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I’m just on my way back from a meeting with the Equalities and Human Rights Commission regarding the Equalities Act that was informative, if not entirely productive.

There is apparently a degree of debate between the EHRC and the Government Equalities Office (Who actually write and implement these laws) on what the Equalities Act means in practice, with the EHRC positioning themselves during the meeting as wanting more from the GEO in the code of practice than the GEO were willing to approve.

Firstly, and quite worryingly, the EHRC legal team told us that the GEO believe that a GRC “does not apply to single sex services or accommodation“. (i.e. you can be discriminated against even if you have one) This seems to mean that a GRC is increasingly being rendered worthless in practice, particularly as the EHRC also believe that the apparent removal of employment protection if you have a GRC is a deliberate act and not in fact a drafting error!

I should be meeting with the GEO next month and I will put the above points to them.

On the “passing” clause – you only have full protection if you pass – we were told this was an interpretation of existing law. The case mentioned was A v West Yorkshire Police but having read the final House of Lords judgement, I can not see the relevance. It may be in one of the other appeals, but I shall try to find out more.

The EHRCs approach on matters in general is to seek test cases to simultaneously clarify grey areas and raise public awareness of equality duties. It was pointed out by several people present that this is far from ideal for those trapped in discriminatory situations as it can take years and much stress to resolve.

On that point, Sarah raised the issue of NHS primary care trusts restricting gender services to a single provider (e.g. Charing Cross) as being a good example of both direct and indirect discrimination as this does not happen with other services. It also goes against the EHRCs stated aims of reducing class-based inequality in terms of things like health as those that can afford to go private will, whereas those who can not will not get treatment. (Not just for Gender-related issues either – being Trans taints every medical issue you may ever encounter) Unfortunately, she was unable to secure a commitment to use this as a test case from the EHRC, only vague assurances that they were working with the Department of Health on the issue so it seems likely that any court action, if they are serious about this, would need to be against a private organisation rather than the state. (I would, given the chance, argue that most Trans discrimination still emanates from the state. Capitalist organisations will often blindly take your money and use your services anyway!)

And finally, a couple of minor points raised were that the EHRC believe direct discrimination provisions within the act will generally “mop up” any areas not covered under harassment clauses for LGBT people and that the exceptions allowing discrimination do not apply to perceived membership of a group, only actual membership. This means that they think you should not be discriminated against just because someone believes you are Trans but only if you are actually Trans, but good luck proving you are cisgendered or if you are a grey area. (E.g. transitioned male or female to neutrois) On raising this last issue, we returned to “well, I think we’d need a test case…”   

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On Monday, there is a meeting at the Equalities and Human Rights Commission to do with Trans-related aspects of the Equalities Act 2010 and I shall be there. It’s more a chance I think for them to tell us about the act and us ask questions rather than try to influence future policy, but I am told we’ll be able to “raise issues and concerns”. If anyone has any points they’d like me to raise, please let me know either by commenting below or via E-Mail – contact details are on my “About/Contact” page.

Feel free to use a pseudonym and are stealth or would like to comment anonymously. Although I won’t stop anyone from doing so, I’d prefer people didn’t just use names like “Anonymous” though because then I can’t figure out who is who in future!

Issues I’m currently thinking of bringing up are: (In no particular order)

  • The apparent conflict between the Gender Recognition Act and Equalities Act in respect of GRCs: The former says you can’t be discriminated against in employment once you have one, the latter says you can. I know the EHRC have already been talking to legal people about this but I’ve not seen any conclusions.
  • Concerns that the Code of Practice apparently says you need to pass to get full protection, which I would argue is not a desirable state of affairs.
  • Application of the Act in practice. We’re told that it would be illegal to operate a blanket ban on Trans people accessing services such as rape counseling and single-sex wards in Hospitals, but we’ve already seen in the case of Nina Kanagasingham that some parts of the state still continue to operate what appears to amount to a blanket ban if you don’t have a GRC.
  • Sarah is also going and planning on asking about PCTs restricting gender services to a single provider. This may be indirect discrimination against Trans folk as they can only do this as Gender Reassignment services are run by mental health services.

