My Lords, Amendment 214 seeks to eliminate the risks and dangers to women in prison by the muddled use in legislation of the terms “sex” and “gender”. They are not interchangeable. They have come to mean very different things. Matters have reached such a pitch that I am tempted to paraphrase the 18th-century man of letters Dr Samuel Johnson and say that “Allowing a person with a full set of male genitals the legal right to serve a sentence in a women’s prison is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all”. It is, not to put a too fine a point on it, barking mad.
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The defiance of science, biology, common sense and reality can be traced back to the Gender Recognition Act 2004. This allows men who identify themselves as women to be recognised as women, even though they may be biologically unaltered from the day they came into this world in their birthday suits. The dangers and risks are obvious. Without our amendment, this legislation makes them even greater. The law also allows new birth certificates to be issued, without requirement of surgery or medical treatment. For all legal purposes, men become females with just a tap of a key on a computer. Piling absurdity on absurdity, it becomes a criminal offence to reveal that they were ever born as men.
As night follows day, just as paedophiles are attracted to the teaching profession and children’s charities, so men with violent sexual intent will be able to seek a gender recognition certificate as a licence to molest and rape women. The Ministry of Justice, in its folly, cannot provide figures for men guilty of such acts because, in a policy of self-inflicting Catch-22, they are categorised as women.
It is surely a fundamental right that women in prison, like women in a gym changing-room or a women’s lavatory, should be allowed to find themselves cohabiting with a person who does not have a penis. We all know that women in prison are especially vulnerable. It is therefore unthinkable that the law should allow them to be menaced by men incarcerated for violent and sexual abuses. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, says that it is only a small number, but a small number is a number. Is that what the law is about? The law should protect all.
Let me make one thing very clear: I am second to none in my support for gay, lesbian and trans rights. This has nothing to do with it. I still have the scars from having to fight as a young woman for equal opportunities in the male-dominated financial services industry. I still bear the scars of having to fight off crude sexual advances that today would carry a jail sentence. In one case, because I refused to submit to my boss’s advances, my promotion was held back for more than a year. This is why I was once a Stonewall supporter. It fought the good fight and won. The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 was a triumph for the humane society we strive to be.
However, today I weep for what Stonewall has become. It is now a cockpit for factions fighting over the meaning of trans rights, where many assert that biological sex does not exist. It is a modern version of the medieval controversy over how many angels could dance on a pinhead. I find it astonishing how many government departments and corporations have bought into this obscurantism.
Things have to change, and change soon. Approval of our amendment would be a start. No person with male genitals should be allowed to be remanded into women’s prisons or serve their sentences there. If the police insist on entering self-identified gender into their records, they must balance it with biological sex. Will the Minister ensure that Amendment 292G, which calls for the police to record birth sex rather than gender, is implemented?
Too many things are going backwards: life expectancy is down; obesity is up; the weather is becoming more violent; and the world has still not shaken off the coronavirus. Let us not add to our woes by bringing down the curtain on the age of reason by replacing it with the age of bigoted fabulists. Will my noble friend assure the House that he will not let ideology trump facts and ensure that women are better protected?