MBM response to Scottish Government statement on the UKSC ruling

The Cabinet Secretary stressed more than once that the Scottish Government had acted in good faith. A good faith approach would have seen Ministers set out plainly to the public and the Parliament, during the passage of the Gender Recognition Reform (GRR) Bill, what they told the courts: that they believed a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) changed a person’s sex under the Equality Act. Instead, they went to extreme lengths to avoid this, implying the opposite throughout the bill process. As the bill progressed Ministers dismissed attempts by the EHRC to make them face the logic of their own position and ignored that the highest court in Scotland had already struck down a self-ID reading of the Equality Act.

There is now a detailed judgment that brings full clarity. Yet Ministers are still not giving Scottish public service managers, their users and employees, the immediate leadership they deserve. Instead they are wasting time on inter-governmental manoeuvres and blame games. Rather than wait for EHRC to get them out of the mess they have created, Ministers just need to read the law, say sorry for their woeful, wasteful handling of this issue over so many years, and get on with their job.

They should start by unpicking the “strategising” by Scottish Trans, that disgracefully treated the most vulnerable, voiceless women as collateral damage. There needs to be immediate action to ensure that women’s prisons in Scotland are, as they should always have been, actually single-sex.