Mick Hartley

A backlash after that trans-inspired Channel Four News hit piece on Baroness Kalkner, head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. From the Telegraph: "54 peers write ‘in strongest terms’ to regulator claiming Tuesday’s report breached Broadcasting Code on impartiality, accuracy and fairness":

Baroness Falkner of Margravine, 68, the chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), is locked in a battle with her own civil servants who have filed a dossier of complaints about her alleging “bullying”, “discrimination”, “harassment” and a “lack of psychological safety”.

Gavin Mansfield KC, an employment barrister of Littleton Chambers, has been drafted in to investigate the 40 complaints, at a cost to taxpayers of £100,000. Lady Falkner is having to pay tens of thousands of pounds from her own pocket for lawyers to defend herself.

Channel 4 News ran a 10-minute report on Tuesday night about the saga, featuring what it claims was more than 20 statements by current or former staff, voiced by anonymous actors, alongside interviews with a trans activist and a Left-leaning Tory MP, without any guests in support of the crossbench peer. It has triggered a furious backlash, with EHRC insiders, gender-critical campaign groups and allies of the equality chief condemning the “polemic hit piece”.

Now, 54 peers have written to the broadcasting regulator demanding an investigation, claiming the piece “breached both Section 5 of the Broadcasting Code (Due Impartiality and Due Accuracy) and Section 7 (Fairness)” . They say they are writing “in the strongest terms to condemn the piece”.

In their letter, sent on Thursday, and seen by The Telegraph, the group of peers write: “Given the fiercely held views on these issues, is there not a responsibility for a national broadcaster to at least attempt to provide both sides of the argument?

“Instead, in our opinion, viewers were fed a piece so unbalanced as to potentially reach the point of prejudice. Channel 4 will no doubt try and defend themselves by saying that they spoke to more than 20 former and current members of staff; yet this means little when all these members of staff appeared to hold exactly the same opinions.”

They claimed that “none of the other EHRC commissioners were approached for comment; nor was there any proper representation of opposing points of view”, nor was there any mention of “the immense amount of abuse Baroness Falkner has been subjected to, both on social media and in real life”.

This included masked trans activists placing bottles of urine outside the EHRC offices in Westminster on May 15, which reportedly led to police erecting a cordon and carrying out a controlled explosion.

This is all about Baroness Falkner's proposal of a technical amendment to the Equality Act 2010 to make it clear that sex means biological sex. This, of course, is anathema to the trans activists – who clearly have friends at Channel Four.

The peers added: “To make no mention of this, while relaying a stream of emotive, one-sided and unsubstantiated statements amounts to nothing more than an irresponsible attack on an organisation that is seeking to uphold the rights of ALL in our society, not just the rights of one special interest group.

“Baroness Falkner has an outstanding personal record opposing discrimination and prejudice of all kinds.

“It is past time that we need frank and public debate on the issues of sex and gender, but it is clear that this piece did nothing to contribute to that, rather it was complicit in promulgating the views of a small group of staff who are clearly seeking to undermine the board and the chair who has our full support.”…

One peer told the Telegraph the Channel 4 report “clearly has an agenda behind it – silencing women”.