Mick Hartley

Stonewall have clearly decided that they need to change their approach. All the bad publicity is taking its toll, and, more significantly no doubt, they're losing their sources of income as more and more organisations pull out of the Diversity Champions scheme. CEO Nancy Kelley has agreed to debate after years of "no debate" as official policy – and the backtracking continues:

Stonewall has dropped guidance advising groups on its workplace schemes to remove the word “mother” from their policies.

The lobby group said that it would no longer reward higher ranking scores to employers who replaced “mother” with gender-neutral alternatives.

Nancy Kelley, the Stonewall chief executive, denied in an interview that such a policy existed. “We’re not interested in removing or erasing the word ‘mother’,” she said. Kelley, who has two adopted children with her wife, added: “I’m a mum. I’m married to another mum. It’s a deeply emotive term. I would be really upset if my children didn’t call me Mum.”

That's plainly untrue. Stonewall have campaigned for exactly that – the erasure of the word "mother".

When presented with its recent advice to Dundee University, which contradicted Kelley’s claims, Stonewall said it would change its guidance.

A Stonewall representative said last night that the word “mother” was precious to LGBTQ+ people.

Hypocrites.

“Our guidance for the workplace equality index is now clear that feedback should suggest a number of different options for making the guidance inclusive of all different ways that our families are formed,” the official said. “It is not necessary to remove terms like ‘mother’ to achieve that outcome.”

The lobby group is under mounting pressure after hundreds of freedom of information documents showed that its schemes encouraged organisations to rewrite their policies in return for points on the workplace equality index, which claims to rank the country’s most LGBT-friendly employers.

Stonewall says that its schemes create fairer workplaces for LGBT staff.

Critics say that organisations are in effect paying a lobby group to promote their policies. Dundee University confirmed yesterday that it had replaced “mother” and “father” with gender-neutral alternatives after feedback from its application for the index.

Explaining why the university scored only five out of 15 points on its policies, Stonewall wrote: “We recommend that you remove the terms mother and father from the body of your policies . . . we’d recommend using gender-neutral language in the body of the policy.”

Stonewall said last night that the feedback to the university was now outdated. “This relates to an old document,” a representative said. “It is no longer the guidance we provide.” The university confirmed that it had changed its terms after the advice.

An investigation by The Times earlier this year disclosed how Stonewall told the Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust to “use terms such as ‘pregnant employee’ or ‘birthing parent’ instead of mother”.

The Scottish government also deleted the word “mother” from its policies after advice from Stonewall. Rhondda Cynon Taf county council, in south Wales, told the index assessors that it changed all its policies on maternity leave, adoption and surrogacy to “avoid gendered pronouns”.

So Kelley lied.

The Glinner Update:

So she lied to Emma Barnett [in that Woman's Hour interview], and she walked back on every single thing she has been pushing for the entire time she’s been at Stonewall.

Are there no grounds for a criminal charge here? Considering the amounts of money involved? Or might the Scottish government have grounds to sue?

Isn’t this fraud?