My Lords, like others, I would have preferred the unapologetic word “woman” to “mother”, but I warmly commend the Government for listening and especially the noble Lord, Lord True, on his patience in talking to some of us. I am delighted to take this as a win.
As we have heard from colleagues, the most gratifying part of all this has been about opening up a broader debate. Second Reading opened a Pandora’s box. As others have said, our inboxes have been bursting with relief and gratitude that the debate happened at all. People who usually sneer at the House of Lords—a lot of my colleagues are not keen on this place—were cheering, which was disconcerting. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, and the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, are now considered national heroes, let me tell you; I am expecting statues to be put up soon. I personally commend the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, for showing real leadership on this question.
However, we should be careful about too many congratulations because the truth is that we are in a privileged place. In this House, at least, we cannot be cancelled for raising the issue. It might be an affront to democratic accountability that we are here for life, but I am delighted that we have used that wiggle room to say something that has become unsayable. How extraordinary and sad that saying that women give birth is so contentious, and that we are told we are brave for saying it. I feel a bit queasy when people say they commend our courage for speaking out, because we are safe here. We are not facing the kind of threats that Professor Selina Todd, a history professor at Oxford University, has when she needs security to give her lectures because she is gender-critical.
All those emails that we receive show just how frightened people are to speak out. Mostly it is not physical fear but fear that they will be dubbed bigots because they are progressive people—and who wants that? They are frightened that their defence of sex-specific services and the use of sex-specific language will see them closed down. I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, when he says that free speech is not under threat. I think it really is.
The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, in some ways associated those of us making these arguments with deploying the same tactics as those who campaigned against immigrants or lesbian and gay rights in the past. That itself becomes a form of demonisation, which has a chilling effect, but I reassure the noble Baroness that this is not an argument for bigotry; it is for women’s rights. She fears that this is stating that
trans people are a threat to women, but that is not what I am trying to do at all. What is a threat to women is a particular brand of trans identity ideology. That does threaten women, but that is not the same as trans people.
There is a shocking consequence for service provision that I want to mention. I have spent hours in this House discussing the Domestic Abuse Bill and will carry on doing so. However, as we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, it is not only free speech that is under attack but services as well. This week, three specialist domestic abuse agencies lost funding due to local government gender-neutral policies and language. The fate of RISE, a mostly women-only refuge and domestic abuse service in Brighton, means that they have lost £5 million in contract work and will likely have to close, after council chiefs set up a tender intentionally non-gendered so that any women-only organisation would fall short of the new demands. When I expressed shock at this, I was told that I was anti-trans women, which I am not.
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Of course, there are tricky questions surrounding this issue. It is a challenging moral and ethical area, and there are difficulties when rights appear to clash with one another. I do not always know how best to discuss what makes someone a man or a woman, or how to create an environment in which we can freely discuss gender identity. I worry about protecting transgender people from discrimination and unfair treatment and I do not want polarisation either. How do we deal with that? We deal with it by grown-up conversation. We need free speech, no demonisation, no calling people phobic or anything else. We need open debate, and I am proud that there have been open debates on this here on Monday and today.
One novelist recently wrote:
“In order to think clearly, we must be able to speak clearly.”
She finished by saying that if the abuse of language and the concerted attempt to cancel womanhood continued, and if the establishment continued to pander to notions such as the statement that it is only women who can get pregnant, we would lose the war on words, and that would be a fatal undermining of precious freedoms that women had achieved. Well, today we did not lose the war on words, and all credit to the Government for that. It is very good news, but there is no room for complacency because this is only the start.