Times: Sunak preparing to block Scottish gender reform bill

[ResisterRex]

Sunak preparing to block Scottish gender reform bill

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/c845bae2-9377-11ed-beb4-99fcdfa7645c?shareToken=217d9586d687af757742096583505820

"Rishi Sunak is poised to block Scottish laws that make it easier for people to change their gender, in an unprecedented move that will provoke a constitutional row.

The Times has been told that new legal advice will pave the way for the government to stop Nicola Sturgeon’s gender recognition laws from getting royal assent next week.

The advice states that the legislation will have an adverse impact on UK-wide equality legislation, enabling ministers to block it. The government will make its case on technical and legal grounds but ministers have repeatedly expressed concerns about the potential impact of the Scottish legislation.

Sunak will make a final decision with Alister Jack, the Scotland secretary, next week on invoking section 35 of the 1998 Scotland Act, which will prohibit Holyrood’s presiding officer from submitting the bill for royal assent. The Times has been told that they will follow the legal advice."

Continues at link

Here but the headline is a little confused!

archive.ph/ZqtjI

Well she's only reflecting a UK government that is happy to throw everyone under the bus to stay in power.

I feel sorry for everyone in the UK.

It is now undeniably on mainstream news. The sunlight is pouring in.

I am appalled at the way the people of Scotland have been treated by pushing through this act.

It has shown that the SNP and Scottish Greens cannot be trusted to listen to their constituents and will steamroller through ideologically driven laws. And lie.

In saying that, the world is watching. They are taking note of the impacts on these laws as they are now going to be discussed in media and hopefully in law courts.

We see the ripple of these cases every time. Look at the world wide changes and awareness that Bell vs Tavistock brought. With so much effort from Keira (thank you again Keira).

I suspect that people in countries like Ireland, some Australian states and Canada will be looking hard at this case and then working out what their governments have pushed through without them being fully aware. The pushback grows much stronger with these ripples.

I only wish it was not happening at all though, that there was no need for it to happen in the first place.

Sonia Sodha:

https://twitter.com/soniasodha/status/1614168319824642048?s=46&t=OvS7wCXiVHwppp17olRgQQ

"Who knows what political implications would be. But in passing its gender reforms the Scottish parliament exceeded its competence because they will impact on the rights of Scottish women and girls as laid out by Equality Act, a UK matter."

(With the article in the OP)

Then:

https://twitter.com/soniasodha/status/1614170998894465025?s=46&t=OvS7wCXiVHwppp17olRgQQ

"And a revealing interview in which the male chair of Stonewall reveals he doesn’t understand equalities law and seems to accuse women of “politicising” their rights 🙄"

Which is this - may need its own thread!

"“[The GRR act] is allowing someone to change their birth certificate to access the health and benefits system — they can live, work, thrive and die with the dignity that they would wish for. It will not,” he insists, “change regulations around single-sex spaces for women, in prisons and elsewhere.”

Nor, apparently, is he alarmed by the data showing that about two thirds of the 5,000 referrals to gender clinics in England and Wales are adolescent biological girls, when years ago there were only 250 referrals in total, boys and girls. Since we know the human brain matures at 26, can he understand the critics who believe that allowing teenagers to change sex at 16 risks doing them irreparable emotional and physical damage?

“We have made a decision to allow people to do a whole bunch of things at 16,” he says, not least allowing them to join the army. But he doesn’t dwell on the topic, moving the discussion on to “conversion therapy”, the discrediting, degrading treatments that attempt to “cure” people’s sexuality.

“The UK actually needs a strategy for trans people rather than a tabloid war,” he says. “We are just going round in circles and people’s lives are being politicised.

"Women’s rights are being politicised in this sense, and I want to try and take the temperature down and actually develop some serious dialogue and serious conversations.”"

‘The UK needs a strategy for trans people rather than a tabloid war’: Iain Anderson interview

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/3b5a2b68-9390-11ed-8b99-f233af7a7956?shareToken=33ec67b505f6ef037d67f9565eb25dc5

If Sunak does have the backbone to do this, the wave of thank God for the 7th Cavalry publicity and evidence from women and girls in Scotland is going to be hard to brush aside.

Those who are angry at England's interference are in the difficult position of saying they'd rather have independence than women have equality of rights to men in Scotland. It's that simple. No one can support all this stuff as it stands at the moment without in essence, supporting male supremacism. Currently a lot of people are trying hard to identify out of this bit.

Those who are angry at England's interference are in the difficult position of saying they'd rather have independence than women have equality of rights to men in Scotland. It's that simple.

Speaking of which...

SNP ready to row back on de facto referendum

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/c1551c5c-9398-11ed-8b99-f233af7a7956?shareToken=b90c63115b5b082752902413a2450409

Such good news.

I was wondering on the implications for Labour, if the legal advice is that this law will infringe on the Equality Act, will it mean Labour will have to rethink their policy to introduce self ID?

I am not 100% sure it will happen. Rishi Sunak and his incompetent government have a track record of talking not doing in many areas.

I will be pleased if I am wrong and it is blocked.

