Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Lord Hope of Craighead Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Lords Hansard - part one & Report stage
Monday 10th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, I am very happy to stand up for womanhood and motherhood, but this amendment is very puzzling indeed. What it would mean is that even if a person born male has lived as a woman for 20 years, even if they have undergone sex reassignment surgery, even if they have a gender recognition certificate, and even if they are assessed as posing no risk whatever to other women, the Home Office would be obliged either to place them in a men’s prison or put them in specially segregated facilities. The former option of putting them in a men’s prison would be a disaster; it would obviously be enormously dangerous to such a person. Placing them in specially segregated facilities would be demeaning; it would fail to recognise what legislation in this country has recognised for the last at least 15 years: that people who happen to be born in the wrong sex deserve our compassion and deserve recognition of their position.

I suggest to the House that these issues are far better addressed, as they are at the moment, by Home Office policy that considers the circumstances of the individual case, rather than by broad amendments of this nature, whatever the good faith of those who put them forward.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, I warmly support what my noble friend Lord Pannick has just said. It is a great mistake, certainly at this stage in our affairs, to attempt to legislate in this matter. It may be that the prison estate will be big enough in years to come so that one can segregate by gender reassignment in special prisons of their own, but we are nowhere near that at the moment and the proper way to deal with this is to rely on the discretion that exists at present.

It is quite striking if you look at the wording of the amendment—it makes no distinction between whether we are talking about male or female prisoners, but very different situations arise depending on which of these two characteristics you are considering. It makes no distinction for the time that the person may have lived in that new assignment. It makes no distinction, either, for the extent of the surgery and the appearance of the person over time as the reassignment process takes place.

It is very difficult for those of us who, I assume, have not faced this to appreciate the intense emotional problem that people who believe that they have been born into the wrong sex undergo. It is a very emotional matter, fighting against characteristics you have acquired that you do not believe belong to you. The way you deal with it is to believe that you are actually of the sex—of the gender, I should say—that you think you should have been. That involves not only reconstruction of the body but a mentality designed entirely to live the new life, which you believe is the one you should have been given. It strikes me as very cruel, if I may use that expression, to treat these people as if they had not reassigned themselves. It is not a choice. They are driven by the characteristics they acquired which forced them into their decision.

I make these points just to emphasise that we are dealing here with a very difficult problem. The offender requires as much consideration on the grounds of safety and emotional distress as the people around them in the prison in which they are placed. Legislation is not the way to go, certainly not at the moment. I personally have complete confidence in the way that the prison authorities are dealing with this very difficult problem at the moment.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I welcome this amendment and I commend the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, in particular, for doggedly sticking with this issue. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson of Tredegar, for organising the MoJ teach-in, which I found very interesting and useful. I learned a lot and I listened hard.

I thought this amendment was a nuanced and sensitive way of dealing with all the objections raised by the MoJ at that teach-in, so I am rather disappointed that the Government have not accepted the proposal from the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, which is a bespoke amendment that protects women’s single-sex spaces while sympathetically and practically managing any challenges faced by transwomen prisoners.

The amendment might be a modest proposal—I think it is—but noble Lords may be interested to hear that it has created a huge amount of interest outside this place over the last couple of days. People on Twitter might look at #KeepPrisonsSingleSex. It has been trending for the last 36 hours. Do look because the messages on there are what I am talking about, rather than the fact that it is trending.

I want to read a few tweets that could maybe help us understand why this amendment matters. One woman said:

“I find it quite baffling that this is even up for discussion! How did we get to the point where we need a debate to include legislation to prevent something so damaging to women?”


Another said:

“Women in UK prisons must not be locked in with convicted male criminals. This is an appalling failure of the duty of care the state has for female prisoners. Female prison staff must not be forced to search male prisoners. Let’s hope the House of Lords shows sense.”


I would like to think the House of Lords would as well, but maybe not. The final one I want to read out says:

“I’ve been to prison and I’m telling you now that for some women it’s their only safe space, due to abuse on the outside. Allowing anyone who claims to feel like a woman to be put in that safe space is wrong! Women, criminal or not deserve to feel safe.”


I say hear, hear to that.