Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Lord Winston Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 17th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I have put my name to this amendment and will speak very briefly, not least because I have the privilege of being one of the Deputy Speakers of this House. I would just remind noble Lords that we are at Report, and at Report we are not meant to give either Second Reading or Committee speeches—it is a discourtesy to the House to be discursive. That is all that needs to be said on that.

Some noble Lords may be familiar with a newspaper that is normally far too left-wing for me, the Daily Telegraph. There is an article in today’s paper by a gentleman called Charles Hymas, which says—and I have no reason to believe it is not true, since I understand that there are fairly close links between the aforementioned organ and the party in government—that there are quite a few quite senior Back-Benchers in another place who are very keen to use this amendment, assuming your Lordships pass it, to enable them to have a proper discussion in another place about this issue and to decide then, as our elected representatives, whether this case has sufficient merit to be put into law and in what manner and form that should happen. I suggest that they are rather better qualified to do that than we are.

Having said that, my Lords, I will support this amendment. I think we should send it back to another place for them to have another look. The other place is also a better place to have what can be an extremely contorted and overimaginative debate about gender and the relative merits of sex and gender.

As others have said, I am not sure that generationally we are the best-equipped assembly to opine on these subjects. That does not mean that we are not able to have a point of view, and I am aware that some noble Lords and noble Baronesses have a very strong point of view. I simply point out that, however strongly they may feel, there are a great many others of a younger generation, and down the other end, who feel differently. I support this amendment, because I think your Lordships should give the other place a chance to decide for itself.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, I hope the noble Lord does not think I am being discourteous to the House by making a short intervention in this important debate. We have to be very careful about legal definitions of sex and gender. Primarily, the definitions are not legal but are in fact biological, as I have said in this Chamber before. That is a problem. That is one of the reasons why I agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, just said. For example, we have to understand that there are situations in which there might well be problems with—whatever you call it—misogyny or hate. Take a transgender woman who was originally assigned as a male and still has the genes of a male, and possibly some of the hormonal function of a male, who competes in a sporting event. That is a difficult issue that has not yet been properly dealt with. Clearly, it is quite likely that from time to time those sorts of situations will cause considerable anger, hostility and all sorts of effects that might be an offence under the Bill. We at least need to record that and decide how we deal with it.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendment, and I want to deal with one or two things that have come up in this discussion. The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, suggested that the evidence base is very thin. The evidence base of women receiving threatening and abusive behaviour and sometimes assault, accompanied by expressions that make it very clear that it is directed at them as women, is substantial. I have just been receiving evidence for a working party in Scotland, and over this past year it has been shocking to see the extent to which this is a serious problem for girls and women. It should not be underestimated, and of course it is accelerated by social media, which is encouraging the kind of verbal assault that is so disgusting and disgraceful that it is hard to imagine women and girls having to deal with it in their daily lives. It really is endemic, so I do not think that what we are trying to do here can be minimised.

As for suggesting that we introduce a complicated debate about the comparatively very few women who are trans women and might be included in this, that seems just extraordinary to me. It is a diversion from the fact that women, who make up more than 50% of the population and are not a minority, are experiencing this on a daily basis. Let us get real about it.

The noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, has pointedly made something part of her amendment. She says that the focus of this is on the perpetrator. How does it come about that an aggravation is used? It is because there is evidence, in addition to the evidence of a regular crime, that it has been motivated by antagonism and hatred towards women.

Of course, misogyny is wider than simple, old-fashioned hating. It is about a sense of entitlement, usually by young men, towards women and their bodies. The ways in which women have to experience verbal nastiness of a high level undermine their self-confidence and self-expression, so this is really damaging in our society. The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, says it is a nonsense to suggest that this leads on to more grievous crime. I am afraid that it is not a nonsense, because we know that it normalises certain kinds of behaviours that then go undetected by the police.

I really want us to think seriously about how we stop this happening. When women say this has to stop, what is the answer? A misogynistic aggravation is not the answer; it will not solve all the problems, but it is a starting point to let women know that misogyny is taken seriously by the legislature. That is why I support this amendment to the Bill.