International Women’s Day

Debate between Joanna Cherry and Bernard Jenkin

Thursday 10th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) for that inspiring close to her speech. I do not wish to disabuse her in any way, but I think she will find that quite a lot of men do quite a lot of pretending too. We may cover it up better, but the hon. Lady gave the right advice: everyone is better if they are just themselves, and we are better if we feel empowered to be ourselves.

This should be a debate in which we celebrate the re-empowerment of women. I say “re-empowerment” because there is now some evidence suggesting that in prehistoric societies women were not disempowered or subjected to male patriarchy. However, recent progress is being thrown into reverse, and not just by terrible wars and by that terrible list that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) reads out every year. In particular, the rights of women to women-only safe spaces are threatened—safe spaces such as public toilets, women’s hospital wards and women’s prisons.

Nearly all violence against women is committed by men, but there is a new and growing category of violence against women committed by people who call themselves women but are biologically male. We should always respond positively to people with genuine gender dysphoria, and I deliver this speech with kindness in my heart, but the Sexual Offences Act 2003 defines rape as when a person

“intentionally penetrates the vagina, anus or mouth of another person…with his penis”

without consent. The Crown Prosecution Service reports that between 2012 and 2018 more than 436 cases of rape were recorded as being committed by women. The penis is a male organ, so these rapes are committed by men presenting themselves as women.

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

Hear, hear.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

Bastions of feminism—and I hear one on the other side of the House—who highlight this risk, and others such as Germaine Greer, Professor Kathleen Stott and Professor Jo Phoenix, and journalists such as Suzanne Moore, are bullied online and even hounded out of their jobs because they talk about this. But we, as legislators, must be clear and courageous about what a man is and what a woman is.

Today’s interim report from the independent review of gender identity services for children and young people by Dr Hilary Cass notes the rapid increase in the number of adolescent girls presenting with gender distress. It states:

“At present we have the least information for the largest group of patients—birth registered females first presenting in early teen years”.

It is essential that we understand why we are witnessing this historically unprecedented number of young girls who are finding puberty so difficult to navigate. The Government’s proposed conversion therapy Bill must be reviewed in the light of this, and we must wait until the full report comes out before we present the Bill for Second Reading.

It is a scientific fact that our biological sex is immutable. Professor Lord Winston said on the BBC’s “Question Time”:

“I will say this categorically—that you cannot change your sex. Your sex actually is there in every single cell in the body.”

The responsibility for clarity starts with us as legislators. We have to be clear about what words mean in our legislation—but, astonishingly, some of us are reluctant to be clear. A woman is an adult female human. Only this week, the hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds) was asked to define a woman on the media, and she was unable, or unwilling, to give a clear answer.

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[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I am afraid that a great many women do not agree with my right hon. Friend, and I am speaking for them.

[Joanna Cherry]

Following on from that point, does the hon. Gentleman agree that there has been some confusion in the past about the extent to which single-sex services can be provided under the Equality Act, and that the planned updated guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission will be very welcome?

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I thank the hon. and learned Lady for that intervention, and I note what she says.

The SNP Minister Shona Robison said when she was introducing the Bill:

“There is no evidence that predatory and abusive men have ever had to pretend to be anything else to carry out abusive and predatory behaviour.”—[Scottish Parliament Official Report, 3 March 2022; c. 65.]

That comment really misses the point. The point is that the Bill does create new opportunities for predatory men and I am afraid that my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) has to accept that there are plenty of instances where biological men have taken advantage of this new freedom being granted them, to the detriment of the safety of women.

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[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger). There are many things about which we disagree, but there are some things about which we agree, and I thank him for his kind comments. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) on securing this debate, and the many hon. Members who have made interesting and valuable contributions, especially my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows), who is such a doughty campaigner for disability rights and the rights of disabled women in particular.

During this International Women’s Day debate, it is the women of Ukraine who should be uppermost in our minds. This morning I and other female MPs—a cross-party group—met the Ukrainian ambassador’s wife. She impressed on us the terrible burden that Ukrainian women face as they flee their country with their children, often leaving their male relatives behind and uncertain of their destination. The majority of the now millions of refugees fleeing Ukraine are women and children, and they need visa-free access to the United Kingdom with their children. We must match the European Union on this, no ifs and no buts. Let’s get on with it.

