Urgent - write to your MP today about back door self ID data bill tomorrow

[ScrollingLeaves]

I am not sure if there has been a thread about this but I just saw this from Sex Matters:

sex-matters.org/posts/updates/urgent-action-email-your-mp-today-on-the-data-bill/

‘The Supreme Court gender ruling had given us clarity. Now this Labour law will torpedo that’

Women’s rights campaigners warn that a Government bill could endanger vulnerable women by blurring the lines between sex and gender identity

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/05/07/labour-law-will-torpedo-gender-clarity

Published at 8pm on 7th so not sure what impact it might have.

Can also be read at https://archive.is/wMnTz

This needs a new thread!?

But if you’ve signed up for the ‘digital verification services’ you will have to accept Government sources as authoritative.”
On Wednesday, the Conservatives attempted to amend the bill so that sex data would be taken solely from birth certificates. The amendment was defeated by 363 votes to 97, meaning the bill will now move onto its final stage – the third reading – before becoming law.

This vote by MPs is unbelievable.
unless there’s some sort of visible mass protest or legal action, then self ID is about to be state sanctioned across the board

The bill goes back to the Lords on 12th May. We can only hope some sanity breaks out, although I am not sure if they can add new amendments or only amend the current amendments already agreed in the Commons (I've been reading the 2025 'Guide to Making legislation' and it is clear as mud!)

Or Labour will push it through, women will deal with another four years of hell, and we wait for Reform who will throw this out and the GRA too. It'll be an open goal.

This is truly, truly stupid. Absolutely fucking mindblowingly dim.

I’m disappointed but not surprised.

On the plus side, I think Sex Matters’ letter campaign probably did make a marked difference to the number of MPs who stood up and said that they supported the accurate recording of biological sex in principle, but just not this specific (Conservative) amendment.

We don’t yet know what, if anything, will make it into the final statute, but if anything is added that causes ambiguity around application of the SC ruling, it won’t hurt to have debates on file that make it clear that so many on the committee acknowledge how important it is to accurately record biological sex when a court looks to secondary sources for a steer on interpretation.

If we look at how far we’ve come since before the SC ruling, it’s massively positive to see that number of MPs openly admitting that biological sex exists and is important. I know we still have a way to go, but that is huge progress compared to a few months ago, when they would have been scared to even admit such a thing for fear of ostracism and being cast out of their party. Hearing “biological sex is vitally important but…” is still not where we want to be, but it’s still a massive step forward from where we were.

I do think we need to keep a close eye on how they think the act (and the new digital system) will be applied vs the reality (particularly in light of @Peregrina’s point about the parallels with the GRA debate), and if necessary make a lot of noise around that, so that if nothing else, more and more debate around sex creeps into Hansard.

This is a controversial and incredibly sprawling bill for lots of other completely unrelated reasons (e.g. all the AI copyright stuff that no-one really knows how best to handle, combatting deepfakes and balancing consumer protection vs not stifling tech development, etc), and it feels both super-urgent but also impossible to implement in lots of disparate areas that fall under ‘data’, so I suspect this bill will be bounced around for a while for other reasons anyway.

The advantage of this for us is that each time it gets bounced back to the commons to talk about AI, as long as someone proposes a relevant amendment, we can do this all over again and make more noise around the sex bit, so that it keeps coming back to bite them and keeps getting plenty of Hansard coverage (which isn’t everything but still helps).

The bill is still going back and forth and the debates are ongoing, so we need to keep watching and take any opportunity we get to highlight the issues and explain why the accurate recording of sex isn’t a tiny fringe issue and shouldn’t be an afterthought.

Plus we need to keep an eye on all the other initiatives intended to implement the Sullivan report (as mentioned in the reasons for NC21 rejection) and make noise there too.

I agree, and even if digital verification were not used specifically by bad men to intentionally sneak through barriers to cause harm, it would eventually be used by so many people that all sorts of people would be among those digitally verified.

Anyway, it isn’t just about who has nefarious intentions, it is about public records using meaningful ‘verification’. The hint is in the word.

LonginesPrime

You have put that so well. What practical steps can we take?

For my part I have decided that I need to keep a dossier on who said what at key moments. So I need to find the quote by Tebbit from Hansard. I need to find where the statement by a LibDem peer telling a long standing member that they were no longer welcome in the Party was made.

