Legislative Definition of Sex

Debate between Hannah Bardell and Nia Griffith

Monday 12th June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Dame Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

The Equality Act 2010 protects against direct and indirect discrimination, but there has always been provision in the Act for different treatment where it is a proportionate means to a legitimate aim—that is, different provision for those whose sex is assigned at birth and those whose legal sex has been acquired through a gender recognition certificate.

For example, although I know of one rape crisis service that has been providing women-only services for 30-years, and uses trans-inclusive language and has been trans-inclusive for 30 years, many other organisations providing services for those who have suffered domestic violence use the current provision in the Equality Act to provide exclusive services for those whose sex at birth was female.

Decisions about who can compete in sports can be made by sporting bodies as appropriate for the sport, and I do not understand why so many Members do not seem to have understood that. Obviously, rugby is totally different from chess. Those decisions are made by the appropriate bodies.

The Gender Recognition Act 2004, in combination with the Equality Act, currently defines someone’s legal sex as either the sex they were assigned at birth or the sex they have acquired through having a gender recognition certificate under the GRA. As I have illustrated, the Equality Act allows for different treatment of people whose legal sex has been acquired through a gender recognition certificate and people whose sex is assigned at birth, as long as the action is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.

If there is a change, as has been suggested, from the current definition in the 2010 Act to a definition based on biological sex, that would create a blanket ban on trans people from services that they had previously enjoyed without concern or complaint, even when it cannot be said to be a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. The change would remove the current protection from discrimination for people in possession of a gender recognition certificate and undermine the Gender Recognition Act, leading to people being treated as if they had not changed their sex.

Unfortunately, this debate has often been portrayed as a matter of whether trans women should be allowed to use women’s toilets. First, we have had the GRA since 2004, and trans women have been using women’s toilets without complaint. Most of us have probably never even noticed. As we know, we have individual cubicles, so everyone has their privacy.

Even more unfortunately, there has been a conflation, even by Members in this debate, of a trans woman and somebody who is a criminal. We know perfectly well that there are police who are criminals and carry out heinous acts, but that does not mean that all police officers are criminals. It is exactly the same. Someone could impersonate a meter reader or a council worker, say, and go to a house to try to gain entry by false means. Why the idea that someone can dress up as a woman and therefore carry out whatever criminal act they intend to should determine how we decide to treat trans women is absolutely indecipherable to me.

To those people who genuinely feel that they do not want to discriminate against trans people, I want to make it clear just how hurtful that suggestion is to many trans people. They feel that they will be completely obliterated—that they will no longer exist, that they will no longer have the right to recognition. They have so many challenges in life—challenges with their family, challenges at work, challenges with their social life—

[Hannah Bardell]

I commend the hon. Lady for making a passionate and common-sense contribution to the debate. I am sure she agrees that some of what we have heard today is just feeding into the moral panic; some of the arguments are just cut and pasted from what gay and lesbian people faced decades ago. Does she agree, as a lesbian, that trans people do not threaten us? In fact, they enhance our existence.

[Dame Nia Griffith]

Absolutely. As a fellow lesbian, I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady; they are absolutely not a threat. More importantly than that, they need our support now more than ever.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Hannah Bardell and Nia Griffith

Wednesday 30th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dame Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

3. What the Government’s planned timetable is for bringing forward legislative proposals on conversion therapy.

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

4. If the Government will take steps to help protect trans people from conversion therapy.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Debate between Hannah Bardell and Nia Griffith

Monday 20th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Hannah Bardell]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. It is very clear from her experiences that these cuts are pernicious and unfounded, and we must, must oppose them.

The Scottish Government are protecting people from Westminster cuts. To be properly supported to live a full and meaningful life, be that in employment or otherwise, we have to look at a different way of doing things. In Scotland, the Scottish National party Government are providing £104 million in 2015-16 to protect as many people as possible from the damaging impact of the welfare reforms imposed so far by Westminster. That includes £35 million to mitigate the bedroom tax and the council tax reduction scheme, which has protected 500,000 Scots.

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that the changes on conditionality to three and four-year-olds are an interference with Scottish and Welsh Government policy? They impose an obligation to provide some form of childcare for those policies to be in any way humane. That is above and beyond the way in which a UK policy should affect Welsh or Scottish Government policy.

[Hannah Bardell]

I agree with the hon. Lady wholeheartedly. We will certainly have to look at that. The Joint Ministerial Committee met today. Hopefully, it will have discussed this matter and we will hear further information on it.

The SNP believes that having socially progressive policies is the key to unlocking our society’s potential. That is why our First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, wrote in yesterday’s Sunday Herald:

“The UN General Assembly in New York will provide the backdrop for national governments to agree the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Sustainable Development Goals themselves offer a vision of the world that I believe people in Scotland share. From ending poverty to combating inequality, the aims set out by the UN form an agenda for tackling some of the world’s greatest problems.

I am delighted to confirm that Scotland has become one of the very first nations on Earth to publicly sign up to these goals and provide leadership on reducing inequality across the globe.”

Michael Green, from the Social Progress Index, said:

“The term Gross Domestic Product is often talked about as if it were ‘handed down from god on tablets of stone.’ But this concept was invented by an economist in the 1930s.”

He says that we need a more effective measurement tool to match 21st century needs: the social progress index. We absolutely agree that GDP is the internationally recognised benchmark, but we have to take into consideration much wider aspects. Michael Green asserts that economic growth has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty and improved the lives of many more over the last half century, yet it is increasingly evident that a model of development based on economic progress alone is incomplete. Economic growth is not enough. A society that fails to address basic human needs, to equip citizens to improve quality of life, to protect the environment and provide opportunity for many of its citizens, is not succeeding. We must widen our understanding of the success of societies beyond economic outcomes. Inclusive growth requires achieving both economic and social progress. If we focus solely on GDP and reducing the deficit at all costs, we will store up significant problems for the future.

The SNP was very clear in its manifesto proposals about the aspects of policy that could be introduced to help bring people out of poverty. We want a vote for child tax credits and child benefit to be uprated in line with the consumer prices index and to support an increase in free childcare up to 30 hours a week by 2020. We propose an increase in carer’s allowance to bring it in line with JSA, which would see more than 100,000 unpaid carers in Scotland better off by almost £600 a year. We support increases in the personal tax allowance, but will back an increase in the work allowance—the amount people are allowed to earn before their benefit is cut at 20%.

The Bill is an attack on civil society. It is an attack on our poorest families. It is a regressive Bill that takes us back in time with cuts that will hit women and children the hardest. It will stigmatise and marginalise women who have been raped, and put conditions on the most needy in our society. At a time when we should be looking outward and forward, when we should be progressive and look to give our people a bright future and something to hope for, this Government are instead looking inward to attack their own people and turn them against each other in a way that even Thatcher’s Government would not have dared. The people of Scotland will not stand for this and neither will its democratically elected politicians. If the Bill and the Budget succeed, going our own way in Scotland and building a society that is progressive and for everyone, not just the rich, will be increasingly attractive. I urge the House to reject the Second Reading of the Bill.