Welcome to the Terf wars. There’s just two days ago until the deadline when Rishi Sunak has to decide whether or not to block Nicola Sturgeon’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill. The legislation was passed last month by a majority at Holyrood of 86 to 39 votes and made it easier for people as young as 16 to change gender without seeing a doctor. However under Section 35 of the Scotland Act, UK ministers can stop a bill getting royal assent if they think it would alter laws reserved to Westminster – in this case equalities law and, specifically, the Equality Act. Sunak must decide by Wednesday whether to use this mechanism to stop the legislation or accept it, amid fears that it could lead to ‘gender tourism’ across the border.
Given the current constitutional impasse up in Scotland, Mr S thought he’d ask the public in England and Wales what they think of all of this. Some 37 per cent oppose proposals to allow people to legally change their gender without a medical diagnosis for gender dysphoria, compared to 28 per cent who support it. That increases to 52 per cent of 2019 Tory voters, against just 16 per cent who back such a move. There is even greater skepticism about allowing children to legally change their gender at the age of 16 rather than 18 – less than a quarter of all voters (22 per cent) support this change compared to more than half (54 per cent) who oppose it. And only 11 per cent of Conservative voters back changing gender at 16, compared to 70 per cent who are against it.
In such circumstances then, it’s perhaps unsurprising that an overall majority of voters in England and Wales would support the UK government blocking the law ‘in order to safeguard women’s rights’ in ‘schools, hospitals, and prisons.’ Some 51 per cent either ‘support’ or ‘strongly support’ the government doing this, compared to 28 per cent who ‘neither support nor oppose’ and just 13 per cent who would ‘oppose’ or ‘strongly oppose’, with 9 per cent as ‘don’t know.’ Some 1,350 voters were surveyed on Thursday 12 January by Redfield and Wilton
Food for thought, perhaps, for those mulling their options in No. 10…
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