Women's and Equalities Select Committee

[ArabellaSaurus]

Welcomes Nadia Whittome, Kim Leadbetter, and Kevin McKenna.

This is very, very bad news for women.

https://x.com/CommonsWEC/status/1983110894835130644

I thought the committee couldn't possibly get any worse, but clearly Labour are spoiling us.

Nadia Whittome is so utterly ridiculous, maybe this move will backfire.

Fucksake

It is such appallingly bad news that I think we need to start a campaign to register our fears. No point in contacting the Chair of the Committee who is as bad as any of them - would letters to boring dreadful Kier work? Lord knows the new Deputy Leader won't help. Judicial review? Who technically has oversight over committee formation and management? I'm not clear how far this is a Labour Party issue and how much a Parliament issue - can anyone shed light?

You’d think there would be two necessary conditions for being on the committee - firstly clear understanding what ‘women’ doe and doesn’t mean, and secondly a grasp of what ‘equality’ means.

https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/328/women-and-equalities-committee/membership/

Christine Jardine also a notorious TRA.

Maybe there's an Ombudsman that we could complain to, this is gerrymandering of a government committee, there should be some rule against it. 😠

Thanks Labour. You just have a load more votes to Reform.

Slow hand clap.

Nadia Whittome? Unbelievable. 😡

Blimey.

Personally I think, and have done for a while that they are going to try to change the Equality Act so the Supreme Court Ruling is irrelevant. I think we are entering into extremely vulnerable territory.

Bad news indeed. Just when it looked as if some small progress was being made by Labour

Well who decided who gets onto the committee? Because this looks like a concerted effort to steer things in a very distinct direction. Is it window dressing to appease those upset with Wes Streeting? Does it have teeth or will it just allow for a load of empty, virtue-signalling and make out that the government really care about trans people?

We know it’s not about protecting women’s sex-based rights at all because none of those MPs care about that. Are labour panicking because they think the Greens are storming ahead in the polls with their TWAW stance. Because if they are, I think they’re digging themselves further and further into the electoral grave.

It's definitely bad news. According to the process laid out here, they were selected by a secret ballot of Labour Party MPs so a lot of more labour MPs hate women than even we thought and it's almost certainly a plan to derail the equality act guidance https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainer/election-select-committee-chairs-and-members

I think it might be more bad news for the Labour Party.

I don't regret not voting Labour in the last election, and they won't be getting my vote anytime soon if they are catapulting idiots like NW into important roles. Clearly large parts of the PLP cannot be trusted. Standing by and doing nothing is lunacy from the Front Bench.

I don't like to be rude about our MPs, but the only reason you'd put Nadia Whittome on a select committee is if Elmo and the Cookie Monster are unavailable.

Nadia is not my MP THANK GOD! But she is relatively local and is completely barking. Some parts of Nottingham are starting to resemble Brighton/Bristol in terms of flags/rainbows etc. Unfortunately this is likely to drive swathes of the electorate into the arms of Reform, who did well in this area at the last local elections.

FFS

I think that an email to Wes Streeting might have more of an effect that an email to Kier
a) Kier won’t see anything sent to him unless his gatekeepers let it through
b) Wes is already onboard with biological sex (and, given this is an updated position, he’s presumably thought it through)
c) he’s clearly ambitious and may well be interested in hearing about what real people want
Or, we could do a petition for parliament to debate ways in which parliament can ensure the SC decision is implemented asap
Thoughts?

Love this response on twitter
You know, if you just got rid of the committee altogether and said 'we couldn't give a fuck about women', you'd actually be less misogynist, insulting and gaslighting than this shite.

The trouble with Streeting is that one of the biggest elements in the PLP is the Stop the Wes Coalition. And it's the PLP who are the problem.

Bridget Phillipson actually has the women and equalities brief, and I don't believe has a high opinion of the current committee, but I don't know how much ice she cuts at the moment.

All were elected unopposed
ie the pro women and pro disabled and pro lesbian MPs did not put themselves forward

Maybe for a smart and ambitious back-bencher, that committee is not where you want to be in terms of career advancement?