Post Westminster Hall Debate - what are the next steps to ensure the sex based rights of biological women

[IwantToRetire]

The other thread is now full https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4800027-debate-relating-to-the-definition-of-sex-in-the-equality-act-2010-will-be-in-westminster-hall-on-12-june-2023-430pm

And what it will achieve we will have to wait and see.

But is clarifying the EA the most important campaign to ensure women's sex based rights.

Or ...

I think the chances of the clarification happening are virtually none with this current government

Surely though the chances are better under Con than Lab, and we're very likely to get a Lab or Lab/Lib coalition next. Argh! I had such high hopes for this debate and now it just look like a roomful of people talking and nothing will move further forward. Anyway, thanks @Slothtoes and @Needmoresleep for the explanations.

You don't need soap. You deserve a prosecco for that rant I have a lovely rant every day about the Labour Party not owning the left and who the fuck do they think they are.

Keir Starmer has started to make me feel quite repulsed. All that power, that potential to do amazing things for women and children, and nah. Not in his matrix. But (and it's a big but) I don't think it was ever really in Johnson's or Sunak's either.

Do we have time to force Sunak to DO something? As pp say, that is the question.

I think the chances of the clarification happening are virtually none with this current government

It would help Labour and Lib Dems if it’s clarified before they get in, if they end up doing so. They are either weak and / or have heavy TRAs present

But it’s also evident from the debate Labour is far more entrenched with gender ideology, so be careful what you wish for and all that

I did wonder if it was what Maria Caulfield was getting at. She knows the civil service blob is real. She knows they need independent lawyers.

But ... the Tories have presided over the blob's creation and rise to prominence. All this has happened since 2010. They are reaping the whirlwind now of stuffing the civil service full of trendy graduates, allowing them to be Stonewalled, and letting EDI take root like bindweed.

I actually feel sorry for him. You can see the distress the cognitive dissonance is provoking. He wants to hate these people, he's angry - he doesn't even know why. He has no arguments whatsoever, only rage.

He's been told by others a story that makes no sense, and on some level he's raging against its incoherence.

If we could just have even one huge, glorious, noisy show of strength before the GE to show all the political parties that there are a LOT more than 6 of us on mumsnut and the Scottish witches, and that we are deadly serious and our votes really do matter.

Perhaps we could get all the GC organisations to work together to book Wembley Stadium for a very big version of Let Women Speak? Make it big enough and we will come. Make it a paid for ticketed event and it can be made secure and organised and meaningful and we will most definitely come!!

Perhaps we could call it Sex Aid? A spectacular massive womanish purple green and white Sex Aid 💜💚🤍.

P.S. I already had the prosecco for breakfast as I was bringing the cauldron to the boil.

It is generally acknowledged that Blair started the blob, but that Cameron, then May did nothing about it. My concern is the judgement type tests that form the first stage of the recruitment process. If you don't think like the recruiter's think presumably you get weeded out.

Judging from what was said there may be some technical concerns in changing the language. These laws interrelate to each other and to other legislation. It needs to be right. The EHRC have highlighted possible problems. Apparently one women in prisons group have concerns and both the Minister and Dodds referred to it. This needs to be right.

Great if there were some legal experts able to give it all a look over and suggest ways forward.

I don’t think misogyny is owned by left or right (sadly) and it’s never ceased to shock me what settled governments with big majorities will not do to help women. Like not extending abortion rights to Northern Ireland until very recent years, for example.

However the ‘blob’ is Michael Govian nonsense I am afraid. Ministers overrule civil servants as of right. They have EHRC to advise them on this area. Are people now saying they don’t like EHRC advice having (rightly I think) agreed with her arguing that clarifying the law needed to be considered?

I think it’s a bit of a waste of time trying to point fingers at blocks to this government taking any action for women. Nobody is tying their hands. They just don’t see it as a priority. They also probably see the penalty paid of taking any action being much greater than the benefits.

So it’s up to women and men to tell every political party that their vote will depend on a solid time bound commitment in a manifesto to taking action in this area. It’s the only lever we have. And as it happens, the 2024 General Election is coming up.

