SCOTTISH Labour's former leader has accused opponents of gender reforms in Scotland of using “populist tactics” as legislation is set to go to a final vote this week.
The Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill will make it easier for trans people to acquire a gender recognition certificate (GRC) by removing the requirement for a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria.
It will also lower the minimum age for applicants from 18 to 16 and drop the time required for an applicant to live in their acquired gender from two years to three months – six for people aged 16 and 17 – though with a subsequent three-month reflection period.
Opponents of the GRR Bill have claimed it could put women and girls in danger, but Kezia Dugdale, who stepped down from Holyrood in 2019, said the debate around the legislation has “been driven by and riven with fear”.
Writing in The Times newspaper on Monday, the former Scottish Labour leader said: “Sadly, facts have been absent from much of this debate, which instead has fed on division and been driven by and riven with fear.
“This is classic populism, where for one to be strong another must be weak; for one group’s rights to be enhanced another must be diminished; that I cannot be a feminist, a lesbian and still support trans rights.”
"From where I sit, it is the women who support this legislation who find themselves voiceless: women who have watched the colours green, white and purple, the symbols of universal suffrage, be appropriated by a cause they don’t support," she said.
Dugdale added: “While I have written previously about what this proposed legislation does and does not do, I have resisted the temptation to enter the debate online or in the media, safe in the knowledge that the bill had a parliamentary majority.
“It would pass, and so too, in time, would the fractious debate. But with hours to go, I feel that there is a need to call out the populist tactics at play and to defend the process and, indeed, the people this bill is really about – the trans community – and their human right to live their lives with dignity and respect.
“And I do this as a lesbian and a defender of women’s rights.”
The former leader’s intervention comes as one of her predecessors, former first minister Jack McConnell, claimed sexual predators could come to Scotland and use the changes to abuse women.
The Scottish Government has repeatedly said the bill would not impact on the Equality Act, which allows for the exclusion of trans people from some single-sex spaces in some circumstances, with ministers backing an amendment to the bill from Labour’s Pam Duncan-Glancy which secured the assertion on the face of the legislation.
But last week, a judge at the Court of Session ruled that the definition of woman should include people with gender recognition certificates.
The case was brought by For Women Scotland who challenged the legal definition of a woman in relation to a GRC in numerous court appeals.
Some 153 amendments will be debated on Tuesday in what could be a marathon, nine-hour session of the Scottish Parliament, with MSPs potentially sitting up until midnight and beyond before the final vote the following day.
