UN expert demands Scottish government uphold sex-based rights

Times

12 hours ago

The United Nations expert on the rights of women and girls has told SNP ministers to immediately implement the Supreme Court ruling on the definition of 'sex' in law.
Reem Alsalem, newly re-appointed as the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, said there should be no 'pause' in action to ensure the sex-based rights of women were upheld and the Scottish government should 'actually get on with it and do it'
'I do not think we should pause or put on hold any action awaiting this guidance, and I don't think the Supreme Court said that either,' she said.
Scottish ministers said they were waiting for guidance from the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) before implementing the court ruling, which has significant implications for single-sex spaces such as changing rooms, refuges and lavatories as well as in sports, healthcare and public appointments. An EHRC consultation on the guidance closed on July 1.
Alsalem said: 'While it is good you will have guidance, I do agree with those who say that there is a lot that can and should be implemented. It is not that there is ambiguity about all aspects of what the Supreme Court says.'
The Supreme Court ruled this year against Scottish ministers in favour of the campaign group For Women Scotland, finding that 'sex' in equality law referred to biological sex and not gender identity.
In an interview with The Sunday Times, Alsalem also said that organisations had 'punished' those who stood up for their sex-based rights. Referring specifically to Sandie Peggie, the nurse at the centre of an employment tribunal against NHS Fife, Alsalem said that public bodies that failed to support a woman's right to single-sex spaces were going 'against what is now the law of the land'.
'Particularly since the Supreme Court ruling, punishing women because they indicate their support for their sex-based right at work seems to me to be very problematic and goes against what is now the law of the land,' Alsalem said of the Peggie case.
Peggie, a nurse at the Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy, was suspended by NHS Fife last year after she complained about having to share changing facilities with Dr Beth Upton, who is male but identifies as a woman.
• Sandie Peggie tribunal: NHS Fife in major 'blunder' as trans discrimination case resumes
Alsalem was a vocal critic of the Scottish government's reforms to gender recognition legislation, warning in 2022 that proposals for self-identification could 'open the door for violent males who identify as men to abuse the process of acquiring a gender certificate and the rights that are associated with it'.
Ministers pushed back on this suggestion and Shona Robison, then the social justice secretary, said there was no body of evidence pointing to 'bad-faith actors' trying to use statutory processes to abuse women and girls.
In calling for the Scottish government to act, Alsalem added: 'If businesses and state-affiliated institutions and government entities recognise that this is the right thing to do, and now this has also been said clearly by the Supreme Court, they actually get on with it and do it.'
Last month she presented a report to the UN human rights council in which she assessed gender-based violence in the UK.
She wrote in the report: 'Women and girls, as well as their male allies, who wish to reassert their needs and rights based on their sex and have asserted the immutable nature of sex have been ostracised, attacked and punished by state and non-state actors, including political parties, universities, private employers and the media, for their beliefs and opinions.'
Her findings said that the UK and Scottish governments must ensure the Supreme Court ruling was upheld by employers and healthcare providers and that it was incumbent on ministers to provide guidance on how to ensure the protection of single-sex spaces.
A spokesman for the Scottish government said it had made it 'clear' that it accepted the Supreme Court's findings and that 'detailed work' was 'ongoing' to draft guidance.
Alsalem also said it was of importance that Police Scotland clarified its approach to data collection and ended its practice of conflating biological sex with gender identity.
'The conflation of sex and gender data, in particular prioritising self-identified gender, erases biological sex records, distorting the male-driven nature of violence against women and girls and hindering root-cause analysis,' she said. 'This approach undermines crime statistics and policy effectiveness in relation to violence against women and girls.'
The government spokesman added: 'We have already updated our guidance for the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018 and are amending the recruitment process for appointments to regulated public bodies. In addition, Police Scotland has published interim guidance on searching of transgender people.'
Alsalem also backed proposed legislation to criminalise buying sex and said that Scotland should outlaw child marriage. She expressed support for the Nordic model — a system that criminalises men for buying sex and decriminalises women doing sex work.
Her report recommends the Nordic model is introduced across the UK and Alsalem said she supports a new bill proposed by Ash Regan, the Alba MSP.
'The data emanating from countries that apply the Nordic model shows very clearly that it works,' she said. 'And data that comes from countries that legalise all aspects of prostitution — I don't use the term sex work, because you are not doing work and you are not selling sex. It is exploitation and abuse and it's not a regular job.'
However, she said, the bill before the Scottish parliament did not go far enough and should be extended, as in Sweden, to cover websites such as Only Fans.
The Scottish government has confirmed that it will consult on the issue of child marriage in Scotland, looking at raising the age of consent to be married to 18.
Alsalem gave her support to the proposal, saying child marriage was a crime and that the minimum age for legal marriage should be raised to be 18, in line with elsewhere in the UK.