Victims and Prisoners Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 5th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 72, which I am delighted is supported by the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough. This was originally an amendment to Clause 15 relating to guidance for independent domestic violence and sexual violence advisers, but the Government have rather usurped that, as we have heard. However, the issues my amendment probes the Government on—specialist victim support for women, in my instance—are still pertinent. I listened to the debate on the previous two or three groups and refrained from speaking, but the issues we have been discussing could have been reflected in all the themes I am interested in looking at.

To state something absolutely obvious, but it is important to remind ourselves: certain crimes are predominantly aimed at women. Although it is true that anyone can suffer domestic abuse or be raped—I acknowledge that male victims may be underreported and I do not want to downplay that women can be perpetrators—all the evidence suggests that approximately 90% of victims of rape or domestic abuse are female. I will return to the reliability of data and whether we can trust it with an amendment in the next group.

My amendment probes whether the Government can ensure, via this Bill, that female victims of sexual and domestic violence have the option of female advocates, advisers and services, and that these victim advocates respect victims’ requests for access to women-only provision. This choice is no longer guaranteed, largely due to the turmoil and confusion caused by gender ideology and political rather than material definitions of what a woman is. This turmoil was vividly illustrated by an invaluable report published last week by the campaign group Sex Matters, entitled Women’s Services: A Sector Silenced. I will ensure that whichever Minister responds gets sent a copy of the report because it is a must-read. Will the Minister agree to meet with its authors? Its contents directly relate to the Bill’s important aim of improving service provision for victims.

The Sex Matters report reveals that the women’s service sector is mired in confusion as it grapples with the conflicts arising out of a move towards either trans-inclusive or so-called gender-neutral services, which are often forced on them by funders and commissioners, all at the expense of women victims’ choices. I will stress why this choice is crucial for victims of certain crimes. I have used the point about choice and options very carefully in my amendment. I quote JK Rowling explaining why she financially backed Beira’s Place, a single-sex rape crisis resource service in Scotland:

“As a survivor of sexual assault myself, I know how important it is that survivors have the option of women-centred and women-delivered care at such a vulnerable time”.


I testify to that from my own experience.

The Equality Act recognises the importance of offering such support as a choice and uses rape counselling as an example of a service where it is proportionate to discriminate—for example, by restricting counselling jobs to women. Despite that, even services that claim to be women-only are compromised by policies based on the belief that anyone who identifies as a woman—even those with male bodies—is a woman. To quote the head of operations of one charity that offers, it says, counselling, advocacy and group work for survivors of sexual violence and abuse in Sussex:

“We do not police gender and we do not define who is and is not a woman; we allow women to define this for themselves”.


I am afraid that such policies are hardly reassuring and create real quandaries for some victims and, indeed, service employees alike.

As we speak, a high-profile and important employment tribunal is taking place in Scotland, involving former staff support counsellor, Roz Adams, who is claiming constructive dismissal against the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre. In evidence, Ms Adams explained how she was told that revealing the biological sex of support workers to centre users was transphobic. The issue arose when a 60 year-old female survivor of sexual assault said she would feel uncomfortable talking to a man, but when she inquired about the sex of the centre’s volunteers, Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre’s response was that it was inappropriate to disclose such information. Worse, her question led to her being sent an email saying that she was not a suitable user of the service—the wrong sort of victim, I assume. Surely it is essential that any advocacy or advice services should be honest with victims about something as basic as the sex of staff who will provide victim support.

Yet, to muddy the water further, consider this. When Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre advertised a senior post a couple of years ago, the job blurb read “only women need apply”, citing the single-sex exemption in the Equality Act. All clear, noble Lords might think, and that would satisfy me. Or perhaps not, because the “only women need apply” job advert then added that as a diverse organisation, applications from trans women—that is, biological males—were especially welcome. Noble Lords may think, “That’s just Scotland: it’s all got a bit gender bonkers up there”, but these confusing trends are widespread throughout the UK. The domestic violence and sexual violence service sector is in turmoil. As the Sex Matters report reveals, there are serious consequences, such as women victims self-excluding and being reluctant to seek help because they do not want to risk being counselled by a man.

