Mick Hartley

The Times leader this morning:

Baroness Falkner of Margravine is no rational person’s idea of an extremist. Few crossbench peers and former members of the Liberal Democrats are. The notion would be laughable were it not what executives at the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which she chairs, appeared to believe. After Lady Falkner dared to dissent from fashionable orthodoxies on transgender rights, staff at the watchdog raised complaints of bullying and briefed them to the press. While that inquiry was set to be dropped last night, the row has raised discomfiting questions.

In February, the EHRC’s commissioners unanimously agreed to back a review of the Equality Act to better reflect the distinctions between biological sex and gender. In April, Lady Falkner wrote to the government to suggest the legislation should be changed to introduce explicit legal protections for biological women in spaces where that distinction really does matter, such as changing rooms and hospital wards. This entirely sensible move was met with vile abuse on social media. Lady Falkner told this newspaper that she had been branded a Nazi and “transphobic scum”.

Women who dare to assert that biological reality matters in the trans debate are now sadly accustomed to such treatment, often from faceless online trolls too cowardly to identify themselves. They should not expect to be victimised by public servants for their views. Yet this, it appears, is what happened in the case of Kishwer Falkner. In advocating protections for women, she and her commissioners overruled the watchdog’s staff. It was only then that they raised complaints about her behaviour and shared their dossier of concerns with Channel 4 News. “Hit job” and “ridiculously petty” were how those complaints were described to The Times this week.

Of course, should their inquiries independently corroborate any claims of bullying and harassment, then Lady Falkner must be held accountable. But the unmistakable impression is of ideologues seeking to punish a public servant for doing her job, which is not to parrot faddish mantras on gender but to ensure that equalities law in this country respects the rights of all. For employees of a publicly-funded watchdog to behave in such a way is indefensible….

Too many women who have taken the same stand have found themselves on the receiving end of similar treatment. Their legitimate concerns on single sex spaces that are so important to their sense of safety and wellbeing have been not only dismissed but met with poisonous vitriol. If anyone in Britain should know better than to oppose this aim, it is the staff of its equalities watchdog. Lady Falkner is to be commended for putting the safety of women first. Ministers should show their solidarity and adopt her recommendations for changing the law as soon as possible. The era of intimidation by the extreme trans lobby must end.