Gender Recognition Act

Neale Hanvey Excerpts
Monday 21st February 2022

(2 years, 1 month ago)

Westminster Hall
Read Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts

Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.

Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.

This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record

Neale Hanvey Portrait Neale Hanvey (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Alba)
- Hansard - -

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) for his excellent opening remarks and his tightrope walk through an incredibly difficult issue. He did an outstanding job.

On a wet and windy winter evening in around about 2013, I made my way across to Edinburgh for a consultation that was being run by the Equality Network in Scotland. It was on the choice of campaign activity, following the successful equal marriage campaign. I was the only politician to turn up. It was myself and a room full of trans men and women. We had a fantastic discussion about how important it was to improve visibility, acceptance and inclusion, and I gave that process my full support that evening.

I have been campaigning for LGBT rights all my adult life. I have lived my life in the open. I was out at work before it was trendy, and I have faced down prejudice and the usual tropes in the workplace. I remember one particularly challenging story where somebody referred to a paedophile, who was being sentenced on the television, and said, “Well, it’s just the same as you.” That involved quite a lengthy conversation, basically about how consent is an important, distinct difference, as well as about the many other issues. I have dealt with all of these tropes. I have faced up to them. I marched against section 28. I marched and even performed one year at Pride.

However, since 2019, I have mistakenly thought that my experience of safeguarding in the NHS, my years of activism in response to the HIV and AIDS crisis and my recent role as the chair of Fife Pride would help me bridge the gap between trans rights activists and women’s groups. In bringing to the fore questions that hitherto would have been routine to any policy development, I was targeted and quite wrongly labelled among many other things as a “transphobe”. The reason was that I would not submit unquestioningly to gender ideology.

What I have witnessed has been horrific. People who call themselves straight allies or queer-identifying straight people have quite literally pushed gay men and lesbians out of our own movement. I can think of no clearer an example than Alexander Bramham, a gay man who was bullied out of Manchester Pride by a straight woman. In all the years I have been out, the worst homophobia I have experienced has been in the last two years, and much of it has happened in this place. Despite my formally raising those concerns, it has not been taken seriously, and it was simply not addressed.

Homophobia is back, and after all the years we spent battering down those barriers, it is back at the behest of Stonewall, and it is draped in a Pride flag. If we remove sex, there can be no homosexual. Sex matters. It is a defining characteristic of who I am. Just saying that has seen me branded a hate figure, targeted for harassment and referred to by an hon. Member in this place as a homophobic b-blank-blank. I will let Members fill that in themselves.

One of the most contentious issues centres on how the word “woman” is defined in law. Does it mean human, adult female, or should it be broader than that and include natal males who decide to live as women and transition? Clarity on that carries significance for how we understand other protected characteristics within the Equality Act, including being same-sex-attracted, and for whether a trans woman who is attracted to a natal female is indeed a lesbian. The ruling from the inner house of the Court of Session last week was unequivocal. For the purposes of the protected characteristic of sex in the 2010 Act, a woman is a natal female of any age, a man in a natal male of any age, and the rights and protections of the trans community are rightly provided under the discrete protected characteristic of gender reassignment. How that decision interacts with GRA reform in Scotland remains to be seen, but as sex and gender are now considered very separate terms that may require further legal attention.

Those issues matter, and that legal clarity is of enormous significance. I pay tribute to Marion, Trina, Susan and everyone at For Women Scotland for their courage, determination and success. I have demonstrated my resilience against outrageous behaviour over the past two years. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), chair of the all-party parliamentary group against antisemitism, and Danny Stone, the chief executive of the Antisemitism Policy Trust, for their confidence, support and guidance.

The impacts ripple well beyond me. Women are being targeted on social media and in the workplace for holding a view that is now an established point of law. They have been told by the First Minister of Scotland that that view is invalid. I hold a deep sadness about the fact that people I have worked closely with have used their influence as LGBT campaigners and politicians to bully, harass and silence women. It is now clear that that is a breach of equality legislation, and it must cease.

For all the years I marched, cared for sick and dying friends, and raised awareness in the workplace, in schools and in my community, my greatest allies have always been women: my mum, my friend Lynn, my friend Fi, my friends Ann and Susan, and many others. They stood by me through thick and thin and I will not abandon them. Now that we have legal clarity over the meaning of sex, we must find a way to tackle the matter, improve the lives of trans people and reform the GRA. As both Baroness Falkner, the current chair of the EHRC, and Trevor Phillips, the founding chair, have made clear in recent days, however, equality is a matter of mutual respect, balance and compromise; it is not something that can be dictated by loud, uncompromising voices. The era of no debate is firmly over. It is time to heal deep wounds and focus on a policy that delivers meaningful improvements to the lives and safety of the trans population, while respecting the rights of others.