My Lords, I just want to intervene briefly. I support this amendment. To me, it is morally wrong for a physical man to be in a woman’s prison. It is as simple as that. If he has identified
himself as a woman, and deserves to be in prison, there should be special facilities that do not bring people of that sort into close proximity with women or—if they are in danger—with men.
9.45 pm
The fact of the matter is that we are denigrating womanhood. Some time ago in this House, we debated the Bill to grant maternity leave to the Attorney-General—a perfectly laudable and reasonable thing to ask us to do. In that Bill, there was no mention of the words “mother” or “woman”—the person giving birth. Thanks to pressure from both sides of this House, there was a small advance. Rather than risk a defeat, the Government altered the wording of the Bill. That seemed an entirely reasonable outcome.
I hope that we can tackle this issue in a calm and moderate way. Its prime purpose is the defence of women and womanhood. Our mother has probably been the most important person in most of our lives. We are denigrating motherhood if we allow physically equipped males to cohabit in women’s prisons.
In her speech, the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, referred to a remarkable young woman, Kate Coleman. She is a highly intelligent graduate who has had personal contact with a number of the real women who have suffered indignity, embarrassment and much worse by having physical males—who say that they are female—in women’s prisons. Everyone, regardless of his or her identity, deserves dignity. If special provisions have to be made for a group of trans people, so be it. Everyone particularly deserves that dignity at the most vulnerable moments of their lives. A woman in prison deserves it. A woman in hospital deserves it. We would be giving way to the slogan-mongers and the sort of people who terrorised that academic at Sussex University if we did not recognise that this is a real issue which deserves to be approached in a balanced, moderate, sensible way, recognising the physical difference between the sexes.
This is a probing amendment. It is not perfect. Very few amendments are. When my noble friend comes to reply, I hope he will indicate that the Government are prepared to talk to some of us who have these acute concerns, to see if some amendment can be fashioned for Report. This is a real problem which we must not ignore.