It would have been news if the Commons debate about the Scottish Gender Recognition Bill hadn’t turned ugly quickly. The questions and answers following Scottish Secretary Alister Jack’s statement about using Section 35 of the Scotland Act to stop the progress of that legislation were deeply uncomfortable. Jack insisted that he was merely focusing on the constitutional issues, something Labour’s Ian Murray looked grateful to be able to do, too, given the splits within his own party on this matter.
A succession of women on the Labour and Conservative benches who raised concerns about the impact of the Holyrood legislation on women across the UK were, however, shouted down by male SNP MPs. Laura Farris and Rachel MacLean from the Tory side told Jack he would be thanked by many women, but both had to stop briefly because of male jeers from the other side of the chamber. So too did Rosie Duffield, Tonia Antoniazzi and Karin Smyth who spoke about protecting single-sex spaces. Smyth in particular was furious, telling the hecklers that ‘it’s not acceptable for people to stand up to talk about women’s speech rights and to be constantly badgered by men’. The Labour tensions on this were clear as some of these MPs’ colleagues, including Charlotte Nichols, were vigorously disagreeing, rolling their eyes and shaking their heads as they spoke.
Those Labour tensions were about the gender recognition reform itself, but the Secretary of State and indeed the SNP MPs focused on the constitution in their speeches. Jack’s case was that the bill would ‘have serious adverse effects on the operation of the Equality Act 2010’ and that the government wanted to avoid having two different regimes for gender recognition on either side of the Scottish border.
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