Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Monday 15th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, the late intervention by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, was helpful in suggesting to the Minister that what I think we would all acknowledge is a complex, sensitive and controversial issue would benefit from a sensible roundtable discussion in which the Prison Service was open to some scrutiny. Part of the issue around gender, sex and identity in government as a whole is that policy has been developed mainly by officials who have come under the influence of certain groups, which Ministers have basically accepted and it has not been subjected to proper scrutiny.

My major appeal to the Minister tonight is to allow for that and to open up a dialogue in which those of us who are gender-critical are not accused of being transphobic or under the pay of alt-right American organisations, something which, I am afraid, has all too often clouded the debate. I have an Oral Question tomorrow about Professor Kathleen Stock—a classic case of someone who has expressed quite legitimate views being subjected to horrendous abuse and basically left simply to put up with it herself; it was very late on that the university came her defence. There are so many examples of this, mainly affecting women. There is a lot of misogyny in this debate, and women are left defenceless by pathetic public bodies which are frightened to upset certain groups such as Stonewall. We know this—in how many government departments has policy been developed by officials, with Ministers having virtually no say?

My appeal to the Minister tonight is to take this seriously and to say there is a legitimate debate—not one in which we call each other names, but where we actually start to discuss these issues. It has never been allowed; there has been no real public debate or scrutiny in Parliament. These issues are so sensitive, and with every Bill that goes through, this debate will take place. We know that the Government are split on this, but they have got to get themselves together and start to have a proper dialogue. That is the appeal I make to the Minister.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I am afraid it is not just the Government who are split on this. With two notable exceptions, rarely have so many noble Barons spoken with such passion and at such length for the dignity of women—and there is nothing wrong with late-flowering feminism. I say that quite sincerely to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, who I had the privilege of advising as a young lawyer in the Home Office some years ago now. There is nothing wrong with late-flowering feminism and, indeed, nothing wrong with speaking up for the dignity of all people. I say that as a self-identifying feminist and human rights campaigner.

The debate has ranged widely, which may be fine even at this late hour, but it has ranged beyond the specific issue. Noble Lords have brought up various issues to do with the lexicon and whether people feel that their dignity is lost, or that somehow their femaleness, or their womanhood, is challenged by newcomers, migrants to their sex, et cetera. To get back to the actual issue, life is complicated, prisons are vulnerable spaces and everybody in prison is inherently potentially threatening but also potentially vulnerable. I want to get back to the actual substance of this amendment and what it is trying to address. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, that, if he and I were trapped in a lift with a third person—this is just a hypothetical, not an invitation, I promise—and the third person was a cis woman, born a woman, still a woman, always a woman, but none the less a white supremacist with previous convictions as long as your arm for violence against non-white women, I would feel much more threatened by the presence of that offender than by the presence of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. He is looking quizzical, but my point is that the Secretary of State has responsibilities to people in custody, in particular, and to people in vulnerable spaces that cannot be dealt with using the blunt instrument of an amendment like this.

I am not making nit-picking points. I am trying to address points that I think the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, tried to make early on. Forgive me—it is no criticism, but some noble Lords responded subsequently with speeches which were understandably carefully prepared in advance, without the opportunity to hear her rather sensitive and thoughtful setting out of the way in which the Government to date are trying to address their administrative and serious human rights responsibilities to deal with all vulnerable people in prison.

I suggest to the noble Lord that in the hypothetical lift I would be at far greater risk from the white supremacist with previous convictions. This is not a total hypothetical, because this has happened in male prisons where non-white offenders have been murdered by fellow cis males—that being the term for people born and always a man—because of a lack of diligence about the offending and attitudinal profile of a person.

If we really care about people being safe in custody, which we must, this will not be resolved by a blunt instrument. This is not a drafting point or a nit-picking point. In my view, we have too many people—and I suggest too many women—in prison anyway, and we need to pay more attention to who is with whom and how we are taking care of them.

Something like this amendment, which says that your birth sex is always your sex for the purposes of imprisonment and incarceration, would mean that someone born a woman who then went through hormone therapy, possibly more interventionist therapies and even surgery would always be in a women’s prison. That would not necessarily always be the right outcome.

What I am trying to suggest is that, yes, I care about being a woman and, yes, I care about being a feminist, but I am a human first and foremost. I do not hate men. I do not fear all men. I am not a self-loathing cis woman. I believe that in this Committee, perhaps more than anywhere, we should be capable of taking some of the heat out of these sensitive issues, as I think we tried to do in an earlier—I called it historic—debate. Debates about the lexicon and wider dignity, important and heated though they are, will not make women safer and they will not make prisoners safer.

