AM banned from Senedd over transgender comments

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.

Mr Bennett 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 wide-ranging 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 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.

“What we need to do is have a grownup conversation about the issue of minority rights and accept that there have to be limits to them. There is only so much deviation from the norm that any society can take before that society completely implodes. And 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.

“That is not to say that there is no good work taking place in the field of human rights in Wales. There is some good work going on. But some of the concern that this report expresses is certainly, in my view, misplaced.”

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: “To state and quote that all human life is unequal is to build a world based on hatred, rule and divide.

“We believe that equality is at the heart of our human rights and strongly disagree with statements such as these that are based on hatred and openly express an enthusiasm to create a divide.”

Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell also criticised the remarks.

“Gareth Bennett’s remarks on trans people are offensive scare-mongering.”