Cass Review

Debate between Victoria Atkins and William Cash

Monday 15th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

True leadership is not just about being careful with the words we use. I will not recite the many words that other Labour Members have used about trans issues. They say, for example, that it is factually inaccurate to say that only women have a cervix—[Interruption.] I am not naming them, but that seems an extraordinary things for a Labour Member to say. [Interruption.] They do not like to hear their words repeated back to them, but I will resist that temptation and instead focus on the application of policy.

Trans prisoners, including those who are fully intact and have been convicted of serious sexual offences, are demanding to be held in prisons that match their chosen gender. This Government, including me and many of my predecessors as Prisons Minister, set clear rules to ensure that situations such as the Karen White case are not repeated, so it was very troubling that Opposition Members did not appear to have the same concerns when it came to the placing of a trans double rapist, Isla Bryson, in Scotland. [Interruption.] I am being told that it is not true but, if Opposition Members want to factcheck, apparently it was the deputy leader of the Labour party who said that it does not matter.

[Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

Although I would like to believe that many of these problems will be resolved by guidance and by changing the administrative rules, and things of that kind, I fear that the real problem is much deeper. It is about the manner in which, over the last generation, we have introduced legislation that has facilitated these arrangements. I am glad that the Government have passed the Online Safety Act 2023 to deal with the platforms on which a lot of this stuff has been spuriously put out by people with absolutely no moral compass.

I thank the Secretary of State for what she has said this afternoon, and for the robust and extremely effective manner in which she has said it, but please do not believe that this will be resolved just by changes to administrative rules. This is about a moral compass and telling the truth. The legislation, whether it is the Equality Act 2010, human rights law or whatever else it might be, will need to be changed.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. I want to get everyone in, but we really cannot have mini-speeches. We need questions that the Secretary of State can answer briefly.