Well done Attorney General

[AndStand]

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Is the tide beginning to turn?

Attorney General Suella Braverman hits out at diversity training mol.im/a/11078419 via dailym.ai/android

Yes you're probably right, but central government could at least try to make sure they conform to the requirements.

Equality Impact Assessments are not mandatory. They might be a way of showing due regard. They might not. The duty is to have due regard and the courts will consider that based on the circumstances and the trail in front of them.

So a decision whether to house males with females absolutely requires an EIA (not sure how else you'd do it) but just doing one isn't the test. The test is what's in it and whether that has informed the decision and if the decision maker has therefore had due regard to his duties when deciding what to do or implement.

Saying the rainbow crossing is helping promote LGBT in an EIA while totally ignoring the legislation on traffic and the needs of disabled people isn't doing it lawfully.

Again, there sprung up an onerous set of "requirements" across the public sector re EIAs. Sometimes they were needed. Sometimes they weren't. Engaging brain is what's always needed, not always filling out a form.

It's a fundamental misunderstanding, either deliberately or not, of the purpose of the EIA and public sector equality duty.

So a decision whether to house males with females absolutely requires an EIA (not sure how else you'd do it) but just doing one isn't the test. The test is what's in it and whether that has informed the decision and if the decision maker has therefore had due regard to his duties when deciding what to do or implement.

YY. I cross posted with you. I do think they are necessary in the same way public consultations are as organisations have to go through a process of considering how the blue sky thinking will pan out in the real world.

You’re right, they don’t care. Given the choice between prioritising the needs of a muslim woman, or a straight white man in a skirt, they help the straight white man in the skirt every time and write it up as diverse.

It’s the opposite of what the Equality Act was trying to achieve.

@Sunshineona

It’s the same when people from working class or ethnic minorities reject gender identity theory or CRT: the people pushing it are largely rich (and mostly white), and they don’t care.

‘Wokeness’ itself is about left wing, white middle class cultural power. By wanting to talk about themselves and their pet issues constantly, and irrespective of what other people want to talk about, they maintain their power. It’s beautifully ironic.

When EDI training is done badly, it is damaging. When it is done right it can help stop structural discrimination against women, disabled people, ethnic minorities etc. I see so much (particularly indirect) discrimination from managers who are clueless about their legal responsibilities. I don't doubt that this is taking some of the stupid examples and using it to soften up on cutting the 'red tape' employers face on disability, sex discrimination etc.

When EDI training is done badly, it is damaging. When it is done right it can help stop structural discrimination against women, disabled people, ethnic minorities etc. I see so much (particularly indirect) discrimination from managers who are clueless about their legal responsibilities. I don't doubt that this is taking some of the stupid examples and using it to soften up on cutting the 'red tape' employers face on disability, sex discrimination etc.

Yes, obviously that is always going to be what the Tories do. It needs balance, which frankly no one is likely to bring.

Agree. Good EDI training is essential. EDI training that has been hijacked by lobby groups that foist their incorrect or divisive theology on employees is so damaging when the conflicting rights of different groups aren’t considered

Seconded, this is brilliantly put.

You might feel differently if you lived in Wales, where we have had a Labour administration for more than 20 years, a lot of that time with a majority that has meant that they can pretty much do what they want. Mark Drakeford, our First Minister, is in total thrall to Stonewall and trans ideology. All LGB and TQ+ matters, including policy, has been outsourced to Stonewall. Apparently he has said that he thinks that Stonewall Cymru is different and better than Stonewall in England.

He's surrounded by a coterie of true believers (Jane Hutt, Hannah Blethyn and others) and there are a number of gay male Special Advisors who are all entrenched in trans ideology. They are buoyed up by the knowledge that Plaid Cymru and the Lib Dems (their main threat here in Wales) are also under the trans spell. When anything involving LGB and TQ+ comes up and they want advice beyond Stonewall the Welsh government turns to a group of trusted advisors including infamously foul-mouthed Pride promoter and trans ally Lu Thomas and transgender medical specialist and ally Dr Sophie Quinney, who has been censured by her own profession for her plans for an affirmation-only model here in Wales.

Over the last three years the Welsh Government have utterly refused to hold discussions with well-established women's groups such as Merched Cymru. They can barely bear to meet their own constituents. My own MS (Labour/ female) has treated me with complete contempt since I approached her to raise this issue.

From where I'm standing here in Wales the Tories look like a beacon of rational adult behaviour. They listened to what women had to say, they didn't apparently bully or shun people who spoke up and, having investigated, they've changed their opinion and are putting things right.

Those of us who effectively live in single party states, in single-chamber 'democracies', in small countries where everyone appears to know everyone else and politicians routinely serve a few years in office before taking up a position at a Welsh university or running one of Wales' many voluntary organisations, before circling back into politics, are trapped.

I guess whichever party, Labour, Greens, Lib Dem, Plaid, SNP the devolved nations are always going to want to go further than Westminster or differentiate themselves from Tory policy.