A story from Sussex Rape Crisis Centre illustrates the dilemma—it has been in the news recently. One service user, Sarah Summers, is suing Survivors’ Network for discrimination because it refused to provide a women-only peer support group. Sarah had joined a female-only group, which she found helpful and supportive as a victim, until a man who identified as a trans woman joined the group, making her feel uncomfortable and unable to be open about her past trauma. Sarah explains, in completely reasonable terms, that she knew:

“Some women are happy to be in that space, and obviously trans survivors have a need for that support. But single-sex spaces should be an option”.


Indeed, Survivors’ Network has such groups for trans, non-binary and intersex people.

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[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, was not here to move his amendment. Given the debate we had on the previous group, I think he would have made the point that we need specific guidance for other specialist services as well. I hope that the Minister will respond to that.

I was very taken with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, about older people. We assume that it is younger people who tend to be victims of domestic abuse, economic abuse and sexual violence, but that is not the case. Older people’s circumstances are often different, and they require more specialist advice. That does not mean that a person cannot be qualified to be a specialist adviser in two or three areas, but it means they have done the training and understand the differences. I am very mindful of that, and these Benches are supportive of it.

On the amendment spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, supported by the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, I am wondering how it would work. I think the noble Baroness is saying that trans women are incapable of understanding, helping or addressing trauma, yet trans women are already accessing women’s refuges because they have been victims of trauma.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I can clarify that.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

Let me develop this point first. The difficulty that I have is that the one place where a trans woman can feel safe if she has been assaulted by a man is a women’s refuge. I have looked and looked to see whether I can find evidence of trans women assaulting women in refuges, and I can find none. I cannot find any publicity, and in the current culture wars that the noble Baroness spoke of, it would be everywhere if that were the case. I hope that it does not happen. From talking to trans women, I know that they have frequently—more frequently than women, if you look at the ratio; it is a very small number of trans women—been assaulted and raped. Therefore, I would be very concerned about anything that removes their rights. I am worried that there is not a problem that needs to be solved. I say that with the greatest respect to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, and the noble Lord, Lord Jackson.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I only want to clarify. The example that I used, to be clear, concerned instances where there was provision for trans women but not all natal women wanted to share their trauma with trans women. I did not mention assault by trans people against anyone, because that is not what this is referring to. The women’s-only facility argument in relation to services for sex, sexual assault and violence and domestic abuse is quite straightforward; it is understood in the law that women can have only-women provision, but the use of the word “woman” is now so misunderstood and can be interpreted as including trans women that it gets very confusing. I am afraid that that means that the lack of choice is not for trans women but for natal women—women.

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[Lord Roborough (Con)]

I am afraid that the response to my noble friend is that the Government are absolutely adamant that service providers are the right people to make these decisions. They deal with a number of different concerns from victims and have to balance those against the resources available to their organisations.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I know that noble Lords want to move on, but the key to what I was saying is that service provision has been compromised by political and ideological interventions. If anything, this undermines the very exemptions in the Equality Act. I am afraid that saying “It’s up to them”, when they are the problem, potentially, is not quite going to cut it.

Could the Minister at least take back to the department that we will be returning to this issue on Report? It is very important, and we need some clarification. Maybe it can come after the meeting with the Sex Matters report writers, but saying that the status quo prevails does not work in this instance.

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

I am very happy to take the noble Baroness’s comments back to the Minister and the Government, and to discuss them.

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[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, reference was made briefly to Amendment 80, and

“services for victims … with no recourse to public funds”.

I want to offer brief but firm support for that amendment. Quite simply, victims of domestic abuse with no recourse to public funds are some of the most disadvantaged people that one sees in the family justice system. It is unthinkable, in my view, that they could be excluded in any way from the benefit of services under the victims’ code.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have an amendment in this group—sometimes the way the groupings lie is a bit difficult. This group covers violence against women and girls, and my amendment relates to how we assess data on that violence. I thank the noble Lords, Lord Blencathra and Lord Jackson of Peterborough, for their support—and we shall hear from one of them shortly.

Amendment 105 seeks to probe problems with the data that we use to develop policies and ensure that there is guidance to establish that sex registered at birth is used for any analysis of patterns of offending and recording victim and perpetrator profiles. Ideally, this would apply throughout the whole criminal justice system but, for now, this amendment focuses on violence against women and girls. I hope that, on this topic at least, there will be unanimity in acknowledging that sex difference between men and women can impact on people’s experience of victimisation and offending and on patterns of offending and risk.

