Mick Hartley

Trouble at t'Equality and Human Rights Commission, as trans activists try to oust Baroness Falkner:

Britain’s human rights watchdog is in crisis as senior staff are accused of trying to oust its chairwoman in revenge for her views on transgender rights law.

Baroness Falkner of Margravine, 68, is facing claims of bullying and harassment by staff at the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and her conduct is being investigated.

Allies of the crossbench peer, a former Liberal Democrat, claim she is a victim of a vendetta by officials at the organisation after EHRC commissioners overruled advice from its executive and backed a review of Britain’s equalities law that critics claim will damage trans rights.

One senior figure said relations between the EHRC’s commissioners and high-ranking staff had “broken down” and employees were accused of colluding to oust Falkner and force a change of policy on the organisation.

The EHRC has brought in an independent barrister to assess the claims made against Falkner. The investigation is expected to cost the taxpayer up to £120,000.

One source described the claims as a “hit job”, saying that senior staff were trying to oust Falkner because they disagreed with her stance on trans rights. “The executive was very hostile to the commissioners taking this decision because they had become used to the board just rubber-stamping whatever the staff at the organisation recommended,” they added.

Another said: “Some of the complaints are amazingly petty, and what is scandalous is that they only emerged after the board’s decision. The very best interpretation is that this was a complete failure of management in allowing these things to escalate.”

The investigation began after the EHRC’s 12 commissioners overruled concerns from the management team to recommend that the government consider creating a legal distinction between people born female and those who transition to become women. This could bar trans women from using single-sex spaces such as women’s hospital wards and from competing against biological women in sport.

The latest smear came last night from Channel 4 News, where a bloke in lipstick claimed that Baroness Falkner had described him as a “bloke in lipstick”. The horror!

Joan Smith at UnHerd:

Exposing a lie sometimes has dramatic consequences. For years we’ve been told there’s no conflict between women’s rights and the demands of trans activists. If that were really the case, no one could possibly object to putting the word “biological” in front of “sex” in equality legislation, could they?

Nothing could be further from the truth, as the head of the UK’s equal rights watchdog, Kishwer, Baroness Falkner, has discovered. She has endured weeks of abuse since the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) wrote to the Government, proposing consideration of a technical amendment to the Equality Act 2010 to make it clear that sex means biological sex.

Since then, all hell has broken loose. Falkner has been called a ‘“Nazi”, a particularly vicious slur given that her husband is German. She’s been attacked by a slew of Labour MPs, who’ve made the baseless accusation that she’s trying to take “rights and protections” away from trans people. Now it’s emerged that a group of employees at the EHRC has compiled a dossier of complaints against her, including “transphobia” and harassment. Falkner is said to be “heartbroken” about the allegations, which her supporters describe as a witch-hunt, but she’s standing her ground….

The attempt to oust Falkner shows how much is at stake. When trans activists claimed they weren’t trying to take anything away from women, they were telling an obvious untruth. Now everyone can see the reality for themselves, as convicted male sex offenders demand to be housed in women’s prisons and disabled women are called bigots for refusing intimate care from trans-identified males.

Adding the word “biological” to the Equality Act would achieve a very simple outcome, which is to confirm that the law means what we always thought it did. No one ever imagined, when the act was passed 13 years ago, that a group of women who share the protected characteristic of sex should include men who say their gender identity is female. If it did, it would mean the end of women-only spaces and services, which is why it is vital that the law should be clarified.

Another untruth is at risk of exposure here, however. Trans people in this country have the same rights as everyone else, which is right and proper. What activists are demanding is additional rights, which in this case compromises women’s rights to privacy and safety. And if the attack on Falkner shows anything, it’s the desperation of people with authoritarian views who fear they’re going to lose.