[Baroness Meyer (Con)]

We are talking about men who feel they are women but who have male genitalia being in a women’s prison. We are not talking about men who had operations. We are talking about men who, after being in a prison for several months, might have needs and could attack women. Some of those men are paedophiles and are violent.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I hear the noble Baroness, and I do not call her a late-flowering human rights spokesperson or feminist. I know that when she spoke on another Bill about parental alienation, she very clearly identified and recognised that people of both sexes were capable of this behaviour. Perhaps if she had had the opportunity to listen to the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, before she prepared hers—I make no criticism of that, because we all do it—she would recognise that the Government are already moving quite a long way to deal with these difficult administrative duties of care.

I believe that people of good will and good faith, as I consider this Committee to be, can deal with this without using some of the language that—forgive me— some noble Lords have used repeatedly. Repeatedly calling people one sex even though it is very important to them to be another does not help. This place—this Committee and your Lordships’ House—should not be a place of culture war. This should be a place where we make difficult things a little bit easier because of rational thought and the respect that we pay each other and therefore everyone else.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I want to respond to that because I think another point that follows from what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said is that the other argument that comes up all the time is that if you raise these issues you want a culture war, which I think the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, was implying.

On terminology, if we are all going to get offended, I do not particularly find descriptions of people as “cis” very helpful either, so when it comes to language issues, the point is that there are tensions that exist outside this place. We know that and it is disingenuous to pretend that there are not.

The noble Baroness rightly pointed out that this is a question of administrative duties of care. This amendment has been very carefully worded in a very narrow way about a very specific issue. What is the objection to that? This is precisely a responsible administrative duty of care, regardless of any hyperbole that people do not like other people using even when they use it.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for that intervention. If I offended her in any way by my remarks—

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

Not me.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

—I apologise. Clearly one of the reasons this is so sensitive is that, beyond this Committee and this Chamber, there is not yet even a settled courtesy about some of these matters. If I have offended any Member of the Committee, I apologise.

I was born a woman, and I still identify as a woman, but I have always tried to disagree well with people, including those on the Benches opposite, who I disagree with across the piece. I have never seen all men as a threat, and I have certainly never seen people of other races, sexualities or sex as a threat, and I am not calling anybody names in this debate.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, this is an important debate. I think I am perfectly entitled to intervene; I do not see why I cannot. I agree with a lot of what my noble friend said about the tone of the debate. My problem is the accusation of transphobia.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

But I did not make it.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

No, my noble friend did not make it, but it is made by many people. Those who are perhaps arguing from my noble friend’s point of view never defend people such as Kathleen Stock when they suffer such abuse. I welcome this debate, which is why I intervened, because, frankly, it is very helpful to try to set a place here. I agree with my noble friend that the Lords is, above all else, a place where we can start to have some reasoned discussion, but there are huge tensions and sensitivities on both sides. I must come back to the Minister: the fact is—

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My noble friend is intervening on me.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

That is very true. My noble friend is right. I will take that and ask her to respond to me.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am grateful for that. Forgive me, again, if I have called anybody names. That has not been my intention. This is difficult terrain. The path of human rights does not run smooth and there are all sorts of difficult issues to be dealt with. There are some people beyond this Committee and your Lordships’ House who seek to set people against each other. The focus of this legislation, and your Lordships’ focus in this Committee, should be to ensure the safety of vulnerable people in prison, whatever sex they were born and whatever sex they now identify as. I was trying to suggest that that is not just about biology. It is also to do with criminality, profile, attitude and so on. I believe we have too many people in prison and that we therefore have too many women in prison.

I would defend academic freedom and debate, by the way. Forgive me if I have not been seen to do so. I believe that my record on free speech matters is decent enough. I urge noble Lords to send a signal to the wider world that, in this place at least, we can disagree well and focus on protecting all vulnerable people in prison.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. As most noble Lords will know, we are the body charged with protecting the protected characteristic of sex as well as that of gender reassignment and the fundamentally important human right of freedom of expression. All those things have been discussed today relatively calmly, on the whole. On debating well, I start from first principles and say that we should never try to close down debate—and yes, we should debate well.

I thank the noble Lords, Lord Blencathra, Lord Morrow and Lord Farmer, and the noble Baroness, Lady Meyer, for proposing this amendment, which basically seeks to ensure that female prisoners are protected from harm. This is a complex area, where the rights of trans women prisoners to have their legal sex recognised has to be balanced with those of female prisoners, who may be fearful of attack, if they know that a dangerous sex offender with male anatomy is housed with them, for example. The important point is that, when you are incarcerated and do not have the liberty to leave a place of danger, the state’s duty to look after you is profound. You do not have the choices that other people have.

The noble Lords and noble Baroness have proposed that prisoners with a gender recognition certificate who are suspected or convicted of a “violent or sexual offence” are treated

“by reference to the sex registered at their birth.”

