Mick Hartley

You thought the Supreme Court ruling brought clarity, and cleared the way for the end of gender nonsense? Think again. There's a new government bill on its way:

Women’s rights campaigners have been warning ministers that the bill, which is intended to introduce a new digital ID system, will play havoc with the ability of companies such as gym chains and public bodies like the NHS and police to ascertain someone’s sex – just after the Supreme Court ruling intended to bring much-needed clarity.

The bill will allow people to prove their identity and facts about themselves by using a new voluntary Government app that is linked to what the bill calls “digital verification services” (DVS), backed by a government “trustmark”. It will draw data from a number of sources but the bodies being presented with the app won’t be able to tell which documents it is relying on.

That means that if the app states that the user is “female”, that information could, in theory, either be based on the sex stated on their passport or driving licence – which can be changed relatively easily from someone’s biological sex – or a birth certificate, which can be changed but only if the individual first obtains a formal gender recognition certificate (which has to be approved by a panel made up of lawyers or medics.)

To worsen matters, says Helen Joyce, of the women’s rights charity Sex Matters, under the new system the app will have to be “treated as more authoritative than any pre-existing record – or the evidence of your own eyes.”

In practice, she says, “if you have a man [seeking] gym membership and he has a digital ID saying he’s female, you’re going to have to accept that. Currently it’s your choice what you would do with a passport with ‘F’ [for female] on it. It would be difficult to say no to him going into the ladies’ changing rooms or toilets, but not impossible.

“But if you’ve signed up for the ‘digital verification services’ you will have to accept Government sources as authoritative.”

On Wednesday, the Conservatives attempted to amend the bill so that sex data would be taken solely from birth certificates. The amendment was defeated by 363 votes to 97, meaning the bill will now move onto its final stage – the third reading – before becoming law.

Tory MPs had previously warned that “inaccurate data entrenched by the Bill” could “pose a risk” to vulnerable people, but the MP for Walthamstow, Stella Creasy, was among many Labour MPs who criticised the Opposition amendment, calling it “a targeting of the trans community which is deeply regressive.”

Oh god. It's the targeting of women which is deeply regressive. Especially vulnerable women who need specialist care. People like Stella Creasy just can't see beyond the fantasy of "the trans community" as the most persecuted minority ever, when in reality it's all about men in dresses and bad wigs imposing themselves in women's spaces.

Heather Binning, chief executive of the Women’s Rights Network, agrees with the Conservatives’ concerns. She says that the new law will essentially introduce gender self-identification – a system which involves the state adopting whichever gender an individual chooses to be known by – “through the back door”. “It flies in the face of the Supreme Court ruling,” she says. “It will be mayhem if it goes thorough as it is. If official documentation says a man is a female with the new system, employers and others will be inclined to accept it. This part of the Bill needs to be scrapped.”

One King’s Counsel (KC) specialising in equality law agrees that the digital ID “is in danger of becoming a de facto gender recognition certificate”, which allows individuals to legally change their gender.

For example, it could lead to incorrect medical treatment being provided for a person whose biological sex is recorded inaccurately. One GP explained how she had witnessed a woman who identified as a man receiving an initial diagnosis for an appendectomy, but when the consultant and anaesthetist later saw the patient they decided to ask about her biological sex. Having established that she was a biological woman, the clinicians reassessed her and she was confirmed to have had a gynaecological problem. As such, this lack of correct data could also put trans people at greater risk in a medical emergency. It could also cause a care agency to send a male nurse or care worker who identifies as a woman to provide intimate care to a female patient at home.

“The proposed Data Bill will put disabled people, particularly women, at more risk than they are already,” says Freeman. “Every instance of a disabled woman being made to feel uncomfortable, or even worse, will be the responsibility of those who voted it through as well as the disability charities who have stayed silent.”

Alice Sullivan, the University College London sociology professor who wrote the Government-commissioned review on errors in the state’s handling of data on sex and gender, warns that “the thing with data is, garbage in, garbage out”.

As Sullivan's report showed, the whole system of data collection on sex by the Office of National Statistics was fatally flawed by their obsession with gender identity. And here we go again.

“There are plenty of areas in which sex matters – it goes far beyond toilets,” says the KC, who asked to remain anonymous. “Of more concern is intimate care provision for people with disabilities, working in a rape crisis centre – people working in these fields need to know what the sex of the person wanting to work there is. They don’t want to know what their gender identity is.

“It’s preposterous to argue you can replace data about sex with gender identity. Gender is not a legal category so why would you need to record it? It would only be useful if you wanted to deceive someone about your biological sex and the whole point of having data and having this new ID app is to be able to prove things about yourself.”

“The NHS needs to know which of its patients and staff are male and which are female in order to fulfil its public service equality duty,” says Samantha [not her real name], a director of service transformation at an NHS trust. “If the data used for the digital ID is not accurate it drives a coach and horses through public bodies’ duty of care. The law says this must be achieved via biological sex, but data sets that don’t accurately record sex cut across all that. The same applies to chaperones for intimate care. That’s unacceptable and potentially unlawful because the patient did not consent to it. The new ID scheme would make the operation of the NHS really difficult.”…

Those familiar with the Bill as it is currently written are concerned it paves the way for a scandal waiting to happen, akin to the SNP’s endorsement of trans activism. In Scotland, Isla Bryson, a biologically male transgender rapist, was initially taken to a women’s prison, and Nicola Sturgeon drew fierce criticism for refusing to call Bryson a man.

“There will be some kind of equivalent of the Nicola Sturgeon/Isla Bryson scandal where the whole country will go ‘How did we get to this?’,” says Samantha. “And the politicians will just be left looking at their shoes. So let’s not mess it up in the first place.”