Lord Moynihan of Chelsea (Con)

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Katz. I will make three very brief points. The first is that the Supreme Court judgment had a logic behind it, and it is very difficult to see how that logic does not roll out across a whole bunch of issues such as this one. So this amendment relates very strongly to that Supreme Court judgment. The second point is that the three noble Baronesses talking against the amendment were trying to say, “Well, what point would it have?” Yet the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, stated that there had been reports that the amount of crime, including violent crime, committed by females had increased, and that this had caused some kind of minor moral panic in society. Now, we know that women—biological women—have far lower rates of offending than men, whether non-violent or violent. Our understanding of the role of women in society is very much driven by that understanding of the civilising impact of womanhood on society. It is fundamental to our ideas of how society works. If we are persuaded by false data that the role of women is changing—that women are becoming more violent, that women are becoming more criminal—our view of society will be very different. That would be unfortunate, if it is false. Finally, the objections made by the noble Baronesses to this amendment, other than those of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, did not fundamentally dispute the premises but merely argued about the practicability—indeed, as did some of the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. If we are to talk about practicability, first, we have the evidence that Scotland has already implemented this, so arguments against practicability fall away. The point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti —that you are putting an onus on a policeman to respond to somebody claiming a particular sex or gender, when in fact that may not be correct—was given the lie by her own statement that there are lots of people who are happy to come to a police station and confuse things by deliberately giving the wrong information. Basically, she is saying that, when a policeman is confronted by a six-foot bloke who says that he is a woman, it is difficult to confront that person. This is set against the very correct concern she had about a woman with short hair or whatever who looks a bit man-like, as many do, being challenged on saying that she is a woman. If they can sort that out in Scotland, they can sort that out in the UK. But, in the meantime, which would you prefer: that data is falsified and moral panics emerge, or that police have a slightly bigger onus to try to ascertain the true biological sex of an individual?