Official crime data is used to assess the most appropriate services that should be developed, and how resources should be targeted effectively—something that the Bill has focused on at length in relation to support for victims. But any claims for evidence-based policy must be based on material reality and cannot depend on, for example, subjective assertions or ideological beliefs, both of which could be misleading. I invite people to agree with me that data needs to be accurate, credible and consistent. The problem is that accuracy, credibility and consistency are being undermined at present, because the criminal justice system has either conflated or replaced data based on immutable sex with data based on more fluid concepts, such as gender identity or self-declared sex.

I am aware that even discussing the collection of data based on a person’s sex, whether male or female, has become controversial these days. One has only to look at last week’s media reports of internal rows taking place in the Office for National Statistics about the methodology used in the census. But that is all the more reason why my amendment emphasises the need to raise the consistent measure of sex registered at birth. At present, there is an inconsistent model of options. The variable category of “gender” is used carelessly in criminal justice circles as interchangeable with sex. Sex can mean, if used imprecisely, sex as self-declared gender. It can mean a legally recognised but none the less acquired gender, sometimes evidenced by a gender recognition certificate—GRC. It can also mean changed government records, such as passports, driving licences, or NHS numbers, even though a person’s biological sex does not change, even if the documentation does. But the introduction of this vast array of recording practices creates a lack clarity about what is being measured and what exactly some types of official criminal justice data represent.

To illustrate that confusion, let us consider that a few years ago the British Transport Police stated that, because the BTP treats all people—victims, offenders and witnesses—with dignity, it

“records their gender according to the gender they present as, and/or how they self-identify their gender”.

That seems to suggest that the British Transport Police is undoubtedly well meaning but none the less prioritises validating people’s identity rather than understanding that data collection is a critical variable in crime statistics. It is important we ensure that official statistics are not treated as personal records of preference; they must be objectively accurate if they are to be useful. What is more, different police forces use different criteria for data collection, and this is very important for our understanding of violence against women and girls.

Keep Prisons Single Sex is involved in an invaluable project and public service which annually submits freedom of information requests to all police forces in the UK with the aim of determining how they record a suspect’s sex. The campaign’s findings for 2023 make for troubling reading. Just for a taster, of the 32 forces that answered the freedom of information request, no force records sex registered at birth in all circumstances; 20 forces use legally recognised acquired gender where the suspect has a GRC; and 13 forces stated that, where a suspect has a self-declared gender identity, they will record this as sex, rather than sex at birth. Some 22 forces answered the question on how a rape suspect’s sex is recorded, with 20 forces recording legally recognised acquired gender—in other words, GRCs—and only one force recording sex registered at birth. This means that suspected rape perpetrators and convicted rapists can be recorded in official statistics as female, if they no longer wish to identify with their male birth sex. To confuse matters further, 22 forces answered questions on how they record the sex of a suspect who identifies as non-binary, with 11 recording sex as “indeterminate” or “unspecified other”, and only nine using sex registered at birth.

Noble Lords might wonder whether any of this matters, and some say it does not. However, in 2019, when Fair Play For Women revealed results from its FOI requests to police forces, the National Police Chiefs’ Council responded that:

“There is no evidence to suggest that recording a person’s gender based on the information that they provide will have an impact on an investigation or on national crime statistics, because of the low numbers involved”.


That is wrong-headed and complacent. On the point about the low numbers involved, one might ask what will happen if many more people apply for a legal sex change. Organisations such as Stonewall claim that the UK trans population is up to 500,000, even though only a small minority have GRCs. That would make a significant error in the datasets. Small numbers of cases misclassified in this way can lead to substantial bias in crime stats, and, importantly, can distort and mislead public understanding of the nature of, in particular, violence against women and girls and offending patterns in relation to sexual offences.

