Chair: the next question is from Johann Lamont from Glasgow CLP and it’s about women’s rights. Do you support the Equality Act and the right of women to organise in support of it’s protections for women?
KS: I do support the Equality Act, I thought it was a really important piece of legislation. It brought together different equality strands, and gave them formal protection. It also set out the circumstances where you can discriminate if you can show where you can show there’s a good purpose for it, and it’s proportionate. It’s built on the Human Rights Act which has the same principles and I support that. And one of the great things about our party is that it has been able over the years to embrace, not just the, the sort of working class and trade union base we’ve always had, but to bring in the equalities strand so that all sorts of people, who care about equality, can feel that they’re part of our party, and our party fights for all of those issues in a united way, so I do support that legislation. I fear for legislation like that, and the Human Rights Act, under the Tories, but actually it’s a very very good piece of legislation, protecting different strands. I would want to take it a bit further, go back to the Charter of Fundamental Rights that we’re losing because that was an even more up to date version of human rights protection.
LN: So I recognise that this has become a deeply emotive debate, particularly around the Gender Recognition Act, and it matters deeply to a lot of women across this country that we protect the right of women to have safe spaces, and I understand that because I represent a constituency where domestic violence rates are amongst the highest in the country, and it really, really matters to people. But when I worked for the charity Centrepoint, we worked very hard to make sure that our hostels were safe spaces for the young people in them, and to made sure that nobody was admitted to those hostels to do them harm, and I think that there are practical ways that we can address those concerns, whilst recognising, as I do, that trans women are women, and our job is not to divide women from other women, but to work together to defend and advance the rights of women together. I have a young person in my constituency who is currently going through this process at the moment, and she has been left without any support, on a waiting list for years. Every time I see her and her family, I wonder whether they are going to survive much longer. The bullying is horrendous, the discrimination is horrendous, and I am determined that I will stand up for her, and for women across this country, and they will hear nothing other from me in this leadership contest that my full and utter compassion and support.
RLB: Well look, there has been a huge, and as Lisa says, emotive discussion that has taken place within the party on this issue, and I want to be very clear that there is no separation of recognising a transwoman’s or a transman’s right to self identify, away from protecting the rights and safety of women, so I do support the provisions of the Equalities(sic) Act, but I also support the right of transmen and transwomen to self ID and I want to see changes in the law made to reflect that, and we do need to take forward people’s concerns about the safety of women in safe spaces, in refuges, and make sure that we as a party develop policies and provisions to provide that comfort and security, but we can do that, I know we can, and we must do it in a respectful and comradely way.