Women are particularly vulnerable in war because of their sex. This is because women are particularly vulnerable to sexual violence at the hands of men. That violence is sex-based and directed at women because of our biology and the fact that we are weaker than men. Sex matters. I do not know why we call it gender-based violence, because it is not gender-based violence; it is sex-based violence. Gender is a social construct. Sex is a material reality. I would like to hear us talk more about sex. I would like to hear us talk about the sex-based pay gap. I would like to hear us talk about the fact that, as Professor Alice Sullivan has said so powerfully in The Guardian today, it is mothers and not fathers who bear the burden of parenthood. Research shows that men often get a pay premium as a result of parenthood, but women’s pay goes down.

I would also like us to be able to say, as is the case in law, that lesbians like myself are same-sex attracted women, not same-gender attracted. What you cannot define you cannot protect, and what you cannot name cannot be properly discussed and debated. That is why the stealthy erasure of sex-based language from our statute book and public and private policy making should be resisted.

It is also why politicians and policy makers should be precise in their language, and should not conflate sex and gender.

Last month, one of Scotland’s Supreme Courts reminded lawmakers that reference to the protected characteristic of sex in the Equality Act 2010 is a reference to a man or a woman for which purpose

“a woman is a female of any age.”

The court said:

“Provisions in favour of women”

based on the protected characteristic of sex

“by definition exclude those who are biologically male.”

That is the law. I am quoting from paragraph 36 of the judgment by the highest court in Scotland in the case of For Women Scotland Limited against the Lord Advocate and the Scottish Ministers. So I defy anyone to claim that what I have just said is transphobic. It is not; it is the law, and it is based on the Equality Act, which also protects trans people from discrimination by means of the very widely drawn protected characteristic of gender reassignment.

The Equality Act was passed by the Labour party; all credit to them for doing so. I know that the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman)—who is not in the Chamber, but for whom I have the highest regard—was instrumental in the passing of that Act. It is also hugely valued by my party, so much so that when our current First Minister was drafting the constitution for an independent Scotland in 2014, she decided to enshrine in that constitution the protections afforded to women and the other protected characteristics in the Equality Act. It was going to be part of the fundamental law of Scotland. I think it would be good if more Scottish politicians remembered that and celebrated it.

I want to quote from an excellent column in today’s Telegraph. I am not in the habit of buying or reading the Telegraph, although a very dear friend of mine—who is now dead—used to say that she bought it every day so that she would have something reliable with which to disagree. However, this is a very good column by Suzanne Moore, who says:

“Words matter, because women naming ourselves and our experience matters. As the American social reformer and women’s rights activist Susan B Anthony had it: ‘No self-respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a party who ignores her sex.’”

And, in my view, no self-respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a political party that makes her rights as a woman or a lesbian conditional on her acceptance of gender identity politics. My rights as a woman and a lesbian are not conditional on my accepting gender identity politics. Nevertheless, as a member of the advisory group of the organisation Sex Matters—and I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests in this respect—I am aware of many cases across the United Kingdom of women being harassed and investigated at work for expressing gender-critical views.

Now, however, we can fight back. Thanks to the courage and resilience of a woman called Maya Forstater and her legal team, we have an Employment Appeal Tribunal ruling that gender-critical beliefs are protected under the Equality Act. That was a major victory for freedom of belief and freedom of speech across these islands. Professor Jo Phoenix of the Open University and postgraduate student Raquel Rosaria Sanchez of Bristol University are just two of the brave women who are taking their universities to court for failing to defend them from harassment because of their gender-critical views. Across the United Kingdom, many women, and indeed men, are now taking their employees, and membership organisations such as the Green party of England and Wales, to court for discriminating against them on the grounds of their belief that sex is real and immutable.

I say to all the gender-critical women who are watching this debate today that we are starting to win this debate, and people like me will not give up no matter what is thrown in our road. Maya Forstater’s win is not the only significant one since the last International Women’s Day. I have already mentioned For Women Scotland’s win in Scotland’s Supreme Courts; Fair Play for Women also achieved a major court victory in a case about the meaning of “sex” in the census in England and Wales, although it was not so successful in Scotland.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

The hon. and learned Lady is making a terrific speech. Would she agree that men have to stand up for women’s rights, too? There are too many men who stand back from this debate and say, “Oh well, this is a women’s issue. I’m not going to get involved.” I think that is a shame, and that is why I spoke in today’s debate.

[Joanna Cherry]

I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. Even worse, there are many men—young men—involved in this debate who have embraced a new form of misogyny. I know that to my cost, and I hope that that will start to change.