If the police now record female crime based on gender identity, this means female crime statistics include both women who were born female and trans women who were born male. I do not know whether noble Lords recall that, in 2021, newspaper headlines screamed that the number of female paedophiles had doubled in four years. This shocking statistic was based on a Radio 4 “File on 4” documentary that used data from FOI requests. It claimed that, between 2015 and 2019, the number of reported cases of female-perpetrated child sex abuse prosecuted by police in England and Wales had risen from 1,249 to 2,297, an increase of 84%. A moral panic followed, as people assumed that that meant that more women were sexually abusing children, with endless talking heads on TV discussing why. The furore calmed down only when it dawned on commentators that no account had been taken of whether males who identify as women might be responsible for the apparent increase because of confusion about data protection. Of course, maybe it is the case that there are more women sexually abusing children—after all, offending patterns do change. However, it is impossible to know or make that claim from the collected data based on a mixture of gender identity and sex registered at birth.

This sort of unreliability surely erodes public understanding. Trust is eroded when sex-disaggregated data held by the police does not actually record what most people think it does. Unsurprisingly, this can lead to media reports of female rapists, women as sex abusers and so on, when in fact what is being reported is male perpetrators claiming female gender identity. We have to look only at the widespread public shock when it was revealed that a double rapist treated as a woman when remanded in a Scottish women’s prison was in fact not the female Isla Bryson but Adam Graham. Indeed, that scandal precipitated the downfall of the Scottish First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon.

To finish, routinely such confusions continue. Only last week, in media coverage of a trial at Southampton Crown Court, both broadcast and print media reported that a 56 year-old female charity shop worker was charged with exposing “her” penis. Lawyers in court were quoted as describing how Samantha Norris pulled down “her” trousers and manipulated “her” penis in front of two 11 year-old girls as they walked past the window of “her” home. But it is “his” home, “his” pants and “his” penis. Mr Norris may identify as a woman and be treated as such by criminal justice agencies, but he is male. How can the public or public authorities have any realistic picture or analysis of the threats posed by violence against women and girls if these confusions are reflected in official data?

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, and shall speak to her Amendment 105. I apologise that I was not able to participate at Second Reading due to attending another meeting.

I submit that sex registered at birth is a fundamental demographic and explanatory variable reflecting the reality of sex-based differences between men and women. Sex registered at birth is a powerful predictor of outcomes and is established throughout the criminal justice system as important in the analysis of offending and pathways into offending and risk.

Males and females offend at different rates, with males offending at significantly increased rates to females. In September 2021, women represented just 4% of the total prison population. Some offence categories, including serious violent and sexual offences, are only very rarely committed by females, with the overwhelming majority of these offences being committed by males. For example, in 2019, women comprised 2% of prosecutions for sexual offences, 16% of prosecutions for violence against the person and 7% of prosecutions for possession of weapons. The groups with the highest proportion of males prosecuted were sexual offences, at 98% male, and possession of weapons, at 93% male. Pathways into offending also differ between the sexes. There are strong links between women’s acquisitive crime—for example, theft and benefit fraud—and their need to provide for their children. For women, a history of male violence, including coercive control, frequently forms a distinct pathway into offending.

Sex registered at birth underpins the provision and planning of services within the criminal justice system, with the female offender strategy providing an evidence-based case to address the distinct needs of women in the criminal justice system. More generally, differences due to sex underpin risk assessment processes, the provision of offender treatment programmes, and the differing security categorisation and arrangements in the male and female prison estates. It is for these reasons, I suggest, it is fundamentally important that, throughout the criminal justice system, suspects’ sex registered at birth is recorded—for all offences, not just violent or sexual offences against women and girls.

However, despite the clear, established, evidence-based importance of sex registered at birth, throughout the United Kingdom police forces routinely record suspects’ gender identity, self-declared gender, legally recognised gender or transgender identity and not their sex registered at birth, including in the case of rape. I will not quote all the statistics which the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, quoted on the freedom of information access requests acquired by Keep Prisons Single Sex, but it seems to be the case that in at least 32 of our police forces there is a complete mishmash in recording the sex of offenders, and that leads to perverse consequences.

There is no evidence that either legally recognised acquired gender, where an individual has been issued with a gender recognition certificate, or self-declared gender or gender identity have even equivalent explanatory power. In fact, where evidence is available, it continues to demonstrate the superior explanatory power of sex registered at birth to offending. I am sure some will argue that, even if sex registered at birth is erased from data in this way, surely the number of times it happens is so small that there is no appreciable impact on the data overall, so why does it really matter and why get upset about it.