Now Keir sides with Sturgeon on gender law

SIR Keir Starmer has sided with Nicola Sturgeon over Scotland’s radical gender reforms.

he opposes Westminster using its ultimate veto to block the SNP government’s controversial plan to let people as young as 16 change their legal sex.

The Labour leader does not think single-sex spaces are put at risk by making it easier for anyone to change sex, and his spokesman would not condemn the party’s MPs who barracked a colleague as she defended women’s rights in a heated Commons debate on Tuesday.

Ministers say they were forced to take the unprecedented step of vetoing legislation passed by the Scottish Parliament because the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill would have had a ‘serious adverse impact’ on equality laws across the UK.

In a further blow to the Scottish First Minister, former Supreme Court judge Lord

‘This is a totally unnecessary row’

hope said yesterday the Government’s reasons were ‘devastating’ and that Miss Sturgeon’s chances of winning a legal challenge were ‘very low’.

But Sir Keir’s spokesman said the UK and Scottish governments could have resolved the ‘totally unnecessary’ row before the unprecedented Section 35 veto was issued and he could not point to anything in the Scottish reforms that posed a threat to single-sex spaces.

‘That’s why we want to see the legal advice to see whether there is something that the Government is saying that we are not aware of as to why they are using this unprecedented step of using the Section 35 mechanism to block the legislation,’ he said.

The spokesman said on Twitter there would be only ‘minimal’ difficulties in handling benefits for people recorded as one sex in Scotland and the other in england, and the ‘vast majority’ of an expected 500 new applications for a Gender Recognition Certificate would be genuine.

he admitted single-sex groups would not be allowed to refuse entry to anyone with a Gender Recognition Certificate, but said this was already the case.

The spokesman said Labour peer Lord Falconer, a former Lord Chancellor who is close to Sir Keir, had also dismissed the Government’s objections.

In Tuesday’s Commons debate, male Labour MPs barracked colleague Rosie Duffield for suggesting that allowing biological males into single- sex spaces such as ‘domestic violence settings, changing rooms and prisons’ would have ‘serious repercussions for women’.

Asked if Sir Keir thought it acceptable that she was shouted down, his spokesman said: ‘There is always robust debate in the house of Commons but that should never cross the line into abuse. If a member feels that that has happened then that clearly isn’t right.’

Senior Labour figure emily Thornberry denied Miss Duffield had been shouted down by MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle. ‘I think I heard Lloyd say, “Oh, Rosie, that isn’t right” but I don’t think that would be probably shouting someone down,’ she told Times Radio.

Miss Duffield herself said yesterday she was not being supported by the party leadership over the abuse. ‘I haven’t heard from Keir,’ she said. ‘The people in the shadow cabinet don’t approach me and ask me if I’m OK or what they can do and they don’t discuss this issue with me,’ she told GB News.

Mr Russell-Moyle apologised for the ‘tone’ of his remarks to a Tory MP he had accused of transphobia – but has not said sorry to Miss Duffield.

YES, it’s a brave and controversial move, but I have no doubt Rishi sunak has made the right decision in blocking the muchdiscussed scottish Bill. The legislation would enable self-identification with a Gender Recognition Certificate from the age of 16 for those who wish to present themselves as the opposite sex to that in which they were born.

It’s the first time British ministers have used powers in the scotland Act to prevent legislation passed by the scottish Parliament from getting Royal Assent, and there’s no doubt Nicola sturgeon will not take this move quietly.

The Bill would allow scots to selfidentify with no medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria and after only a matter of months of presenting oneself in the adopted gender.

Of course, there are concerns about the impact self-ID might have on the provisions of the UK equality laws. Would there be a kind of ‘ trans tourism’ where predatory men might get a certificate in scotland, come back to england legally acknowledged as female, and abuse the rights of women to single-sex spaces?

Maybe it’s a risk, but it seems to me that, regardless of where you stand on the oh-so-heated gender debate, it’s the safeguarding of children that must be of the greatest concern to us all.

I cannot understand why Nicola sturgeon, who has so often declared herself an ardent feminist, could think it OK to lower the age where self-ID would be permitted from 18 to 16.

Does she not know that the official age for being an adult is 18? Anyone younger than that is a child, and we all know that children, particularly teenagers, can be confused about who they are, make daft decisions and need to be protected.

We know from masses of evidence that the number of girls and boys thinking they were ‘born into the wrong body’ has risen spectacularly in recent years.

some think it’s a kind of trendy hysteria that’s made so many consider changing their gender, but we know from the case of Keira Bell that going ahead with such an idea can do terrible mental and physical damage to a child, seriously impacting the rest of their lives.

It was Keira who in 2020 had the courage to tell her story. she was 16 when she went to the now defunct NHs Tavistock and Portman Gender Identity Development service (GIDs), as a girl who wanted to be a boy.

she was given puberty-blocking drugs to halt her development. she then had a double mastectomy, only to realise, six years later, that she had made a terrible mistake.

sadly, the impact of the drugs was not reversible as she’d been assured. she had lost her breasts and her voice was permanently changed by the time she understood, in her early 20s, that her 16year- old self had, by her own admission, been ‘very mentally ill’ and she now knew she was a woman.

While I’m with the Prime Minister on blocking this bill, I hope he’ll consider a little more carefully his own plan to ban all forms of conversion therapy.

There’s no doubt that the practice of ‘therapy’ to bully anyone into saying they are not gay is cruel and pointless.

But gender identity is far more complex than sexual orientation.

No harm results from a person’s choice of who to love. But a decision to change gender can be harmful in a child.

Do we want to criminalise parents, doctors or therapists who only want to question whether changing gender in adolescence is really the right idea? No we don’t. Young people need help and advice. That’s common sense, not conversion.

Rejecting the scottish Bill is not only about protecting children from harm. It’s also about safeguarding women. The scottish secretary, Alister Jack, acknowledged earlier this week that legal advice had left him ‘ concerned’ about the consequences of self-ID.

He, like so many of us, realises there could be ‘serious adverse effects’ on national equality laws including the right for women to feel safe in single-sex spaces.

I fully expect, as a result of this article, to be screamed at and, again, dubbed a ‘transphobe’.

Let me repeat, I am not transphobic. so often people ask why so many feminists are incensed by the transgender movement.

Let me explain. We are not crazy, foaming- at- the mouth, nasty people who want to make life miserable for any man who dares adopt a female identity. That’s what the radical activists would have you think. We were born women and believe sex is different from gender, that your biology is something you can’t change.

As women, we’ve suffered discrimination and risk and have fought hard on our own behalf.

We know what it means to be a woman, and we don’t like activists thinking they can assert their rights by eradicating the words ‘woman’, ‘mother’, ‘breastfeeding’. They are our words. Leave them and us alone.