But I am trying to be positive, and I want to list a couple of the other successes there have been in the last year for gender-critical women such as myself. My friends at the LGB Alliance are registered as a charity now, and they held a major conference that was attended by many parliamentarians. I see some of them here today. Sadly, however, a straight, married Member of this House saw fit to protest outside the conference, which was organised by lesbians to discuss the rights of same-sex-attracted people. I thought I had seen the last of that sort of lesbophobia in the ’90s, but it turns out I was wrong. I repeat that lesbian rights are not conditional on our accepting gender identity theory.

Another positive development has been the Equality and Human Rights Commission entering the debate on self-identification and on how to frame the quite appropriate ban on conversion therapy. The commission entered the debate with a voice of calm common sense, reminding us that human rights are universal and that all protected characteristics under the Equality Act deserve protection. Others have mentioned the very welcome interim report on the Cass review today, and I hope the Minister will be able to assure us that the Government will look carefully at that report and look into the alarming phenomenon of so many young women feeling so uncomfortable with their identity as women as they go through puberty in our society that they feel they have to change their identity to cope with those pressures.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Joanna Cherry and Bernard Jenkin

Report stage: First Day: House of Commons
Tuesday 16th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Joanna Cherry]

Yes. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. It would not be very consistent if I thought that the British Executive should not get sweeping powers but the Scottish Executive should. All these arguments about curtailing Executive power apply to all Governments in these islands, not just to this Government. At the moment—my hon. Friend the Member for North East Fife (Stephen Gethins) will address these matters later—the Scottish Government are getting precious few powers in relation to these matters, and that is a grave concern. However, others will address that later.

The Solicitor General said he had listened with care to what was said about this issue in Committee, so what will Ministers do about it? Have they spoken to the judiciary about this? Have they taken on board the judiciary’s concerns about the scope of discretion granted to them and their fear of that, given recent politically motivated attacks on the judiciary? Have Ministers taken on board the concern expressed on both sides of this House and by many organisations outwith it about the broad scope of the powers currently afforded?

As I said, I have no doubt that these concerns will be raised in the Lords, but now is the time for the Government to tell this democratically elected and accountable House what they are going to do to circumscribe the exercise of Executive power in this Bill.

[Mr Jenkin]

I will speak only briefly to somewhat lament the fact that we have not made more progress on this clause 11 issue. Let me explain the background. The Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee has taken an interest in this matter. We have taken an extensive interest in the inter-institutional relations between the different Parliaments of the United Kingdom and the different Administrations of the United Kingdom, which is a very undeveloped part of our constitution. We have the legal framework, but we do not have the practices, the culture or the institutional underpinning. The debate about the legislative consent motions in relation to this legislation has shown that up to a degree.

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green), recently departed from the Government, who played a crucial role in making considerable advances on the question of how the legislative consent motions in support of this proposed Act of Parliament should be supported by the devolved Parliaments. It seems to me that the process has stalled somewhat, and it is unfortunate that we do not have the Government or others tabling amendments at this stage of the scrutiny of the Bill, when some of us had hoped that that would be the case. I am bound to say that it may reflect the fact that there is not yet a consensus, and it would be more important to reach a consensus on this matter than to table some amendments that do not reflect a consensus.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Joanna Cherry and Bernard Jenkin

Committee: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 21st November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Joanna Cherry]

I beg to differ. The Solicitor General is right about the dates, but as we know, the charter is merely a codification of various general rights and principles. We have significant concerns about not incorporating it, notwithstanding the little list that the Minister is going to give us on 5 December, because with all due respect, a list prepared by a Minister does not have the same weight in a court of law as a codification that has been signed up to by a number of countries.

It is not just my view and that of the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) that there will be an issue for the Good Friday agreement. A briefing produced by none less than the Bingham Centre for the rule of law has raised the question of whether non-retention of the charter will impact on Northern Ireland. It has raised a series of questions, which I have just paraphrased, and I look forward to the Solicitor General answering them in more detail, rather than merely saying that there is not a problem. If I may say so, this illustrates the whole problem with the British Government’s approach to the unique situation in which Northern Ireland finds itself as a result a Brexit. There is a constant parrying, and saying, “There is not a problem, it can all be sorted out. It will all be fine.” This is what is causing us problems in the negotiations with the EU27, and particularly with the Republic of Ireland. Mere platitudes and assurances are not enough. We need some detail as to why removing the charter of fundamental rights from domestic law in the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland will not pose a problem for the Good Friday agreement. However, I am sure that as we have the Solicitor General here, we will hear that detail later.

