Protection from Sex-based Harassment in Public Bill

Peter Gibson Excerpts

Report stage
Friday 24th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope]

With the greatest respect to my right hon. Friend, I think he is conflating two dissimilar situations, because the situation he is describing is already an aggravated offence and what we are talking about here are offences that are not aggravated. Indeed, this Bill has been introduced because they are not regarded as aggravated offences and thereby qualifying for greater punishment.

It is a mistake to try to equate a situation where something is already an aggravated offence with the situation described in this Bill. If a person is harassing or making remarks to somebody in the mistaken belief that they are trying to insult a woman, but it turns out that they are a man, that seems to me to be a mistake. Although that will probably still enable the person to be convicted of a public order offence, it will be a public order offence not because of their behaviour, but because of that person’s sex. It is semantics, I am prepared to concede, but that is why I introduced that amendment.

[Peter Gibson (Darlington) (Con)]

Before the intervention of my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), was my hon. Friend saying that misgendering somebody would cause less offence to them as opposed to greater offence? To my mind, any sexual-based harassment, whether it be misgendered or correctly gendered, will still cause offence.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I have tried to avoid—and have done so up to now—getting into the debate about the difference between sex and gender. I will not rise to my hon. Friend’s bait to try to develop arguments around that. The Bill, commendably, is specific to sex, and it leaves out gender. I will leave it at that if that is all right with my hon. Friend.

This brings me to the conclusion of my remarks. I will not say what my intentions are in relation to these amendments until I have heard from the Minister, which I hope, Madam Deputy Speaker, you will think is a reasonable approach to take.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Gibson]

It is a pleasure to be called to speak in this debate. I once again congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) on bringing forward this important and hugely welcome Bill, which will better protect all our constituents.

As I outlined in my Second Reading speech, we have a long heritage of protective legislation brought forward by Conservative Governments; there is the Children Act 1989, the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, the Modern Slavery Act 2015, the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, and even my private hire and taxi legislation, or Sian’s law. We can add my right hon. Friend’s Bill to those. I also look forward to seeing very soon the draft legislation promised by the Government on banning conversion practices, which will add further to that range of protections. I appreciate that time is short, so I conclude by again congratulating him on the Bill’s Third Reading. I am happy to give it my full support.