@Pluvia

This is why I think devolution has been a disaster. If Wales were independent, there would be more electoral balance (and therefore competition) because there wouldn’t be the carrot of independence to get votes out of people. MPs would be forced to listen, not use their elected positions as vehicles to force through radical and unpopular social change. If there was no independence and only the Westminster government, the same would apply. Devolution has created two one-party states.

Thanks Pluvia I’m in England and appreciate your perspective. Sounds awful. Don’t get me wrong, I think no party has served women well on this gender identity politics issue, (sole honourable exception being the communists I believe). Absolutely, misogyny remains rife in all party politics.

I feel largely ‘politically homeless’ as a result and find it unnerving that quite a few people on MN seem to expect big things from the Tories when women have been writing to them for at least a decade on these issues. Absolutely fuck all has been done until Newsnight and the Times took notice and Bell and Forstater cases were crowdfunded by the likes of all of us and won. Proposals to reform GRA came and went Women and Equalities select committee worse than useless etc etc. ‘Terf’ threats and abuse went unchallenged as the culture war heated up.

(As an aside, JRs are expected to be weakened by the Tories so would Bell even have been possible in the future with them in charge?)

anyway finally in line with the Tories’ ‘war on woke’, they spotted a vast constituency of women to appeal to over gender identity whom no political party was supporting. That’s a good thing and obviously It’s a relief to hear these statements. However it’s important to look close because they don’t appear hugely grounded in actual changes. Even the really welcome and important Cass review is playing catch-up over things that should have been done if normal existing rules had been followed rather than identity politics allowed to take priority over patient care -which as I will boringly repeat, has all happened on the Tories’ overall Westminster government watch.

Yes, I know that's one argument for independence. I don't think independence wouldn't have saved us from the situation we're currently in.

They need to appoint a really senior Minister for Common Sense. Anything not economic gets put through that office. They green flag, amber flag or red flag policies and send the reds back.

Children transitioning? 🚩

Males in women’s jails? 🚩

You get the idea.

I’d vote for that

Stonewall in the Health Service? Police officers wearing political badges? Teachers deciding whether your child is male or female?

We’re going to need more flags.

I think EDI training is pretty important. There is no doubt that in organisations the culture benefits some types of people and disadvantages others. I've seen it happen in many of the places I've worked. Similarly, diversity is a strength, and it is true that inclusivity requires positive action, though what that action is is often not clear. The problem with the EDI training that I have been subjected to participated in is that it doesn't deal with any of these issues. It's all catechistic, repeated mantras and sharing pain. It's like going to Church. Ignorance is sin, and a reason for shame. But the point of training is that you come out of it with understanding of your current situation, an action plan and the tools to implement it. I have never been to an EDI training session which actually did this.

‘Similarly, diversity is a strength, and it is true that inclusivity requires positive action, though what that action is is often not clear.’

That’s a tenet of EDI, but what does it mean? How is diversity inherently a strength? What positive action is required for inclusivity (you say it’s not clear - so how do we know?).

To be clear, I think hiring policies might (and should) tend towards diverse outcomes because people aren’t discriminating, but I don’t necessarily have an issue with a less diverse organisation, providing it’s an organic outcome, ie it’s not the result of illegal discrimination.

No organisation needs an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion service. All they need is for HR to know and apply even-handedly the Equality Act 2010 and the Human Rights Act 1998, both of which are adequate to deliver EDI.

This is where the EHRC can assist, by providing objective [ie: not influenced by lobby groups] detailed Statutory Codes of Practice.

Companies/public services do need HR knowledge and application but they also need someone who knows the requirements for service provision. For example, what they must provide a disabled person who's travelling by plane.

@ResisterRex

If the person in question is a service user? Yes, a big company needs a legal department that advises them of the law. A smaller business would be advised to get legal advice.

+1

They want to cover their arses though. What tends to happen with legislation like this is the the public sector responds to it by creating a job to oversee it. Thus if they screw up, it lands at the door of said "EDI officer" rather than on the department/organisation/council etc as a whole.

I like the Equalities Act, I have to say. It's a cracking bit of legislation in the most part because it forces the public sector to consider how its policies and spends affect all groups in society, across a range of measures.

Applied correctly, it should stop a council, say, spending huge amount of money to benefit adult males with a sports hobby to the detriment of elderly ladies who knit, but it should also stop them from spending huge amounts on elderly ladies who knit to the detriment of adult males with sports hobbies.

It is an act that should, if applied correctly, be a "balancer": it is about ensuring, to some extent, equality across all ranges.

Only the problem is that the EA spawned EDI and that became solely focused, as another poster has pointed out, on the concept of "the minority". So everything became about the "inclusion" of minority groups, even kind of making them up in some cases, and everybody forgot that, by doing this, they could be inadvertently discriminating against other minorities, but also going against the principles of the EA by not treating "non-minority" groups in an equal manner.

And that's how you end up with a case like Maya's.

The inability of public sector managers and decision-makers to realise this is, frankly, depressing.