So many threads to trawl through! But once my dossier is up and running I can keep it up to date.

The two drafts to my MP are already on file.

There is absolutely zero point in bothering to collect data that is fictional. And that's just the basic starting point.

I despair of this government, I really do.

That is a good idea.

What Norman Tebbit said was a revelation to me as his thinking around the matter was so acute in every way yet in all these years I only read it on this board the other week ( though others had picked up on it now I search).

This OP Feb 2024 has lots of useful quotes regarding concerns during the GRA debate - which would prove to be all too justified - but which were ignored.

One poster very usefully researched how many newspapers or news outlets mentioned it at all - virtually none!

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5015686-5015686-gender-recognition-act-2004

This thread from 2018 opens with a long Twitter thread about the GRA debates.
www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3388967-Illuminating-Twitter-thread-about-the-origins-of-the-Gender-Recognition-Act

In terms of timing of the bill going forward, looking back at some of the other amendments that did pass yesterday, it does seem that some of the sticky copyright issues did get kicked into the long grass (details to be decided after the act has passed), so perhaps I was a tad optimistic in how quickly this bill will pass if the plan is to iron out all the tech details later.

I’m not sufficiently familiar with the tech aspects of this bill to know how much is outstanding on that side (perhaps someone else can tell us?) or whether all of it is good to go now. It didn’t sound like it from the snippets of the debate I heard yesterday, but I appreciate there’s also a lot of pressure to enact this on the AI/tech side for obvious reasons.

Thats a great idea - are you planning to publish it online?

I’m not proficient in coding but there’s lots of stuff I think women should have an online database to search.

I’ve been looking at the Hansard data permissions (ironically!) to see if we’re allowed to do some sort of RSS feed from them when sex is mentioned (as there are tools to share individual spoken contributions already), but I’m not sure it could be done publicly without falling foul of their permissions (and also I don’t have the tech skills to set it up on my own..).

I do feel quite strongly that it’s important that as many people as possible know the details of what’s going on at the moment in terms of legislative decisions (not just the data bill) so we don’t end up with another GRA debacle where not enough people were paying attention to the bigger picture.

And I think it would be so much easier for busy women to stay informed and get involved in politics if the key information they need (how their MP voted on sex issues, what they said in the commons on the topic, etc) could be condensed for them so they don’t have to individually scour several websites every time they want an update on this stuff.

People get involved when it’s easy to do so (e.g. when Sex Matters or another campaign group do the legwork and make it super-easy to drop an email to their MP), but as you’ve just described, there is so much info to trawl through that it would be great if a few people doing that legwork can benefit thousands of busy women who wouldn’t otherwise see those important nuggets of information.

I hadn't thought as far as publishing it.

some sort of RSS feed from them when sex is mentioned

I have never done this but understand in Outlook you can add filters to RSS feeds by words under Rules and Alerts.

Which presumably you could apply to the feeds they already provide https://www.parliament.uk/site-information/rss-feeds/

I have just received a reply from my MP after sending them an email before the vote.

Two things stand out. They use ‘sex’ when describing what I asked for, as if sex is a disputed concept or word they don’t like to use. They also note that the Lib Dems voted against because, ie they just voted along party lines.

They then point out how toxic it has all become since the Supreme Court ruling and appear to indicate that’s the fault of one side only,and it’s putting the trans community at greater risk.

I may reply but I think they are so blinkered at the moment I would just go down as the local crazy woman and lose any credibility if I needed to contact them again.

I could write my MP's reply for him - (Labour, batshit end) - even though it hasn't appeared yet.

1. the most important thing about women (and gay) rights is always to respect (straight) men (by essentially not wanting rights in the first place that said men might find inconvenient.)

2. Labour is always perfect and right, we are proud and in total denial at all times, yay us

3. anything wrong isn't our fault anyway, a bigger boy did it and ran away.

I'm positive I am also on the Witch Burning list, but whatever. He cannot say that no one in his consitutency said anything or minded, or that when the obvious issues happen, that no one told him. And I will this time be pointing out that if he is against women's legal rights because men are cross at women and gay people being allowed boundaries, he has a significant issue with equality for women and homosexuality: should I take this as the party position.

They don't like it up 'em...