Politics Live 10 Jan - Scottish Gender Reform Bill - will it be blocked by Westminster?

[MoirasSaggyBundles]

They will be discussing this on today's programme. Panellists include Sonia Sodha.

Full panel:

Siobhan Baillie MP (Con)
Kirsten Oswald MP (SNP)
Sonia Sodha (Observer)
Zoe Stimpel (Telegraph)

Thanks. I see the BBC's "LGBT and identity correspondent" already said having one doesn't affect accessing services and toilets

Rest of it not toooooo bad so far, although no explanation of Holyrood and the international angle under S35.

Options:

Section 35 order to block Royal assent.

Amend GRA so that Scottish certs won't be accepted in rest of UK - Kemi Badenoch looking at this.

Robin White is on now!!

RMW: if I was gay, I wouldn't have to go in front of a panel

Totally irrelevant.

It's all a bit Daily Mail sad face from RMW. Nothing of substance.

Siobhan Baillie saying she would not remove the doctor certificate requirement Thinks it is fair to be looking at the impact on women's safety, but not sure about blocking.

RMW: having a changed birth certificate is important to trans people (eg the surviving partner has to deal with a death certificate which upsets them)

Totally misses the point about what a birth certificate is for and whether we should be falsifying public records. And misses the impact on society / doesn't balance this against wider considerations

Nothing of substance.

Exactly

Kirsten Oswald - it's the will of the Scottish Parliament. There's no conflict with the rest of UK. Making it easier for the most marginalised (ffs).

Kirsten Oswald - no conflict with EQA. WHO policies on trans = the ones we should follow.

The usual

Zoe Strimpel has called out RMW's line on being gay

Sonia Sodha raised Wi Spa (not sure of spelling)

RMW - good journalists and politicians should be reassuring people

No no, that is NOT the role of the 4th estate (or lawmakers)

Zoe Stimpel - commenting on the UN High Commissioner saying no evidence of predatory male exploitation of self ID - doesn't agree and not reassured - plenty of incidence. That's not haw law and safety works. If you have a system that can easily be abused, that's a problem for everyone. Having g a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria is needed when you think of the concerns of women and girls in their spaces. RMW comparing it with being gay is misleading, because gay doesn't have anything to do with the spaces we are allowed into.

Is it my imagination or has RW been given more airtime than any of the women.

UN special rapporteur for violence against women and girls, Rima (?) Al Salem said it will potentially open the door for violent to identify as women to abuse the process of acquiring a gender certificate and rights associated with it.

Kirsten Oswald - violent men don't need a GRC. A GRC won't change people's access to single sex spaces, it won't change the difficulties women have over male predators. This is a different issue.

Sonia Sodha -

Sonia Sodha - several expert discrimination lawyers and a Scottish court have confirmed that, whether or not you have a GRC changes the threshold at which is becomes lawful and permissible to exclude somebody biologically not female from a female only space.

The more this is discussed, the more it cannot be justified. No wonder "no debate" was clung onto so desperately for such a long time.

And this seems like a misrepresentation of updating the international GRC list and S35 by RMW

SS - Predatory men - it's common sense that if you are a male sex offender and you get off on voyeurism or exposure, the fact that you can get a certificate on the basis of self ID with no medical diagnosis; declare yourself legally female for the purposes of the law; and that gets you access to certain female only spaces - of course men will abuse that. Eg, in California, in a Californian spa, a registered sex offender exposed himself in a female only changing room to a teenage. When a woman complained, she was called transphobic.

RMW referred to the GRC list being updated, as the "Badenoch List" (dehumanising her, I thought). The presenter came in to clarify that Kemi Badenoch is a person, essentially. Something like "Kemi Badenoch, the Minister for Women and Eq, carry on...".

I wonder if we will start hearing about a "Badenoch List".

RMW asked to comment on whether it will be abused. Says we should make law based on evidence and good journalists and politicians should be reassuring people and not promoting stories that cause concern. We already have 230 million people who live under a system where gender can be self declared. The committee in the Scottish Parliament worked very carefully through a consultation process that examined the evidence, not people's fears, not people's concerns, but the evidence of what actually happens. The report says that there was no concrete example brought forward to the committee.

Sodha used the wording of this petition at one point as well:

Petition: Update the Equality Act to make clear the characteristic “sex” is biological sex www.mumsnet.com/Talk/petitions_noticeboard/4668426-petition-update-the-equality-act-to-make-clear-the-characteristic-sex-is-biological-sex

Sonia S - the Scottish Parliament consultation has been widely criticised as not being fair and balanced. MSPs in favour said no evidence. There are individual case studies of this happening which they dismiss as anecdote. The issue is that in a lot of countries where self ID exists, if someone legally changes their sex, their crimes are recorded as female crimes even if that person is biologically male. These things are not being tracked. It is wrong to say there is zero evidence. The absence of robust academic evidence does not mean there is no evidence that this brings risk.

Then California spa clip

twitter.com/chrismceleny/status/1612796059868188672?s=46&t=LzayusOKTQ_hSZ1Y1R5qUw

RMW - Every day I gave evidence there was evidence from 3 academics who had studied this elsewhere. You don't make law on anecdotes or single incidents. |If a single red headed person is a criminal, we don't criminalise all red headed people. The Scot gov as part of the process announced there would be changes to the statutory instruments to deal with sex offenders in Scotland, sex offenders, not trans people, that means there would be opportunities to block delay or interfere them gaining a GRC.

SS - that isn't worth the paper it's written on. IT depends on people coming forward and declaring they are a sex offender. Also, there are a lot of men who commit sex offences who are not convicted because a tiny proportion of sex offences like voyeurism and exposure actually see a day in court.