Gender Recognition

Joanna Cherry Excerpts

Wednesday 6th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Kemi Badenoch]

This is something that I have said it is crucial that sporting bodies understand. They are responsible for managing the rules in this space, and quite a lot of them have updated their guidance to reflect that, but not all of them. Young women in competitive sports should not have to silently accept that biological men will always beat them and take their chances to win gold. Generations of women before them have worked really hard to ensure that women have a place in sports and that those who excel are rewarded for that and are recognised.

The Equality Act 2010 is not a barrier to fair sport for women. It permits it, and it even requires it, so I shall work with my colleagues in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport—the Minister for Equalities is a DCMS Minister—to ensure that fair sport is a right that every woman and every girl can enjoy.

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

I welcome the commitment by the Secretary of State to evidence-based policymaking and to awaiting the outcome of the Cass review. She will be aware, like me, that the interim report from the review stated that it had heard from young lesbians who felt pressurised to identify as transgender male. As a lesbian, that is something that concerns me.

As well as having evidence-based policymaking, does the Secretary of State think that it is important to be clear about what are and are not our obligations under international law? Does she agree that there is no international treaty to which the United Kingdom is a signatory that requires us to have a system of self-identification? The current system we have is legally compliant and is compliant with the European convention on human rights. While some people talk about self-ID as best practice, that is no more than an expression of their opinion. Does she recognise that self-identification raises real issues not just for the safety of women and girls but for their privacy and dignity, as well as for the rights of same-sex-attracted people freely to associate?

[Kemi Badenoch]

The hon. and learned Lady is absolutely right. Self-ID impacts on all the things she mentioned. We speak less about freedom of association and the impact on that. It goes to the point made by the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Neale Hanvey) that we need in many respects to separate sexual orientation from what we refer to now as gender identity—that is, what is under the “T”. We have lumped them together before. That was helpful in many circumstances, but I have seen this issue arise in other equalities work that I have done around race, where we use the term BAME to lump together lots of different groups. When that occurred, we missed a lot of information about what was happening within those groups. We need as much granularity as possible if we are to serve people who are LGB as well as people who are T.

The hon. and learned Lady asks what work we are doing to stop lesbians being made to feel as if they have to be trans-identified males. I have asked the Equality Hub to do some work with The Lesbian Project, which I know is interested in fixing this problem. On the point of international treaties, she is absolutely right in what she says. So much of the criticism about how our international standing will fall is not evidence-based policy, but “not a good look-ism”. It says, “This is not a good look and we probably should not do it,” but that is not how we should be making policy. We should be looking at the facts, thinking clearly about the outcomes we want and acting accordingly. That is the way the Equality Hub, under my leadership, will continue to behave.