender Action Plan (which I already have, obviously).
2. One document circulated internally to various ministers and civil servants. This document says that an Equality Impact Assessment has been drafted and will be updated and published with the Action Plan.

They seem to be claiming that this is all the documentation they have concerning the impact assessment.

Does this mean they didn’t actually do the EIA?

The total lack of evidence in this regard strongly suggests that no EIA was completed.

What's equally infuriating is the suggestion that the Action Plan is now out of date so we shouldn't worry our pretty heads about it anyway. We know that actions have already been taken on the basis of the plan - training & guidance re trans inclusion at refuges; guidance to sports' bodies like the WRU; training for teachers; Stonewall/GI materials to use in schools etc. At the very least there should be a review of the impact of these.

The Action Plan basically scraps all single-sex rights in Wales: in sports and changing rooms; in rape crisis centres and women's shelters; in schools & workplaces. It's a complete take-over.

Plus the suggestion that they are waiting for the GRA consultation is a complete red-herring.

I am posting below part of the text of the email I sent to Mark Drakeford and Jane Hutt. Although they say that the action plan is out of date, they have not responded to the specific point that the current guidance should be withdrawn due to the lack of an equality impact assessment.
---

"Please would you look further into the circumstances surrounding the loss of this important document, since the lack of an Equality Impact Assessment means that children and vulnerable women could already be at risk as a result of organisations following the guidance given in the Transgender Action Plan and associated Welsh Government funded documents such as the TransForm Cymru Toolkit and Welsh Women’s Aid's “Transgender Policy & Procedural Guidance”. Please will you also confirm that you will withdraw the Transgender Action Plan, the TransForm Cymru toolkit and the Welsh Women's Aid transgender guidance until they have been properly assessed for their impact on other protected groups, and rewritten to reflect this."

Plus the suggestion that they are waiting for the GRA consultation is a complete red-herring.

They seem quite fond of this as an excuse not to respond to any of the points I have made in my many emails to them. One question I have asked (several times), but failed to obtain an answer to is this:
“Do you think that girls in school should have access to single-sex toilets, changing rooms and showers? Single sex in this context means free of male-bodied people.” (I put in the explanation of what I meant by single sex, just in case they think that a boy magically changes sex when he says he's a girl.)

This is the last response to this question that I received from them:
"In line with previous correspondence on these issues, we are continuing to await the outcome of the UK Government’s consultation on the Gender Recognition Act. We have recently been advised that analysis of the very large number of responses received to this consultation is underway and that the outcome will be published subsequently. We are mindful of the concerns expressed by yourself and others on these issues and will be considering what further action is needed in Wales. No decisions have yet been taken about this, but I can assure you that impact assessments will be undertaken in respect of any substantive new policy developments in this area. This is also likely to involve consultation on the issues which you have highlighted in your latest and previous emails and related topics. It would not be appropriate to pre-empt such consultation and I am therefore unable to provide the “yes or no” answers you have requested at this stage."

My response:
"I don't see the relevance of the reform of the Gender Recognition Act to this question. Unless, of course, you are suggesting that should the UK government decide to go ahead with self-declaration of legal sex, and extends this right to children, girls could automatically lose their right to single sex spaces."

I possibly should have phrased that as a question, rather than a statement, but it probably wouldn't have made any difference since they haven't answered many of the other questions I've asked.

Women's rights to single-sex spaces, services and opportunities are simply ignored. Not even mentioned. It's as if we don't exist.
I agree it's scary. I'm bloody terrified.

Me too. Also utterly appalled at their “It’s done now, so even if women are at risk, we’re not going to change anything, whether or not it’s legal to continue.”

It’s the same pattern everywhere. Bring in new rules by stealth, then pretend women are ‘rolling back trans rights’ when women point out that women’s rights have been steamrollered without blinking.

@Oldstyle I've just followed Helen on Twitter. Did you ask her on Twitter? Could you/someone who's good with words draft a tweet I could copy (as I'm not great at it and don't want to come across as thick )

Could many of us tweet it? And not just @helen???

I've met Jane Hutt a couple of times and I would be very surprised if she wasn't GC.

I worked with her in the early noughties when she was Health Minister. She certainly didn’t get submissions involving “cervix owners” back then.