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Although it didn’t seem very optional when I flew through Las Vegas airport earlier this year, it seems that now the TSA are threatening to give people intimate patdowns if they refuse to go through their new backscatter machines.

I can picture the scene now. The nice and terribly camp young man walks up to security and indicates that he doesn’t want to go through the machine. “I’m sorry sir,” comes the reply, “if you don’t go through the machine, one of my colleagues will have to search you very thoroughly indeed”. The passenger eyes up the collection of well-groomed young men in the very smart uniforms… And we’ll stop right there because otherwise this blog would end up being X-rated.

Still, I suspect that the TSA won’t have any problems keeping the LGB diversity statistics up amongst their staff in future.

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This morning’s news is that prisoners are to get the vote. It’s a long running case with the European Courts that started in 2005 and on which the government has finally relented. This is political, so perhaps the change in government to a more liberal one has contributed to this. Conversely, the Conservatives are not known for their positive attitude towards prisoners.

There’s a predictable backlash about people being punished and they should lose their liberty, to which I have one thing to add: Not everyone is in prison for punishment. Some people are on remand and have not been convicted with anything yet and although we sometimes may need to stop people absconding while things progress, they are not (yet) being punished and people that find themselves in this position are already allowed to vote.

However, there are people inside who are there just because it’s considered unsafe to release them, but have served the “punishment” portion of their sentence and at the moment they are deprived of the right to vote. At this point, I feel I should probably plug Ben’s Prison blog, by a serving prisoner who is in exactly this position. I’m sure we’ll see something from him on the topic soon, but it will be delayed somewhat – he has to post his blog posts to someone who actually has internet access, because there is no internet in prisons!

Fifty years ago, we were still locking up people for being gay. I’m sure there are some out there who would rather LGBT folk didn’t get the vote, but unsurprisingly I’m not one of them. Should we also deprive people of the vote for victimless crimes that only exist because they cause moral outrage amongst the masses? After all, they can’t vote to make these things legal because they are in prison and we took that away from them.

And finally, even if you grouped all the prisoners together, they would still not collectively be able to elect more than one MP. I hardly think we’re likely to see anyone overthrowing society just through one MP, but they still deserve some say in how they are treated. Look at yesterday’s case with Nina for an example of why this is important.

Sometimes, I think people want to deprive prisoners of the vote just because they don’t view them as human.

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In common with much of the UK Trans community, I’m too angry to write a coherent post about this right now. The Daily Mail have just published an article about the defendant in the recent death on the London Underground also being Trans. This gives them the perfect opportunity to engage in mis-gendering, bad stereotypes and all the other bigotry beloved of that publication, particularly given the possible sex worker angle too. (I’m sceptical on this point, a renowned human rights lawyer would not typically need the extra money)

I’m not just angry with the Mail though, I’m also angry with British Transport Police and the courts. The only reason the press got wind of this story was because the BTP told the press a “man” had gone under the train, in direct contradiction to eyewitnesses who stated it was a woman so they looked into it further. It’s really not hard to write a press release without gendering someone if you’re not mentioning their name anyway – most people won’t even think twice if it fails to mention if it’s a bloke or woman. Via The Sun, whose article is marginally better than the Daily Mail but only just, we know there was no initial confusion that lead to this outing by the police as those on site at the incident initially had no reason to believe she was a Transwoman.

And then we have the courts. We don’t know the full story for now, perhaps it was bought up by the defence team for some reason but if not why did the Courts allow the defendant to be outed in this way? It’s possible this will prejudice any future trial in such a way that it can’t be a fair trial. (It would possibly have to come out anyway as a defence against any allegation that it was a hate crime, but that decision was months away and could have been handled better) Even if it was an accidental outing, the Judge could have prevented the gutter press from reporting that particular fact.

To top it all off, we learn the defendant has been taken to a male prison. I do not know the defendant so I can’t be sure how far down the road to transition they are, but if they are full time this seems grossly inappropriate and may be putting them in serious danger.