I understand the intent behind this amendment, which is essentially to secure the safety of natal women. However, it raises some issues that require further thought—for example, the risk of violence towards trans women prisoners housed in a male prison as well as to trans men in a female prison. I urge noble Lords not to frame this serious and complex issue either in a numbers game—are there very few or not so few?—or in what may or may not be our personal outlook, if we find ourselves in that position. The law is frequently a straitjacket, and it is not sufficiently malleable to accommodate the complexity of identities around us.

At the heart of this issue is the need to protect female prisoners and ensure that they have access to single-sex spaces, including bathrooms, sleeping accommodation and other areas that they need. Violent and sexual offenders are a threat to their fellow inmates, regardless of their sex or gender identity. Cases of assault sadly already happen in single-sex prisons. However, in the case of trans prisoners who may be violent or who may have committed crimes involving sexual assault, it is right that we now need to give additional thought to how they are housed. As it stands, the law stands calls for these decisions to be made on a case-by-case basis. While this will be right in many situations, it may also raise the question of how female prisoners can have confidence in their ability to safely access spaces such as toilets within the prison, precisely because they cannot know the outcome of a case-by-case assessment, as opposed to the generality of a law that exists for them. Further thought needs to be given to the facilities provided to trans people and whether provision can be expanded for trans people that ensures that all sides of that debate can be safe and secure within the prison estate.

A further problem with the amendment is that, oddly, it is too narrow and does not capture the issue of trans men or trans women who do not have a gender recognition certificate but, nevertheless, self-identify in the gender and can therefore apply and be granted a place in the relevant prison estate. I do not think the noble Lords who put down the amendment intended for it to be quite so narrow—certainly their speeches do not reflect the narrowness of the written words. These are not straightforward issues, and it is right that we properly consider the balance of rights of different prisoners. I do not believe that the amendment gets that balance right, but it does ask serious and important questions that need to be addressed in law.

If the Minister is minded to pursue these arguments through Report, I ask that he give extremely serious consideration to the importance of getting the balance of rights correct and ensuring that all prisoners have the duty of the state to safeguard them upheld as we go forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise very briefly—the noble Lord, Lord Russell, will be pleased to know—to offer the Green group’s support for Amendment 219 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove. I shall simply make two points, one of which draws on the recent intervention by the noble Lord, Lord Russell.

First, the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, referred to the origins of this amendment. Nottinghamshire Police Force has been a pioneer in this area. In my contribution on this subject on the Domestic Abuse Bill, I looked back beyond that. If you look at the history of how Nottingham police came to be doing it, it began with a group called Nottingham Citizens and a survey it conducted among the people of Nottingham. That led to a conference held at the Nottingham Women’s Centre, which informed the police and police action. This is something that very much grew from the grass roots up. In response to many of the contributions from people advocating Amendment 219A instead: this has been proven to work. It is there demonstrably on the ground. The fact is there.

For my second point, I refer to the author Caroline Criado Perez and quote her:

“There is enough data to know that men who kill women do not suddenly kill women, they work up to killing women … If only we were to listen to women and pay attention to the misogyny and aggression and violence that they deal with on a daily basis.”


That is what Amendment 219 seeks to do. The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, suggests that we have to wait and wait and wait. I would suggest we have been waiting lifetimes—centuries—for this action. We have a proven model that has been shown to work. Let us put it into effect.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, her noble friend Lord Polak, my noble friend Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede and the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool. I want to focus on the amendment, not on a wide-ranging debate about everything that is wrong in relation to sex and gender or discourse in society.

I want to congratulate the noble Baroness because it is a simple and focused amendment. The word “misogyny” does not even appear in it. It is not thought crime. It is not even a speech offence. It follows a well-trodden path of adding protected characteristics or certain characteristics to a list. Hostility towards people with these characteristics will be an aggravating factor in a crime that already exists and has already been proven or admitted beyond reasonable doubt in a court. I say to noble Lords who are worried that I will come back to their fears and try to assuage them.

It seems totally unconscionable to me that, for example, race and religion have been aggravating factors in the code for so long but not hostility towards women. Hence, in the waiting millennia—certainly decades—since the code, these factors have been added. Some people will say that we never needed to add aggravating factors at all, and we could always trust the courts to get it right. Whether that is true or not—and I am not sure it is—we have a well-trodden system, and it is unconscionable, particularly at this moment when women and girls are feeling the way they are, that we should say we must wait because it is all very complex. If it is not complex in relation to race, religion and sexuality, it is not complicated in relation to sex. These are people who have already committed a criminal offence.

Why add aggravation at all? If somebody gets drunk on a Friday night and gets into fights with people they come across, that is bad enough. But if they go out after a few drinks on a Friday night to single out a particular group or a particular type of person based on their race or religion, or go out beating up women, that is an additional public policy problem, and that is why aggravation in relation to the group is a matter for this Committee and for policymakers.