Today we are publishing ‘A Woman’s Guide to the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021’. The Act, which creates a new offence of ‘stirring up hate’ in relation to ‘transgender identity’, came fully in force from 1 April 2024. murrayblackburnmackenzie.org/2024/04/07/a-w… There is a concern that the Act coming into force will increase complaints about what women say and a lot of uncertainty about how readily the police will respond to complaints by launching investigations.

🧵On 27 October 2023 we wrote to the Chief Constable Jo Farrell, raising our concerns about Police Scotland policies on gender identity, and asked for a meeting to discuss these. The letter was sent onto DCC Speirs in his capacity as lead for Professionalism, lead for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, and the Policing Together portfolio. An in-person meeting was arranged for 31 January 2024, at Police Scotland Headquarters, Tulliallan.

In 2020, we wrote about how the long-time existence of a UK-wide offence of stirring up racial hatred was being used to play down or attack concerns about extending stirring up offences to a wider range of characteristics. 1/9
murrayblackburnmackenzie.org/2020/08/28/the… This offence was regarded in 1986 as being uniquely necessary for race. In its submission to the 2018 Scottish review, the Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights opposed the extension of the stirring up offence to other groups based on absence of clear evidence of need. 2/9

As covered in today's @heraldscotland, the Scottish Prison Service took deliberate steps to avoid disclosing the operational guidance on its trans prisoner policy under Freedom of Information law, ahead of the policy going live. heraldscotland.com/news/24132893.… The SPS was aware the operational guidance would be subject to FOI requests once it had published the main policy. Under FOI law public authorities can, however, refuse to disclose information if they plan to publish it within 12 weeks.

We are quoted in this Sunday Post article on the Scottish Prison Service transgender prisoner policy, and its report detailing female prisoner and staff views, which the SPS refuses to publish. The SPS has taken 5 years to develop a policy that ignores routine safeguards based on what sex a person is, designed to protect women. It has done so to benefit a small group of male prisoners who have told prison managers that they believe themselves to be women.

NEW: Our latest blog looks at the Police Scotland LGBT Allies Toolkit, and questions how a scheme that asks officers to ‘evangelise their allyship’ to certain groups can be reconciled with a commitment to police impartiality. murrayblackburnmackenzie.org/2023/10/20/eva… What at first glance might appear to be relatively anodyne commitments to creating ‘safe environments’, using ‘inclusive language’, and encouraging ‘diversity of thought’, take on a different tone, when the detail of what this means is examined.

THREAD: Bringing the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 into force.

It has been reported that the Act will be brought into force early next year. scottishlegal.com/articles/polic… As we described here, bringing the Act fully into force will need further regulations making in the Scottish Parliament. x.com/mbmpolicy/stat…

THREAD: Ahead of next week's judicial review of Section 35 Order issued in respect of the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill, this thread provides some practical information for those who wish to follow the case. The case starts on Tuesday 19 September, and is scheduled to last for 3 days. It will be held in the Outer House of the Court of Session, in front of a single judge (the Hon Lady Haldane).

NEW BLOG: We follow up an earlier analysis of cross-border communications over the GRR Bill, using new information accessed via a review of an FoI request, and material both governments have submitted to the forthcoming s35 court case. murrayblackburnmackenzie.org/2023/09/12/sco… We found meetings were not held fortnightly, as described to the Scottish Parliament in April. There were ten meetings in total during the year. The previous FoI response omitted information held by the SG which would have made this clear.

We have now had a response to this letter./

https://twitter.com/mbmpolicy/status/1686671944723156993

Full text below, with the relevant extract of the business plan referred to (the actions highlighted in this do not however directly address the points in the letter).

THREAD. On 6 July 2018, we submitted a FOI request to the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) asking for sight of the equality impact assessment undertaken on their trans prisoner policy.
whatdotheyknow.com/request/equali… The SPS lists all equality impact assessments (EQIA) they have carried out on their website. No EQIA was listed for the trans prisoner policy. That is still the case today.
sps.gov.uk/Corporate/Abou…

We believe that this is the first time that the review of the Scottish Prison Service's Gender Identity and Gender Reassignment Policy has been described as being conducted "in partnership with the Scottish government." bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotla… The comment that the process is "nearing completion" should be read in the context of these comments in the Scottish Parliament on Wednesday, 25 January, saying 3 of 5 stages are complete. parliament.scot/chamber-and-co…

The SPS's Gender Identity and Gender Reassignment Policy, which provides the context for current media coverage of individual cases, is available here. sps.gov.uk/Corporate/Publ… The underlying principle that accommodation should, as far as possible, be based on how a prisoner "is living permanently" is set out here:

THREAD: The impact of replacing sex with gender identity in prisons policy was one of the first issues we considered and has continued to be a large area of concern for us. This thread brings together our blogs, articles and speeches on this, as background to events this week. In June 2019, Lucy Hunter Blackburn gave this speech to an event held at the University of Edinburgh. It summarised work we had done looking at the development of the relevant prison policy in Scotland. forwomen.scot/wp-content/upl…

THREAD (picking up from the thread here.): From March to December 2022, we drew MSPs' attention to the interaction of the Bill and the Equality Act, as an unresolved issue. Often we did this with other groups. Notes we circulated to MSPs follow.

https://twitter.com/mbmpolicy/status/1615097361662971904?s=20

Stage 1 evidence submissions were invited by mid-May. We submitted this, later published on Bill Committee's website (and so available to all MSPs). murrayblackburnmackenzie.org/2022/05/16/mbm…

THREAD: In January last year, we submitted an FoI to the Scotland Office, to find out what approaches the Scottish Govt had made to it over the GRR Bill, since the second Scottish consultation closed, on 17 March 2020. It held no records of any. murrayblackburnmackenzie.org/wp-content/upl… This also covered the whole period since the UK government announced, in September 2020, that it would not be proceeding with a similar Bill, raising more substantial cross-border questions for the Bill than before. gov.uk/government/spe…

THREAD: Raising the interaction of the GRR Bill with the Equality Act 2010.

We, along with others, have raised this as a key issue with government and MSPs, and in the media, over several years. This thread brings together examples of that. Our first comment on the Bill was this letter in The Sunday Times, on 9 December 2018. It flagged the potential impact on the operation of protections based on sex in the Equality Act as an issue still to be resolved.

On 5 December, we wrote to the Cabinet Secretary, Shona Robison MSP, seeking her view as a matter of principle on a series of specific questions related to women’s entitlement to set personal boundaries based on another person's sex, in certain situations./ We said: "We would be grateful if you could clarify the Scottish Government’s position on each of these four questions as a matter of principle. That is, not in terms of describing current law, nor what the effect of the current Bill may or may not be."

We have a letter in today's Times addressing claims made by Stonewall regarding the UK Government's plans to update the approved countries list for overseas gender recognition. thetimes.co.uk/article/times-… Recent comments from Stonewall have sown confusion about how gender recognition obtained outside the UK is handled here, and how that relates to the changes proposed in Scotland. There is no automatic recognition in the UK of any gender recognition certificates issued elsewhere.

THREAD: On amending the GRR Bill and MSPs choices

MSPs seeking to lodge amendments have been told that any amendment which would change the effect of a GRC is ‘inadmissible’ as not ‘relevant’. 1/ This means it goes beyond the “purpose” of the Bill, which the government describes as limited to reforming who is able to obtain legal gender recognition and how that is done, and any relevant connected matters. 2/

Along with 28 other individuals and organisations, we have today written to the UN special rapporteur on violence against women Reem Alsalem to welcome her recent intervention on the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill. You can read the letter here: murrayblackburnmackenzie.org/wp-content/upl…