“Cruel” attempt to change how trans people are imprisoned withdrawn from House of Lords

Following a debate in the House of Lords, a “cruel” amendment attempting to change how trans people are imprisoned was withdrawn.

On 10 January, an amendment to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill was proposed in the House of Lords to make prisoners put in a jail corresponding to the sex recorded at their birth.

Put forward by Lord Blencathra, a Conservative Party life peer and former MP, his suggested changes would have made whether or not someone had a gender recognition certificate irrelevant when it comes to the prison they are placed in.

According to Lord Blencathra, trans people who “should not be accommodated with prisoners of the same sex as registered at birth, separate accommodation must be provided to ensure that there is no access to or association with prisoners of the opposite sex as registered at birth.”

Referencing an earlier amendment he had attempted to make to the Gender Recognition Act, the 68-year-old acknowledged that it was “unbalanced” as he “neglected to account for the small minority of trans women who might face unacceptable risk if housed in male prisons.”

During his debate, the Lord suggested that if trans women “cannot be housed safely in either the general population of the male estate or with other males in a vulnerable prisoners unit, the decision can be made to house that prisoner in a specialist transgender unit.”

Lord Cormack, who is also a former Tory MP and life peer, said he was “very glad” to support the amendment after being moved by Lord Blencathra’s “convincing and passionate speech.”

“I believe very strongly, as does my noble friend Lord Blencathra, that the solution is to treat those who are particularly vulnerable in such a way that we take as many safeguards against their vulnerability as possible,” the 82-year-old explained. “To me, that leads logically to a solution where those who were born as women, and who are women, are in women’s prisons, and those who are still physically male are, if necessary, housed in a separate unit.”

Also supporting the change was Baroness Fox of Buckley, another life peer and ex-Tory MP, who praised Lord Blencathra “for doggedly sticking with this issue.”

Citing tweets from the #KeepPrisonsSingleSex hashtag, the Baroness called the changes a “modest proposal” generating “a huge amount of interest outside this place”.

“I know that some noble Lords may be feeling uncomfortable that I am using the word ‘male’ to describe transgender women—such is the muddle that we have got into in conflating sex and gender,” the 61-year-old told her peers. “I was doing that to emphasise their sex, rather than to be offensive or cause any problems, but such is the weight of coercive control and political pressure around identity politics that it can be difficult sometimes to state biological truth—and the biological truth is that sex and gender are distinct.”

Another Conservative Party life peer supporting the amendment was Baroness Meyer, who clarified “that we are talking only about men who have not transitioned to women, which is quite different.”

Lord Pannick, a crossbencher in the House of Lords, called the proposed changes “enormously dangerous” and said that he stood against the “puzzling” amendment.

“What it would mean is that even if a person born male has lived as a woman for 20 years, even if they have undergone sex reassignment surgery, even if they have a gender recognition certificate, and even if they are assessed as posing no risk whatever to other women, the Home Office would be obliged either to place them in a men’s prison or put them in specially segregated facilities,” he explained.

Similarly, Lord Hope of Craighead, a retired Scottish judge and former Convenor of the Crossbench peers, criticised the “cruel” amendment.

Last night in the @UKHouseofLords I spoke in support of transgender people’s rights.

I also spoke to protect women & girls.
I voted for a statutory inquiry into the issues surrounding Sarah Everard.

No one who spoke against trans rights voted to protect women & girls. No one.

— Brian Paddick (@brianpaddick) January 11, 2022

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