The gender bill dividing the UK
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 23 January 2023
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The UK government has blocked Scottish gender recognition reforms, which would allow anyone over the age of 16 to self-declare their gender and be recognised as such by the Scottish government.
The Scottish government argues its legislation would merely update and improve the legal situation in Scotland for transgender people. But the UK government says this is not true, and that the Scottish legislation would have a profound impact on UK-wide equalities law. We examine the debate and the constitutional row that has ensued.
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Guest: Mark McLaughlin, Political Correspondent, The Times.
Host: Manveen Rana.
Clips: BBC News, The Scottish Sun, Guardian, Channel 4 News, 5 News, ITV.
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Transcript
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| 1:22.4 | Last Wednesday evening, if you looked out over Whitehall in the heart of Westminster, |
| 1:28.5 | what you'd see was a tide of people protesting. At the gates of Downing Street and in Parliament |
| 1:35.6 | Square holding up purple placards demanding trans rights now. In recent years, gender and how we |
| 1:51.6 | identify ourselves, an intensely personal matter has somehow morphed into a very public cultural |
| 1:59.2 | war. We say no to meals in any spaces and services designed exclusively for women and girls. |
| 2:11.4 | We know that trans women access women services anyway, we don't believe there are any |
| 2:16.1 | proposed changes in the bill that will impact on single sex basis which already operate on a |
| 2:21.2 | basis of self-id. But when MSPs, members of the Scottish Parliament, voted on a new |
| 2:33.2 | gender recognition reform bill, that culture war became a constitutional one. |
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