And finally, notice that the Daily Mail “reporter” writing the article gets anonymity. One rule for them…

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The recent ILGA-Europe conference was bound to stir up a certain type of Tory, given the intersection of possible anti-EU and anti-LGBT rants. True to form, The Telegraph ran an article, accusing delegates of “continuing to party” and claiming (Without stating sources, of course) that £124,000 of EU money was spent hosting it. Well, I don’t trust anything they print on this topic, given their wonderful definition of Transsexual in the glossary:

Transsexual: When an individual identifies with a gender that is different from their biological sex. Many transsexuals believe that to be a true transsexual one needs to have a desire for gender change surgery.

There’s just so much wrong with that, I don’t even know where to begin. Oh, and if you were not already rolling your eyes, they put “intersex” in quotes. Seriously. Which makes me suspicious about the £124,000 figure they mention, so I had a quick look at the ILGA Europe accounts. Apparently, they spent €174,000 on Annual conference, which equates to around £151,000 at the moment. Only 47% of the IGLA-Europe budget is paid for by EU funding, so we get £71,000, almost half what the Telegraph claim.

They go on:

Delegates at the event in the Netherlands enjoyed lavish food and hospitality as David Cameron moved to guarantee that the EU budget would not increase by more than 2.9 per cent and insisted that its largesse on dubious projects around the world must end. But on the opening night of the gay and lesbian conference, delegates from 37 countries were treated to a welcoming dinner in The Hague’s medieval Hall of Knights, one of the city’s main tourist attractions.

There’s an invite on the ILGA-Europe website to attendees from the Dutch Government which actually seems to own the Hall, so it’s likely that the EU budget did not actually pay for the “lavish food and hospitality”.

Of course, no proper article like this is complete without appropriate quotes from outraged groups. Having stated that the spending was “condemned as ‘politically correct drivel’ by MPs”, they go on to quote just one MP, Philip Davies. Looks like the Telegraph is having trouble with the difference between plural and singular. So, is Philip Davies, MP for Shipley in Yorkshire, likely to be representative of MPs or even Conservative MPs? Well, he’s the kind of person to make quotes that get him “rebuked” by Harriet Harman, told Muslims to F**k off following an incident that wasn’t even caused by Muslims, (The Sun apologised, Philip Davies never has) and has been referred to as a “troglodyte” even by members of his own party.

Who better to go to if you want a quick anti-EU, anti-equalities comment to put in your paper? It’s not like he’s going to lose his seat over it: Shipley has only returned a Labour MP twice since the end of World War II, both times following the Labour landslides in 1997 and 2001. Even then, the Labour majority was less than 3,000 both times, versus the 10,000 Davies currently enjoys.

The Yes to Fairer votes campaign is over here, if you want…

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In more not-news, the Stonewall demonstration has been cancelled, following their partial U-turn over marriage equality and complete U-turn over the Journalist of the year award nominations.

There are still outstanding issues. Stonewall are explicitly against opposite-sex civil partnerships and want to preserve that as something “special” for LG(b) folk. There is an argument that opposite-sex civil partnerships are not an LGB issue, but that fails on two counts: Firstly, Stonewall should not be against them, as they are, on that score but should leave them alone. Secondly, and more importantly, Bisexual folk might want to get a Civil Partnership rather than a Marriage despite being in an opposite-sex relationship. (For those who want to continue to work towards Equal Marriage, the Equal Love campaign is worth a look.)

There is also the “FIT” video Stonewall produced. If you haven’t seen it, the relevant clip is available on YouTube. Whilst bad (It uses the word “Tranny”) it’s not screaming-and-throwing-things-at-the-computer bad, more just bang-head-on-desk-in-frustration bad. The director, Rikki Beadle-Blair, has publicly apologised for this and the apologies are very genuine. I believe any problems with this video are probably down to Stonewall not being a Trans organisation and thus being unable to get any real input on what is or isn’t acceptable in such a video rather than any failings on the part of Rikki. Stonewall should have realised this and steered clear of the topic.

