Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Baroness Brinton and Baroness Morris of Yardley

Lords Hansard - part two & Committee stage
Monday 22nd November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I wish to speak against this amendment, because on first reading it set off a number of alarm bells. But I say to the noble Lord, Lord Wasserman, that I listened carefully to what he said, to try to understand his arguments. For me, there are consequences for trans people in the amendment that no other group of people with protected characteristics would have to face in our society.

Those who have laid and spoken to amendments to this Bill against transgender people have repeatedly said there is a data collection problem. But I do not understand why the data needs to be collected by the police, given that for most crimes—whether the victim or the person being arrested, as set out in this amendment—being a trans person is just not relevant.

A parallel example would be requiring a disabled person to register with the police. I have chosen this example deliberately because, four years ago, I was physically attacked in my wheelchair at Euston station. For that incident, the wonderful British Transport Police recorded the crime as a disability hate crime—the crime, note, not the victim or the perpetrator. I would be appalled if every time I reported a crime thereafter—online fraud, for example—I had to say, “By the way, I’m disabled and I’m on your disability register.”

Rape offences are probably the only offences where the police need to know the sex of the offender because the legislation is dependent on the person’s genitals. It is otherwise not relevant information because the police do not need to know it. The noble Lord, Lord Wasserman, says that it is easy to add one section to the crime reporting information system—CRIS—but is it so easy? Adding just one extra category will take time and, for an existing reporting system, is usually very much more expensive than expected. Just ask the Government about the costs of adding the booster jab details to the Covid app, when they have thrown millions at IT during the pandemic.

I note that the amendment says that the above

“does not constitute an offence under section 22 of the Gender Recognition Act 2004”,

which prevents the disclosure of this protected information. On what grounds, then, is it acceptable to share people’s protected characteristics when the GRA says that is private information? In the context of personal information, can the noble Lord confirm whether the amendment complies with GDPR? I am not sure that it does, as it is not personal information that is essential to record.

I return to why the amendment was laid. Can the noble Lord, Lord Wasserman, answer some questions to try to explain the aims of his amendment? I will give a hypothetical example: a trans individual is subject to house burglary or to a street mugging unrelated to their gender. This amendment requires them, if they report that crime, to out themselves to the police. Why should they suffer that loss of privacy and human rights, and to what end? Why should trans people face such a disincentive to report crimes perpetrated against them? Why is this the one group of people being singled out as victims?

I have a second example. A trans person is arrested for being drunk and disorderly but they have been assaulted and in fact are suffering from concussion, which can give the same appearance. That would be a defence to any charge but they are required to out themselves upon arrest. Why? A key tenet of our law is that accused persons are presumed innocent and mostly have the same right to privacy and liberty as all citizens. That is different for criminals. The noble Lord, Lord Wasserman, referred two or three times to crimes and criminals but that is not what this amendment says. It concerns anyone who is arrested. What is the position of an accused person who refuses to provide the relevant information? The amendment does not make this clear. Would they be obstructing a police officer in the execution of their duty under Section 89(2) of the Police Act 1996?

A further real concern about this amendment, if enacted, is that it would prevent trans people coming forward to report being victims of crime as they would have to out themselves. Many would not be comfortable with disclosing that sort of information. It also implies that a gender recognition certificate is what defines gender, whereas many trans people do not have or want one of them.

The fundamental problem for me, though, is the labelling and targeting of trans people, either as victims or those arrested by the police, alone of any group in our society. While this amendment may not be being instructing them at this stage to wear a pink triangle on their jackets at all times, there would be a data pink triangle. It would set them apart from every other grouping in society. It sets a dangerous and unacceptable precedent. I hope the noble Lord will withdraw the amendment.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, I have put my name to this amendment and I shall speak in support of it. I very much welcome the way in which the noble Lord, Lord Wasserman, presented the argument. He gave a lot of detail, and at this time of night I will not go over it again, but I want to emphasise one or two points.

To begin with, I say that I sort of understand the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and I take them seriously, because anybody who thinks that any proposed legislation will discriminate against one group deserves to be heard and to have those questions explored. But at the core of this is the collection of data; we are an immensely data-rich society at the moment. Sitting here, throughout the debates this evening, there have been so many times when the argument that has been put forward has depended on the collection of data. Whichever public service you look at, whether it be education, health, the criminal law or whatever, much of the progress that we have made over previous decades has been because we have had the ability to collect data.

I am a woman, and I think that my sex has made many advances over the past decades because people arguing for legislation that has protected women, men, people with disabilities and people who are transgender have been able to make the case only because they have been able to collect the data. Unless you have the data, you are arguing vaguely about some impression about something that might happen, so I am deeply wedded to the idea of collecting data in the formation of public policy and the advancement of political ideas.

I think that is defensible, but I do not take for granted the fact that we do not give something up in the collection of that data. I will be honest. I am trustee of a number of charities, as I think everybody in this Chamber is. Every year, when I am asked to fill in the data declaration, I see another bit of data there. Sometimes, I think “Why do they want to know that about me?”, and the one I am saying that about at the moment is sexuality. I sit there, I tick the box that says “heterosexual”, and I think “What’s that got to do with me being a trustee of this body?” But I sign it, because I think that, on the whole, that declaration of bits of information about ourselves can be put to the common public good. If we were to look at charities, without declaring that information, how do we ever get to make the argument that women, or people who are black or from ethnic minorities, or from the gay community, are not represented on charities? Whether we like it or not—and I accept that it is difficult to come to terms with it sometimes—it is about the protection, rights and freedoms of individuals. But I would never say that we do not pay a price for the collection of this data, or that we must not continuously and constantly make sure that the data we are asking to be collected is in the public policy interest.

That is why I have come to this amendment and why I very much support the arguments that have been made. What the amendment asks is simply that we collect two bits of data, among others. One is the sex at birth and the other is any gender acquired during the lifetime of the person. Without that, I do not know how we can go on to develop public policy in the pursuit of those who have committed crime and of the public duty to protect those who have been victims of crime. Unless we have the data about how many of which groups there are, they will be ignored.

I have sat through a long and very interesting debate today. My noble friend on the Front Bench said that one of the most important things about the Bill before the Committee is that it is a Bill about protecting women and girls. I do not know how you do that unless you collect the data. We have heard about county lines and knife crime. Unless we collect the data to know that many of the people who are drawn in and persuaded to commit those crimes are young men, we cannot develop a suite of policies that support them. When we collect data about sex, it is entirely proper to ask about acquired gender as well. We must not conflate the two.

The problem at the moment is that different police forces are collecting data about sex at birth and about gender acquired at some other point and then conflating the two. We do not have the sequencing of data and information across police forces in this country that can enable us to make public policy. That is what this amendment is asking. It wants to disaggregate those, as the mover of the amendment has said.