Charles Moore in the Telegraph

"Any move whose main motivation was political would backfire and would deserve to do so. This is Ms Sturgeon’s mistake. The Government should not mirror it.
So the question confrontingg_ Rishi Sunak’s Government is important, but quite narrow. It is not, “Mustn’t the SNP be prevented from introducing such sex-change madness?” It is “Does the GRR exceed the rights of a devolved legislature by enacting a provision that would have a material, adverse impact on the operation of the law throughout the United Kingdom?”
If it thinks the answer to that second question is “Yes”, the Government’s clearest remedy is to invoke Section 35 of the Scotland Act 1998. That would not kill the Bill outright but would force the Scottish government to negotiate with London alterations which would make it compatible with the Act."

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/01/13/nicola-sturgeons-trans-law-constitutional-mischief-not-another/

Charles Moore accessible link

archive.ph/2023.01.13-223240/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/01/13/nicola-sturgeons-trans-law-constitutional-mischief-not-another/

That is something we all should bear in mind!

I don't see this badly made Bill becoming law, tbh - the broader question and issues for the longer term are how its all going to impact on the EA and the GRA.

One would hope that the issues/problems with the two laws have been highlighted, but I don't know if there's enough appetite to actually fix them without this kind of legislative pressure.

Politicians will be quite happy to leave the mess of the two conflicting Acts as is unless they're forced somehow to sort it all out, and pretend that the existing Sex Fudge works fine.

I haven’t followed it much but I did hear a decision needs to be made this week. So they can’t kick the can

Or it could go to Supreme Court

I have mixed feelings, I very much feel for women in Scotland who don’t want this but can also see that they’ll be backlash from MSPs over it

Anyone who trusts the Tories to deliver on promises to women, needs to look at their track record on delivering on promises to anyone who isn't a wealthy crony donor and then read the fable of the scorpion and the frog.

Why anyone would trust SNP or Labour not to sign away women’s rights is ignoring what’s going on

Just blind to reality

Distrusting the Tories doesn't equate to trusting not Tories.

(Ponders to oneself ... is it distrust, or mistrust ?)

As long as I don’t have to hear Labour and SNP are doing better on this whilst they destroy women’s rights, people can trust who they want. It’s irrelevant to me.

But trying to deflect away from what’s happening under SNP and Labour won’t help.

This is why she's put it forward. She wants him to step in and block it to drive the campaign for independence.

It’s a difficult place to be as it will help her aim

I’d be tempted to pass it to the Supreme Court to take the heat of it politically

This

It will be seen as colonial interference and will only increase support for independence by making out that the Scot govt has been wronged by the Evil English overruling our legitimate devolved processes.

I think the majority of the Scottish populace are completely sick of the SNP constantly clamouring that every bloody thing that doesn't go well or go their way is 'Westminster'. It's a very worn excuse.

I say this as a former independence voter.

In addition, the SNP is not interested in Independence, according to various informed parties. They have too much to lose!

Sex Matters on the absolute brass neck of Stonewall saying they want to talk:

twitter.com/sexmattersorg/status/1614308471599423496?s=46&t=9m-o0sEHaiWFktwVGAGR3A

Because of course they said all this a few months ago. "Big tent" and all that. But only for the Right Sort Of Women's Groups.

Re: SLaM & our fishy friends, I do wonder what a FOI request would reveal about the balance of by whom they’re being trained & about what 🤔
^^
A SLaM spokesman said: “This training is not related to the development of an early adopter service for children and young people experiencing gender incongruence and gender dysphoria.
“We commission as well as directly provide high-quality professional training courses from a wide range of providers as part of our training offer for our staff to further support the provision of personalised, safe and therapeutic care for young people and adults using mental health services.”
A spokesman for the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust said: “The Trust has a clear position of independence, and engages with a number of support groups with a range of different positions. We are committed to providing an environment where staff can work thoughtfully with each individual patient with no preferred outcome in mind.”

Are they a Trust that ran the Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training on Learning Disability and Autism as soon as it became available for example? How much training do they receive on FGM, as the local population the Trust serves includes girls at risk & women who are survivors of it? Hinduism & Islam? (Lewisham has a Temple & a Mosque). Are they trained on the needs of the Irish diaspora as a discrete group (& the various sub-groupings within that)? What training has resulted from the publication of the BLACHIR Report?

What’s the betting that like every fecker else their EDI Training is almost entirely about the LGBTQ; heavy emphasis on the last two letters?

SLaM have no business being allowed to set themselves up as shiny new specialist centre when they cannot currently provide anything close to adequate services for children & young people in the part of London they are meant to serve. All this “children languishing for years on NHS gender clinic lists” - apparently they’re not also on lists for CAMHS because ageing out is a thing there too. Or not even getting onto the list, because at age 10 you’ve been sent on a mindfulness course run by children’s services that’s meant to fix your crippling anxiety.

(Sorry, am just v cross about it all. Ugh.)

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/is-rishi-sunak-about-to-block-scotlands-gender-id-law_uk_63c06a2ce4b0d6724fcbe8e5

"Whitehall sources say Alister Jack, the secretary of state for Scotland, will announce on Wednesday that the UK government will block the bill." Looking more promising

That "big tent" doesn't seem to include Lucy Hunter Blackburn:

https://twitter.com/lucyhunterb/status/1614348820669923328?s=46&t=r3sgfPoPILFF_vGYa3eceA

Thank you all for the links , much appreciated