And the last point is Stonewall’s apparent consultation with the government on the Gender Recognition Act. Fortunately, I suspect we’ve been banging on the door of the government hard enough for the last few months that they’re not likely to take too much notice of Stonewall without checking with us first.

Despite all that, I think calling off the demonstration is the right thing to do. We have a set of smaller points which doesn’t work so well at a demo when you only have seconds to get the message across to attendees. We’ve proven that the LGBT communities can rally a large amount of grass-roots support if necessary and thus have secured major concessions from Stonewall under the threat of a demonstration. If it went ahead now, there would be no reason for anyone else we threaten to protest to back down.

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On the topic of the not-Interception Modernisation Programme, which I shall geekily call the Pling-Imp from now on, Dr. Julian Huppert MP asked a question in Prime Ministers Questions on Wednesday on this topic:

Can the Prime Minister reassure the House that the Government have no plans to revive Labour’s intercept modernisation programme, whether in name or in function, and that he remains fully committed to the pledge in the coalition agreement to reverse the substantial erosion of civil liberties and to roll back state intrusion?

The response from the Prime Minister was somewhat more equivocal than I would have liked and didn’t really address the point:

I would argue that we have made good progress on rolling back state intrusion in terms of getting rid of ID cards and in terms of the right to enter a person’s home. We are not considering a central Government database to store all communications information, and we shall be working with the Information Commissioner’s Office on anything we do in that area.

Even Labour only briefly considered the centralised database and it had been dropped by May 2009, so this isn’t really news. I understand that Dr.Huppert has submitted followup written questions, which he referred to on Twitter and also in yesterday’s debate on the Internet and Privacy. Unfortunately it seems that questions are not published until the answers are submitted so we do not yet know what has been asked.

Edited to add: Since I put up this post, I’ve been contacted by the Open Rights Group in relation to the below paragraphs saying that they didn’t intend to suggest we were spreading misinformation, but that we were being supplied with misinformation.

So, does it sound like the Pling-IMP is back? The Open Rights Group are “convinced” that this is the case. Following republication of parts of my blog posts on Lib Dem Voice, they went on to quite publicly suggest we were spreading misinformation. This annoys me for two reasons. Firstly, the ORG are guilty of spinning the facts to the point of misinformation themselves. Their original petition, which they are still advertising widely, mentions a two billion bound price tag which we now know is inaccurate. The wording of the petition also suggests government interception, when of course we all know that was ruled out back in 2009 in favour of mandating ISPs to perform the interception.

Secondly, and more importantly, although I expect random and unsubstantiated attacks from the more tribal members of the opposition I would regard the Open Rights Group as being on the same side. I can understand their suspicion of anything that comes of Government given we did have over a decade of increasingly illiberal measures, but there’s no indication that the current crop of ministers have gone native.

For anyone from the Open Rights Group that’s reading this: Right now, you are annoying members of the party in power most likely to be sympathetic to your cause and you’re annoying the technical staff at ISPs. We are on your side and we would like your help. Please quit with the hyperbole aimed at us, because if we give up and go home you’ll be dealing with the Conservatives and Business leaders instead.

Yesterday’s debate in Parliament gives you a clue to the Conservative view on this. Although not as keen on state control in general as the last government, they are inclined to care more about Google Streetview because no business relationship exists between the public being photographed and Google. As soon as you have a business relationship – customer and ISP – they really don’t seem quite so interested. After all, shouldn’t competition within the market should deal with any issues?

Back to the Pling-IMP. I am a fan of evidence-based policy but if there is any evidence that it’s back, it is not being shared it with us. All we have to go on so far is that there is some sort of wide-ranging consultation afoot, with no price tag either high or low attached. It’s being conducted by the same Home Office communications group that undertook the original IMP study, but that’s hardly surprising as I would not have expected the Milk Marketing Board to have been given this task.

The Prime Minister’s answer definitely concerns me. I would have preferred a statement that they are not currently planning on asking ISPs to capture any more information or store what they have for any longer. But it’s not worrying enough that I’m going to get all righteous before the consultation is even out.

