In case anyone wanted to send some Conservative Lords and Ladies an email about the Ministerial and Other Maternity Allowances Bill that is due for its second reading in the House of Lords on MONDAY 22ND FEBRUARY 2021, below is a template email for you (adapted from MFs original one) to adapt to your own needs/style, and in a separate post below is a list of email addresses pulled from www.members.parliament.uk/members/Lords.
(Note: I only included Conservative Lords/Ladies because… well… as last Thursday showed us, they are more likely to support this cause. That said, if anyone wants to provide an email list for other affiliated and non-affiliated peers, that would be good, too.)
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Dear [XXXX],
I am writing to draw your attention to the Ministerial and Other Maternity Allowances Bill which cleared the House of Commons after receiving an unopposed third reading on Thursday 11th February 2021.
I am, of course, delighted that ministers will receive formal paid maternity leave. No minister should have to resign in order to care for a newborn, and I am very glad that this issue will prompt the government to look at all state maternity (and paternity) provisions afresh.
What I was dismayed about, however, was the fact that a proposed amendment to the language of the bill was not made. Currently, Clause 1, Page 1, Line 14 of the bill says that the provision of payment of maternity allowance will be offered if:
(a) the person is pregnant and it is no more than 12 weeks before the expected week of childbirth;
(b) the person has given birth to a child within the previous 4 weeks.
The amendment, put forward by 19 Conservative MPs and 2 Labour MPs, was to - quite simply - replace the word "person" with "woman". Only women can get pregnant and so only women need be referred to in this passage.
I assume the use of the word "person" is a result of the guidance set out in the Guide to Gender-Neutral Drafting (2019) created by the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel and the Government Legal Department (the latter is a Stonewall Diversity Champion.) It was created with the help of the Interlaw Diversity Forum which is a private group that helps law firms improve their Stonewall Equality Index, and with the help of Global Butterlies which provides a “Corporate Trans and Non-Binary Inclusion Training and Consultancy.” All of those groups clearly have a vested interest in erasing the word ‘woman’ from legislation, and it is interesting to note that no women's rights groups were consulted in the writing of this document.
This drafting guidance encourages all bills to “avoid gender-specific pronouns and adjectives” which echoes Stonewall's guidance to HR departments (those whose institutions are Stonewall Diversity Champions and pay for Stonewall consultancy), which says:
The “use of Mother and Father has not been explicitly stated as inclusive of all trans identities. We would recommend using a gender neutral term, such as ‘parent who has given birth’ or ‘new mothers and other pregnant employees.’
This is yet another deliberate attempt to erase female-specific terminology under the guise of “inclusion”.
It is for that reason, as the bill passes onwards to the House of Lords on 22nd February 2021, that I implore you to propose again that same amendment: replace the word "person" with "woman". As of 2017, the UK only had 2 people identifying as men who gave birth. In attempting to accommodate this tiny cohort of transpeople who get pregnant, this bill and other sex-specific gender-neutral language offends innumerable women like me and we are asking you to make it stop.
I urge you to intervene. This is the thin end of the wedge of a stealthy policy creep that seeks to erase the specific sex-based rights and the biological reality of women in an attempt to include those who identify as men who, as years of evolutionary biology research makes absolutely clear, remain biological women irrespective of their gender identity.
Many thanks for taking the time to read this. I thank you in anticipation of your proposed amendment.
Kind regards,
[XXXX]