The UK and Scottish Labor leadership have moved to calm row over their approach to Holyrood’s gender recognition bill and the Westminster government has moved to block it as individual MSPs call for colleagues in Westminster to respect Holyrood’s work on transgender rights reform.
A court battle is now looming over Westminster’s decision to block legislation passed by the Scottish parliament late last year to introduce a self-declaration system for people who want to change their gender.
On Wednesday morning, Scottish Labor leader Anas Sarwar, who has so far faced criticism for his silence on the constitutional row, insisted there was no disagreement with UK leader Keir Starmer.
Starmer said on Monday that 16-year-olds should not be able to legally change gender, putting him at odds with Scottish colleagues, most of whom backed plans to extend the application process for ‘a gender recognition certificate (GRC) at 16. – and 17-year-olds.
Sarwar said: “How Keir decides what the law is like in other parts of the UK is absolutely a matter for the UK party.”
He told Radio Clyde: “But where there is agreement is around devolution protection, reform, protection of single-sex spaces and removing the inhumanities of the process of getting a GRC “.
The party’s only Scottish MP, Ian Murray, led Labour’s response to Scottish Secretary Alister Jack’s decision to make an Article 35 order to prevent the bill getting royal assent on Monday and Tuesday.
The shadow Scottish secretary also insisted on Wednesday: “There is little difference between the two sides of the Labor party on this.”
Meanwhile, top UK party figures denied Keir Starmer was trying to engage in the culture wars by not agreeing to lower the age at which individuals can obtain gender recognition certificates to 16, insisting they are agree that the reform of the gender law must be modernized.
UK Labor has tried to step back from the row, suggesting it wants to take a “sober” and “evidence-based” approach and remember that the issue is, at its heart, trans rights .
But individual MSPs criticized Starmer’s intervention and suggested UK colleagues should pay more attention to his expertise after spending the past year working on the details of the bill.
Prominent backbencher Monica Lennon suggested Starmer was misinformed, saying she would be “better off talking to Scottish Labor people than being in the debate and doing the work in the Scottish Parliament”.
Employment spokesman Paul Sweeney accepted there were “tensions” within Labor over transgender rights, but added: “The fundamental principle must be that the MSPs who worked on the Bill, the have examined line by line and voted for it by a large majority are best placed. to discuss the details and decide the final position. This does not seem to have been the case so far.”
Several Labor MPs voiced their own concerns about the Holyrood bill in the Commons on Tuesday, an indication of long-standing divisions, particularly among working women. At Holyrood, two Labor MSPs, who were whipped for voting in favor of the bill, rebelled at the final vote in December, while others were able to be absent.
Sweeney urged MSPs from all parties to come together and “be unequivocal that decisions made in our parliament, which are clearly powers, must be respected and not interfered with”.
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Lennon also urged his party’s Holyrood leadership to tackle the “disinformation and dangerous tropes” he said were evident in the UK government’s blocking of the gender bill.
“Leadership is important at a time when there is so much dangerous misinformation. When a minority group is being demonised, Scottish Labor should call it out.”
Sarwar called on the UK government to instruct the Equality and Human Rights Commission to issue guidance on controversial aspects of the bill that both governments could consider, adding that a Scottish Labor amendment ensured that “nothing in bill replaces the Equality Act”.
He said the use of section 35 was “the wrong approach”, as a UK Labor spokesman described the decision as unprecedented and demanded the UK government release its legal advice to understand the basis on which it was taken.
“It is clearly an unprecedented decision and we want to see the basis on which it was taken.”
The spokesman added: “There is nothing in the public statements the government has made yesterday to suggest there is a threat to these exemptions for single-sex spaces on its councils.” It appears to be a progression from Starmer’s own comments earlier this week that he was “concerned” about the impact of the bill on the Equality Act across the UK.
Pam Duncan-Glancy, Scottish Labour’s equality spokeswoman who led the bill at committee stage, said her peers were “dismayed” at the emerging constitutional conflict because “amidst all this is trans people who were planning this change.”
He described Jack’s justification for blocking the bill as “as thin as paper”.