It might be worth looking at the Violence against women, domestic abuse & sexual violence (wales) Act 2015. A possible different way into the issue.

Section 2 of that Act is interesting. It obliges a person exercising functions under the Act to have regard to the need to remove or minimise any factors that increase the risk of violence to women and girls. This would catch the Welsh ministers in drawing up their strategy under section 3. Also local authorities drawing up strategies under section 5.

It might be worth asking in a foi how the increased risk of offences against women in shared sex changing rooms - clearly a factor to which section 2 requires regard to be had - has been taken into account in formulating and implementing the national and local strategies as required by the Act. And asking for evidence of how it was taken into account.

Perhaps worth raising with one of the Welsh politicians mentioned above? I mean, there is so much evidence re men in women’s prisons, shared changing rooms, that this has to be a factor to be taken into account under section 2.And if it hadn’t been, isn’t that a breach of statutory duty?

Also possibly the second section 2 requirement - exacerbating the impact of abuse - in terms of allowing men into domestic abuse crisis centres, rape crisis centres, making it more difficult (because distressing) for women to use shared sex facilities, eg changing rooms for public pools, where they are now expected to get changed in front of men.

Can you ask a sympathetic assembly member to look into it?

Dontdox: Helen Mary tweeted that she'd look in to this after she was tagged (is that the phrase? I'm not very technically adept!) in several tweets about the 'lost' EIA. Don't think there's been anything from her since but yes, it might be worth lots of us tweeting her and anyone else who might have a brain / a bit of integrity / any concern for women (all three might be asking too much).
Boobili She was. She now says that TW are W, and that misgendering is a hate crime.

Read this earlier. Comments are open!

penarthnews.wpcomstaging.com/2019/09/05/welsh-government-wipes-and-shreds-key-trans-sex-document/

FOIrequester, this was your second request for the email trails and minutes of meetings, and all you got was the one circulated email saying it had been drafted and the action plan itself?

If I've understood you correctly then yes, this confirms it plain wasn't done, and we're into intentional faking of and avoidance of following due process. Which, by inference, must have been in order to compel a desired outcome by avoiding recording information that would have prevented it. Which is a lot worse than the incompetency of not doing it, because it shows deliberate intent to deceive for a political purpose in the knowledge it would damage other protected groups.

So now this goes to the next level of ombudsman/MP/government equalities office/newspapers, because it isn't incompetence, it's corruption.

Welsh Government Civil Servants have been unable to find the document on any hard-drive, or any server, or on any lap-top, or on any memory stick and it’s not in any of the hundreds of government filing cabinets . Apparently even draft versions of the text have somehow disappeared into the ether.

And apparently all emails discussing it, the names of who was commissioned to carry it out, the minutes of the meetings where it was planned, discussed, fed back on and applied into the writing of the plan.....

Bollocks. It doesn't exist.

This is bizarre, at our Welsh primary school. A person at a party on NYE was telling me that they had inspected a number of schools and recommendations were being written re: toilets and changing facilities because of this. That was nine months ago.

I've now asked for an internal review of the handling of the request for correspondence and minutes of meetings.

Details here.
www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/documents_relating_to_the_equali#outgoing-937813

and

I can't wait for the answer on that one, I really can't.

On Twitter-

https://twitter.com/sdewherst/status/1171176678976045056?s=21

Report from Penarth News. Sarky comment alert from "Martin" in the comments ref MN not to mention an outrageous comment about there being "some advantage about removing some single sex facilities"

Martin's got a few ishoos I see....

Excellent work, FOI - what a mind-boggling clusterfuck this whole episode is.

I'm clerk to the governors of a Denbighshire school, the new Trans guidance came out earlier this year, complete with our old friend the genderbread man.

I should have a reply to my FOI request for the Equality Impact Assessment for this guidance from Denbighshire Council next week. I'll post on here when I hear from them but you will be able to see it here:

www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/equality_impact_assessment_for_t_4

I think schools are also supposed to do their own EIA before implementing any of the guidance in order to comply with the Public Sector Equality Duty. Welsh government have helpfully provided some guidance on how to do that. www.eiapractice.wales.nhs.uk/undertaking-an-eia