THE UK Government is intent on attacking “a far more positive” human rights environment in Scotland, a charity boss has said.
Naomi McAuliffe, the head of Amnesty International in Scotland, hit out at the Tory government after reports that they were planning a constitutional battle with the Scottish Government over gender reform.
Suella Braverman, the Attorney General for England and Wales, told the Telegraph that plans for Scotland to make it easier for people to legally change their gender may not be “workable” considering differing laws elsewhere in the UK.
She indicated to the paper that she is considering a move to challenge or block the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill introduced to the Scottish Parliament.
Braverman said: “I think there are incredibly serious implications of what the Scottish Government is proposing, and I will be considering whether there are constitutional issues.
“Effectively the Scottish Parliament, if this is enacted, will be approving a form of self-identification. And we will have a two-tier system within the United Kingdom.
“I can’t foresee how that is workable, whereby north of the Border, you may be able to self-identify but a bit south of the Border that might not be recognised. What effects does that have on our public institutions, our state? It is incredibly worrying and causes a huge amount of uncertainty.”
Among other things, the reform bill would legislate so that people who wish to legally change their gender do not need a medical diagnosis to do so, and reduce the period in which people need to have lived in their acquired gender from two years to six months.
Responding to the news, Amnesty boss McAuliffe (above) said it was “infuriating but sadly predictable”.
“We have seen multiple incursions into Scots law and devolution in order to restrict rights,” she went on.
“Scotland is a far more positive environment for human rights but the current UK Government is intent on levelling down.”
Listing examples of Westminster meddling in Scots law, McAuliffe said the post-Brexit Internal Market Act had given the London government “huge powers to interfere with devolution”, while the children’s rights bill referred to the Supreme Court represented a “worrying over-reach into devolution”.
“Now we’re seeing a direct and overt attempt to overturn a piece of legislation that has cross-party support and was a manifesto commitment of a number of parties at Holyrood,” she added.
“There are plenty of other examples of where Scotland, whether government, parliament, local authorities, and certainly civil society, have tried to further rights protection and have actively been blocked: asylum accommodation, drug treatment.
“We already have multiple different laws in Scotland to the rest of the UK. That is THE POINT of devolution.
“But it really looks like this current UK Government is actively and specifically trying to stop or interfere with the human rights trajectory we’ve been on for 20 years.”
In their "shared policy programme" published in August 2021, the SNP and Greens said they would introduce a bill to simplify the gender recognition process for trans people "in the first year of this parliamentary session".
Scottish Labour and the Scottish LibDems also supported gender reform in their 2021 election manifestos.