After all, it’s still just as impractical to achieve now as it was last year.

I have no doubt that whatever consultation is released, there will be those that seize upon any little word in it that suggests interception of any sort might perhaps be changed in some way other than completely getting rid of it. I do hope that does not happen too much because it detracts from making changes for the better and what is going on now is bad and needs to be changed. We should not be locking up teenagers for possibly forgetting passwords. Nor should the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act give City and Borough Councils the same powers as police and the security services to access information held by service providers.

The problems in this area stem in part from misunderstanding about what is possible. “Making better use of data we already have” is one item I’m told is definitely within scope of the upcoming consultation, but it’s hard to be constructive when one is rabidly denouncing any attempt to discuss the matter before we even know the questions.

We have a new government in power and should be encouraging debate on existing laws, not stifling it.

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The Pink Paper are reporting that Stonewall have “joined the fight for gay marriage equality”! Excellent news! Lets see what Stonewall have to say about it:

We seek to secure marriage for gay people as a civil vehicle on the same basis as heterosexual marriage, available in a registry office but without a mandate on religious organisations to celebrate it. We seek to retain civil partnerships for lesbian and gay people recognising their special and unique status.

Hang on, something isn’t right here. Who mentioned vehicles? A civil what? And yes, much of the LGBT population of the UK would probably describe Stonewall as “unique” in many respects…

Oh, wait, I understand: They’ve been watching Yes, Minister. “Always get rid of the tricky part in the title. It does less damage there than in the text.” So if we announce it as marriage equality, hopefully people won’t actually read what we said and might think we’re doing something, right?

While it’s possible they’ve just worded this really, really badly I’m sure you’ll forgive me for a touch of cynicism, given that Stonewall hardly have a positive track record when it comes to this sort of thing. If we take what they’ve written at face value, it seems that the only item Stonewall “seek to secure” is the ability to get hitched in a registry office and call it a marriage, with a slightly confused note tacked on at the end about the law allowing Civil Partnerships to be celebrated in churches.

Allowing churches – through their own choice – to conduct gay marriages in churches? No, doesn’t look like they’re in favour of that.

Supporting straight civil partnerships? Whoa! That would just be too radical.

P.S. As I was typing this, Stonewall posted a press release on their web site on the topic.

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Following my last post on the topic, I dropped a note to the Home Office contacts I had, such that they are, asking if what has been announced as part of the Strategic Defence and Security Review was in fact the Interception Modernisation Programme. For those who haven’t been following, that’s the innocent sounding name for the last governments plan to build a database with details of every EMail, Facebook message, Instant Message, Internet phone call and anything else they can manage.

Today I had the reply: In short, no. It’s not the IMP.

This is the sort of responsible fact checking that you’d think the Telegraph might do before running a story on the topic. Or the Independent. Even the Guardian. Twice. No, sorry, that’s three stories.

Of course, there will be more to it than that but the main message I took away from the 10 minute phone call was that what has been announced is not intended to be picking up from where they left off. Instead, it’s a new initiative with it’s own consultation.

This new initiative will last months and the fact that they apparently “understand a lot more than they did five years ago” hopefully means the questions they ask will be more informed in the first place. Cynically, I could not help but think while on the call that it also means they understand the current government isn’t going to be quite such a walkover on Civil Liberties as the last lot.

What else in scope for this consultation? Right now, it’s hard to tell. We certainly haven’t seen the last of IMP-like suggestions as I’m sure the Security Services are still going to want something but I was repeatedly assured that what is on the cards is wider in scope than before. Alongside the usual government consultation objectives such as “value for money”, we have “What is technically possible?” and “How can we make better use of existing data and powers?”

I would hope there is a chance to influence current policy to create a more liberal approach, given that the current kick-in-the-door-first, ask-questions-later policy just results in locking up teenagers who allegedly can’t remember a password after a few months. On the flip side, past dealings with the security services mean I’m far from complacent.

We shall have to wait and see.