My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 72, which I am delighted is supported by the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough. This was originally an amendment to Clause 15 relating to guidance for independent domestic violence and sexual violence advisers, but the Government have rather usurped that, as we have heard. However, the issues my amendment probes the Government on—specialist victim support for women, in my instance—are still pertinent. I listened to the debate on the previous two or three groups and refrained from speaking, but the issues we have been discussing could have been reflected in all the themes I am interested in looking at.
To state something absolutely obvious, but it is important to remind ourselves: certain crimes are predominantly aimed at women. Although it is true that anyone can suffer domestic abuse or be raped—I acknowledge that male victims may be underreported and I do not want to downplay that women can be perpetrators—all the evidence suggests that approximately 90% of victims of rape or domestic abuse are female. I will return to the reliability of data and whether we can trust it with an amendment in the next group.
My amendment probes whether the Government can ensure, via this Bill, that female victims of sexual and domestic violence have the option of female advocates, advisers and services, and that these victim advocates respect victims’ requests for access to women-only provision. This choice is no longer guaranteed, largely due to the turmoil and confusion caused by gender ideology and political rather than material definitions of what a woman is. This turmoil was vividly illustrated by an invaluable report published last week by the campaign group Sex Matters, entitled Women’s Services: A Sector Silenced. I will ensure that whichever Minister responds gets sent a copy of the report because it is a must-read. Will the Minister agree to meet with its authors? Its contents directly relate to the Bill’s important aim of improving service provision for victims.
The Sex Matters report reveals that the women’s service sector is mired in confusion as it grapples with the conflicts arising out of a move towards either trans-inclusive or so-called gender-neutral services, which are often forced on them by funders and commissioners, all at the expense of women victims’ choices. I will stress why this choice is crucial for victims of certain crimes. I have used the point about choice and options very carefully in my amendment. I quote JK Rowling explaining why she financially backed Beira’s Place, a single-sex rape crisis resource service in Scotland:
“As a survivor of sexual assault myself, I know how important it is that survivors have the option of women-centred and women-delivered care at such a vulnerable time”.
I testify to that from my own experience.
The Equality Act recognises the importance of offering such support as a choice and uses rape counselling as an example of a service where it is proportionate to discriminate—for example, by restricting counselling jobs to women. Despite that, even services that claim to be women-only are compromised by policies based on the belief that anyone who identifies as a woman—even those with male bodies—is a woman. To quote the
head of operations of one charity that offers, it says, counselling, advocacy and group work for survivors of sexual violence and abuse in Sussex:
“We do not police gender and we do not define who is and is not a woman; we allow women to define this for themselves”.
I am afraid that such policies are hardly reassuring and create real quandaries for some victims and, indeed, service employees alike.
As we speak, a high-profile and important employment tribunal is taking place in Scotland, involving former staff support counsellor, Roz Adams, who is claiming constructive dismissal against the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre. In evidence, Ms Adams explained how she was told that revealing the biological sex of support workers to centre users was transphobic. The issue arose when a 60 year-old female survivor of sexual assault said she would feel uncomfortable talking to a man, but when she inquired about the sex of the centre’s volunteers, Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre’s response was that it was inappropriate to disclose such information. Worse, her question led to her being sent an email saying that she was not a suitable user of the service—the wrong sort of victim, I assume. Surely it is essential that any advocacy or advice services should be honest with victims about something as basic as the sex of staff who will provide victim support.
Yet, to muddy the water further, consider this. When Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre advertised a senior post a couple of years ago, the job blurb read “only women need apply”, citing the single-sex exemption in the Equality Act. All clear, noble Lords might think, and that would satisfy me. Or perhaps not, because the “only women need apply” job advert then added that as a diverse organisation, applications from trans women—that is, biological males—were especially welcome. Noble Lords may think, “That’s just Scotland: it’s all got a bit gender bonkers up there”, but these confusing trends are widespread throughout the UK. The domestic violence and sexual violence service sector is in turmoil. As the Sex Matters report reveals, there are serious consequences, such as women victims self-excluding and being reluctant to seek help because they do not want to risk being counselled by a man.
A story from Sussex Rape Crisis Centre illustrates the dilemma—it has been in the news recently. One service user, Sarah Summers, is suing Survivors’ Network for discrimination because it refused to provide a women-only peer support group. Sarah had joined a female-only group, which she found helpful and supportive as a victim, until a man who identified as a trans woman joined the group, making her feel uncomfortable and unable to be open about her past trauma. Sarah explains, in completely reasonable terms, that she knew:
“Some women are happy to be in that space, and obviously trans survivors have a need for that support. But single-sex spaces should be an option”.
Indeed, Survivors’ Network has such groups for trans, non-binary and intersex people.
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Despite that, Sarah was told that she was no longer welcome; she had to go elsewhere because she asked, quite reasonably, whether she could go to a women-only group. However, she discovered that she could not go
elsewhere in the local area because there are no other support groups in Brighton solely for biological female victims—they all state in their policy that they welcome self-identifying females, which is not the same thing. This pattern is replicated across the sector, with funders and local councils even using a seemingly innocuous term such as “gender-neutral” to defund single-sex services.
Do noble Lords remember when Brighton Council told the charity Rise a couple of years ago—I know it was referred to by noble Lords in the House—that, although its 25 year-old refuge and outreach service pioneered services for LGBT people, because Rise also ran an exclusively women’s service for domestic abuse victims, it was losing a lucrative tender to non-gendered suppliers? Such procurement priorities are limiting choice. We have already heard passionate explanations of why funding pressures on organisations are really frightening for them, but you can imagine that funding can almost be used in a blackmail-like way—“You won’t get the funding if you don’t do this policy”. That is limiting choice for women.
Finally, throughout the Bill and discussions in Committee that we have heard, we tend to assume that victim-related advocates, NGOs, third-sector organisations and charities are always on the side of victims, and we should not ask any questions. We need to query that slightly—at least not take it at face value. We need to confront the fact that there is a growing fracture between too many trustees or senior professionals who run victim support projects, versus the needs and choices of grass-roots service users and even their own staff. For example, the CEO of the Survivors’ Network, which is funded by this Government, local authorities and the NHS, stated in written evidence to the Commons Select Committee that she “strongly” felt
“that the use of women only spaces by trans women should be actively encouraged”.
That is advocacy for ideology, not for victims.
Meanwhile, the CEO of the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre I discussed earlier, Mridul Wadhwa, a trans woman who has boasted about not having a GRC, infamously told a podcast in 2021 that rape victims who went to that centre had bigoted and unacceptable beliefs because they wanted women-only facilities, and that actually they could expect to have those bigoted, prejudiced, transphobic views challenged if they used the service provision she runs. That is not service provision; that is ideological propaganda.
This amendment simply wants to ensure that such politicised, ideological attitudes within the sector do not deny victims the option of choosing the sex of the advisers allocated to act on their behalf or the services they want to use, and can choose women-only provision. Unless we make it explicit in the Bill, it just will not happen.