Bennett banned from speaking in the Senedd

A UKIP AM who launched a bitter attack on minority rights has been banned from speaking in the Senedd for a year.

Gareth Bennett, who represents South Wales Central, said on Tuesday there had to be a “limit” to minority rights.

He told Assembly colleagues: “If we carry on down this road of appeasing the nuttiest elements of the transgender movement then what we will face as a society, within a very short space of time, is total implosion.”

His comments were met with incredulous looks and heckles from other AMs from across the chamber during the discussion about the Equality and Human Rights Commission for their annual review.

Mr Bennett is a member of the Assembly’s Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee.

Labour’s Vaughan Gething and Joyce Watson and Plaid’s Bethan Jenkins and Simon Thomas were among those in the chamber at the time of the comments.

He told the Senedd: “I think it would be fair to say that many of us in Ukip don’t quite share the same enthusiasm for so-called human rights as people in other parties.

“We are specifically concerned that the increasing focus on the rights of minorities will ultimately impact negatively on the rights of the majority population.

“We have a perfect example of this with the recent controversies over transgender rights.

“A Conservative Government at Westminster is proposing some fairly wideranging increases to the rights of transgender people. This could mean that anyone who wishes to identify as being of a gender different to their physical gender may be able to do so simply by defining themselves as such.

“So we could have men entering women’s public toilets because these men claim to define themselves as women.

“We could have male criminals demanding to be sent to women’s prisons because they define themselves as women. We could end up with the Girl Guide movement having to accept men who define themselves as women as Guide leaders, because if the Girl Guide movement refuses to do this, they may end up facing prosecution because they have somehow breached somebody’s socalled human rights.

“We are going to have a lot of fun with this over the next few years if we continue to proceed as a society with this kind of minority-obsessed nonsense.”

Yesterday presiding officer Elin Jones called on Mr Bennett to withdraw his remarks and apologise but, when he did not, she said he would not be called to speak during 2018.

A spokeswoman from Diverse Cymru said they “reject in the strongest possible terms” the comments.

She said: “We are proud of Wales’ record of an open, welcoming and inclusive society and reject in the strongest terms attempts such as these that encourage fear and hatred of people who are seen as ‘different’ based on their gender identity, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, race or country of birth.”

Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell also criticised the remarks.

He said: “Gareth Bennett’s remarks on trans people are offensive scare-mongering. Non-trans people do not lose any rights by the law giving recognition and respect to trans women and men. Mr Bennett is wrong.”