[Mr Jenkin]

I wonder whether the hon. and learned Lady recalls the Mostyn judgment of 2013, in which a very senior member of the judiciary expressed astonishment that there was direct applicability of the charter in UK domestic law, given that the protocol had been attached to the charter when we originally signed up to it. Given the rather temporary nature of the charter rights, how can it be so fundamental to the Good Friday agreement? It did not exist in law in this country, and was not recognised by the judiciary, even after it had been brought into force in the treaties.

[Joanna Cherry]

If I may say so, I think that that is to misunderstand. I am not responsible for the false assurances that were given about the opt-out when this country signed up to the charter. They did not come from the Scottish National party, and I think it is fair to say that they have now been disowned by the Labour party. In reality, the incorporation of the charter in our law has meant enhanced direct effect. I use the term “direct effect” rather than “direct applicability” because people are able to take an action and refer to those rights in the course of their action, as we saw in the Supreme Court case last summer when a gentleman named Mr Walker was able to realise equal pension rights for his husband, despite a loophole in UK law about the equalisation of pension rights for gay couples, because the EU charter closed that loophole.

I want to give the House a brief list of some of the rights involved. We have heard a lot about data protection, and I know that others will want to address that issue, but it is worth remembering that the right to be forgotten on Google and other search engines—which I believe is of interest to some Members—stems from the EU charter. There is more to it than that, however. Let us look at the words of others, rather than simply accepting the argument on my say-so.

When the Exiting the European Union Committee took evidence on these matters, Caroline Normand, the director of policy at Which?, told us that

“the Charter of Fundamental Rights contains some really important principles for consumers. The particular ones that I would highlight are the right to a high level of human health protection, which is article 35, and a right to a high level of consumer protection.”

She referred to the case last May—it has already been mentioned today—when the large tobacco companies brought judicial review proceedings challenging the regulations that introduced standardised packaging for tobacco products. The High Court dismissed the case, referencing the public health and other rights set out in the charter. That is a pretty meaningful right for public health in these islands.

Dr Charlotte O’Brien, a senior lecturer at York Law School, told the Select Committee that she had produced an approximate count for the number of times the charter was referenced in case law. She found that the charter was cited in 248 cases in England and Wales, 17 in Northern Ireland, 14 in Scotland and 98 in the European Court of Human Rights, and in 832 EU judgments, 515 of which were from the Court of Justice. Her point was that that is an awful lot of cases that would have to be read differently, and it is not clear how they are to be read differently.

UK's Nuclear Deterrent

Debate between Joanna Cherry and Bernard Jenkin

Monday 18th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Joanna Cherry]

rose—

[Mr Jenkin]

I appreciate that it was in their manifesto, but what of the bit of hypocrisy highlighted so ably by the hon. Member for Gedling? On the one hand, they reject the whole notion of nuclear defence, yet they want an independent Scotland to join NATO, which is a nuclear alliance, and benefit from the shelter that other countries are prepared to provide them with as part of the nuclear umbrella.

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[Mr Jenkin]

My hon. Friend is right. The cost of maintaining the nuclear deterrent on a year-on-year basis is much less than our aid budget. A year’s cost of the Trident missile submarine system is the equivalent of one week’s spending on the national health service. It is also about a quarter of our net contribution to the European Union, and I look forward to saving that cost.

At about 6% of the overall defence budget and about 2% of GDP, this weapons system represents extraordinarily good-value expenditure, given that it deters large-scale state-on-state warfare. It is a matter of great pride that our country has inherited this role, and, precisely because we do not want every NATO country or every democracy to have nuclear weapons, it is our duty as global citizens to retain the system, contributing, as we do, to the global security and safety of the world.

[Joanna Cherry]

Before the hon. Gentleman sits down, would he like to reconsider his comment that we were hypocrites because we did not want an independent nuclear deterrent, but did want to be in NATO? Does he realise that he was calling the majority of the United Kingdom’s allies in NATO hypocrites?

[Mr Jenkin]

As was explained so ably by the hon. Member for Gedling, if a country is a member of NATO, it is a member of the NATO nuclear group. It is involved in the planning of deployment of nuclear weapons, regardless of whether they are its own weapons. Why would Scotland, under the Scottish National party, be so reluctant to play such a vital role in the global security of the country? I respect the fact that SNP members have personal scruples about nuclear weapons, and they are entitled to those scruples. I am merely arguing that were the Scottish people truly to vote on that issue and that issue alone, they might well find that their view was not representative of the aspiration of the true majority of Scots.