Scottish Government hiding GRA Consultation results

[MiladyBerserko]

The Scottish Government conducted a Consultation which finished in March 2020, where they asked for responses to proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act. They said these responses would be published. Now it seems, they are refusing to publish them and also, refuse to respond to FOI requests about it.

See this tweet which shows that the responses to another Consultation re. women's representation on public boards were largely concerned about the redefinition of the word 'women' and its impact on the legal rights of women and girls. This also appears not to have been published, although I need confirmation on this.

mobile.twitter.com/painteyhands/status/1413219892652875780

Questions:
Why is the Scottish Government backtracking on its promise to publish the GRA consultation?

How much did it cost to conduct a Consultation which they are now choosing to ignore?

Why are they permitted to ignore the results of a public consultation?

Am I naive to think they should be held to account?

Women and Girls in Scotland appear to be taking this forward. Good luck to them and I will be supporting them.

I would think it was Twitter Olly

Thanks @Rhannion

Bump.

Have received a holding email from one MSP regarding my questions about when the analysis report will be published - will update when I hear more

Scotland is FAST becoming the local area "Canada" of nonsense.

And local pockets of North England: and South Coast England.

This is NOT a good thing for anyone who has battled for Protections under the EA UK Act.

Update from Women and Girls in Scotland:
twitter.com/WG_Scotland/status/1416011674495107073?s=19

Shona Robison, Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government, is taking over the Ministerial remit for reforming the GRA in Scotland, and the government officials that have worked on GRA reform for the last four years will no longer be involved.

In case it is of interest, @mbmpolicy has listed some of Shona's previous comments regarding trans inclusion in women's spaces here: t.co/SdGZiq913s

The Scottish Government has confirmed it will now consider whether to publish individual responses to the GRA Bill consultation, but it has not yet provided a date for publication of its consultation report and organisational responses.

The Scottish Government also told us it didn't include the findings of our Female Only Provision Report, found here: t.co/uZO6Ofhy4u, as evidence of the need for single sex spaces in the GRA Bill consultation, because the report did not come up in its literature search.

However the government already had our report & had discussed it with us, & yet nonetheless claimed in the consultation not to know of any evidence showing women need spaces away from males, regardless of how they identify. We believe this is a serious failure of due process.

Thank you.

We believe this is a serious failure of due process.

It is!

FFS I swear it gets worse they just keep doubling down.

Yes.

We are not going to let them away with this, we need to tell as many people as possible what is going, tell the men and women in your lives what is at stake here. It’s ypur mothers, sisters, daughters, grandchildren’s safety they are messing with and we can’t let this happen.

First email I have had back which wasn't a holding reply. Still not a great deal further forward though -

'The Scottish Government report that there is no timescale for the publication of results of the GRA consultation due to dealing with Covid as priority. But they say they are now arranging for the consultation responses to be independently analysed and will publish the analysis report in due course.'

In my initial email, I had been very clear that I understood that there would be inevitable delays due to COVID but asked for an approximate idea of when the analysis report would be published.

They said they would publish the responses, not just analysis. The public should see the responses, not the carving up of women's testimonies for political means.

Yes.

The "independent analysis" of the English GRA consultation was biased and loaded.

I think it may have even been done by Nat Cen, whose CEO then is now the CEO of Stonewall.

Any organisation that is a member of Stonewall's champion scheme cannot be said to be independent in anyway for this purpose.

Typical SNP behaviour. Everything is covered up. Yet more to be swept under the carpet.

I noticed this in Charlie's post:
A large proportion of the public continues to be unaware that these reform proposals exist and even if they know of their existence, few understand their implications for society in general and the rights of women in particular.

I found that doorstep campaigners didn't have the first clue that these policies were in their own manifesto either.