Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

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

[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.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I had not intended to speak, but I would like to support what the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, has just said. There are two groups of people who need support. I agree with her that the well-intentioned amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, does not actually meet the problem. These two groups are the women who are women at birth and remain women, and those who were men at birth and become women. Both groups, even in prison, need respect for who they are and what has happened to them. I do not think that the prison system is well adapted at the moment to deal with trans women, and the Minister needs to think with some care whether rather more should be done to help that group of women.

However, the help for that group of women should not be at the expense—I venture into dangerous ground —of those who remain women. This is an extremely tricky area, and we know from areas outside the prison system just how tricky is it. I do not envy the Minister or the Ministry of Justice the situation in which they find themselves because this did not exist—as far as we knew—even 10 or 20 years ago but, my goodness me, it exists now. There are two groups, both of whom need not only respect, but understanding and care, even within a prison.