By Sophie Perry
Copyright thepinknews
Lib Dem members have rejected a bid to prevent trans women standing in roles reserved for women at their recent conference.
The amendment was put forward by Liberal Voice for Women, at the Liberal Democrats’ annual conference in Bournemouth, UK, on Saturday (20 September). The gender-critical group wanted to change the party’s constitution so that quotas based on gender would instead be based on biological sex. They called for a debate and a binding vote on the matter.
“Returning males into vacancies expressly reserved for females would be unlawful,” the group’s motion said.
The party’s constitution currently says that no less than 40 per cent of those on federal bodies and committees shall “self-identify as men or non-binary people, and self-identify as women or non-binary people respectively”.
Liberal Voice for Women also tried to amend the constitution at the 2023 conference but retabled the motion in the wake of this year’s UK Supreme Court ruling which deemed that the definition of the protected characteristic of “sex” in the 2010 Equality Act referred to biological sex only.
Liberal Voice for Women: “The TERFs were right all along”
A spokesperson for the group said: “The law hasn’t changed but the Supreme Court has ruled that the ‘TERFs’ (trans-exclusionary radical feminists) were right all along: sex in the Equality Act means biological sex.”
But Lucas North, the treasurer of LGBT+ Liberal Democrats, described the proposed amendment as “a sham”, and urged fellow Lib Dem members to “reject the idea that trans identities are up for debate” and not to turn the conference stage into a “platform for transphobic views”.
North went on to say: “As we see the political landscape shift further and further right, it is more important than ever that we hold on to our values and not let our conference, our voice as members, be used to legitimise bigotry in the name of a small and extremist faction.”
However, Liberal Voice member Dr Zoe Hollowood hit back, saying that “silencing the debate because you disagree with it is not the answer” and that preventing people from “hearing both sides” was “not the liberal way”.
Referring to the recent arrest of gender-critical pundit Graham Linehan, Hollowood claimed free speech was “under pressure” in the UK. There were groans from the audience when she said the Father Ted co-creator had been arrested “over tweets”.
In the vote that followed, the amendment did not get enough support, with a “clear majority” instead deciding to move to the next item of business.
Speaking on BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey rejected the idea that members of the campaign group felt shut down. I’m sorry if they’re cross but I do think the truth is… that we abide by the law,” he said.
“There was a motion that I wasn’t part of to move on to next business but, given we debated these very issues just a few months ago, I think it’s quite reasonable to say we’re the only party engaging with these issues.”
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