Sorry ‘her’ there meaning Baroness Falkner.
Would be great to have a massive event!

The facepalming in the background is priceless.

This

Like not extending abortion rights to Northern Ireland until very recent years, for example.

That was devolved to the NI Assembly. Westminster choosing to get involved would have breached the NI Protocol. It was only when a ECtHR ruling forced the Westminster govt to do something that they passed the least legislation possible to comply with the ruling.

Yep.

No need for apologies. I'm right there with you. I watched yesterday and when lifelong Labour voters are nodding along to the Conservatives and shouting at the Labour ones then something is seriously wrong within the Labour party. I can't and wont put my cross next to them.

If Labour is not prepared to correctly state what a woman is then this woman won't be voting for them.

If the conservatives are the only ones not denying the reality of my sex then they will get my vote.

Yes to repeal GRA.

NI wasn’t given abortion rights by successive Westminster governments post 1967 that could have done it before 2010, which was when Stormont took devolved powers on abortion policy as I understand it. The Westminster gov knew there was widespread religious opposition and so NI women and girls had to travel for an abortion to Britain, and pay privately until relatively recently. See timeline here. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-politics-56041849.amp

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8909/

This Parliamentary briefing outlines the existing law in NI on abortion. There may still be some problems in access, commissioning and staffing the abortion services in NI but the actual law itself in NI is better for women than the law in the UK. The law for GB should be enabled to catch up

for eg I don’t know the legal details of the current awful case in the news of the mum of 3 imprisoned this week for taking abortion drugs in England after the legal time limit, but I think it’s the 1861 Offences against the person Act that she broke the law on- which has been repealed in NI.

Ben Bradshaw is thanking Dodds. What on earth for?!

https://twitter.com/BenPBradshaw/status/1668576787196985345?t=j_Q9thVVcFfSDBpg2J87rw&s=19

There seems to be a bit of uncertainty about the process, from several posters (just quoting the first such comment and the one below as examples).

Are these debates only for back bench MPs to get an answer from Ministers?

Petition debates are a response to public concerns, not backbench ones. They are intended as a way for people to raise awareness of a cause.

There is usually no decision made in the debate - the motion at the end is not for or against what the petition asked for but the simply 'This house has considered [topic]'. There is no obligation or standard process for the government or any party to take further action. Having had their attention drawn to a petition topic, if it is seen to be a matter of significant public concern, parties might take that into account when formulating future policies but they don't have to.

When Maya says it 'should' be followed by a statutory instrument she is giving her opinion on what would happen in a sane world with politicians working in the best interest of the public. She's not stating what the actual process is.

Frontbench MPs tend not to take part because petition debates take place at the same time as normal parliamentary business is carrying on in the main chamber (hence breaks for divisons). In the case the House was dealing with some pretty big stuff - public order bill and retained EU laws - so many frontbenchers would be speaking in, or at least expected to be seen to be present for, those debates.

I think you're right, sadly. Rather like the Dems never getting round to properly securing abortion rights in the US and holding it out as a carrot that was never quite in reach.

Build it and they will come - indeed!

Sex Aid?! I'm envisioning the merch stand now ...

"Give us the fecking money!", as Bob Geldof apparently didn't say...!

'Dildo they know it's Christmastime at all?'

They're Sex Aid people, Lynn!!!

I just found the entire debate seriously depressing.

As a woman who has faced discrimination on the basis of sex this idea that any male who says that they are a woman has any kind of shared experience with me is deeply offensive.

Trans people do face discrimination, and it is a good job that they are already protected from it by the Equality Act. The fact that they want women to have nothing of our own, combined with the non - men definition of females that are coming out in Universities and the like, make me want to scream at our politicians who are basically saying that women don't matter (as much as men) in law.

What these politicians are standing for, whether they realise it or not, is male supremacy.

I thought there were plenty of bad faith arguments, the American right FFS and weaponising suicide.

All thoroughly depressing.

What these politicians are standing for, whether they realise it or not, is male supremacy.

This.