Grooming gangs, gender laws and government overreach
Parliament's back and it's already a mess - Claire Fox reports from a week inside the Lords.
After a much-needed Easter recess, Parliament is back - and, honestly, I’ve returned with more determination to call out BS than ever. And there’s plenty of BS in Westminster.
You’d think a break would help me shake off the frustration with mainstream politics, but no such luck. In fact, within minutes of being back in the House of Lords, I was reminded exactly why. Just before Recess, the Labour government tried to sneak through an announcement buried in a debate on child sexual abuse, that effectively weakening already-meagre local inquiries into grooming gangs. Unsurprisingly, I was reminded of the fury I had felt at the time, so when I noted that a Repeat Statement was scheduled for the first evening back, I cancelled all other plans and stayed to make so many people’s frustration known. Shockingly, the Labour and Lib Dem benches were empty.
There was another Repeat Statement later in the week, and a lot of people on the red benches were competing to get in to briefly discuss For Women Scotland’s landmark victory at the Supreme Court. This was a hard-won victory for grassroots women’s groups, and made this year’s Easter a memorable, historic one of both celebration and relief. Yet what did we get in the Lords? Far too many keen to indulge in hand-wringing platitudes, and prove their ‘compassion for trans people’. Women barely got a mention and near-total silence on those whose lives have been upended for saying what the law now confirms. But it was a relief that both the Tories and Labour were uncompromising in asserting their commitment to the now legally clear position that trans women are not women, and that single sex spaces - sports or hospitals or rape crisis centres - matter. I was keen to point out that this was no time for a party-political blame game. No party has clean hands here.
A minority of us across all parties and none have the receipts and the scars and could name names of those front benchers who shamed, shunned and shushed us from the dispatch box. But this is no time for retribution. We need a bit more humility and a lot more hard work. Because as legislators, it was we who misled the public, trans people and institutions about the law, by allowing the poisonous myths of gender ideology to take hold in so many institutions. And that includes parliament and the Whitehall civil service. Now it’s our job now to root it out.
Badly worded, unclear laws are a bit of a theme this week. I was reminded of this when Shrewsbury Flower Show announced it won’t happen this year. It’s been cancelled by Martyn’s Law, officially the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act, which was sold to us as a necessary measure to protect the public against terrorism, but now the victim is a flower show. Over many hours in the Lords Chamber, a group of us warned that this would be the likely consequence of allowing emotionally driven legislation to trump sober judgment. By adopting a ‘something must be done’ approach, we risk losing our civic spaces and strangling community life.
And there’s another proposed law we discussed this week that’s likely to have equally dire unintended consequences: the Labour government’s shiny new tobacco and vape bill - a cut-and-paste version of a Rishi Sunak’s Tory Bill of the same name. It’s another legislative mess that would ban young people from ever buying cigarettes while their slightly older mates still can. A feel-good headline grabber with the kind of authoritarian edge that is also an executive power grab, the Bill will let ministers quietly seize more decision-making powers with less scrutiny. This isn’t public health, it’s a democratic sleight of hand. And by the way, while I make weighty speeches in the Lords, I was bemused that my speech on this one, admitting my penchant for flavoured vapes, was the one picked up the media:
Lastly, in a debate on the Future of News report, I asked who defines misinformation and how it’s weaponised to justify censorship. I name-dropped that Podcastistan debate and asked why MSM journos so nasty about new news entrants like TalkTV or GBNews? Media plurality is now under threat from orchestrated activist attacks on these channels, often based on nothing more than anti-press-freedom snobbishness. Just take the ludicrous mass complaints to Ofcom after Josh Howie told a joke on his show.
This episode of Inside the Lords gets into all of it - the statements, the silences, the dangerous drift toward unaccountable government and the political posturing that passes for leadership. It’s messy. It’s maddening. But we can’t afford to look away. So make sure you spread the word and get others to sign up to the YouTube Channel here:
I've also linked to two podcast conversations I had recently (hopefully BS-free): one with the Social Democratic Party - a small but serious outfit I think is worth your attention - and another with Penny Dee on her podcast, where we covered all things sex and gender just before that landmark Supreme Court decision. Enjoy.
Why has Shrewsbury Flower Show been cancelled? The government guidance states that this 2025 legislation won't be in force until after a 24 month period allowing premises and event organisers to prepare.
Claire be careful with the SDP. I fid their comms for a while and stepped in to write their animal welfare policies. For a party that sounds like it has English values of family, community and national, pro Brexit and anti mass immigration, it folded at the first fence when entryism Muslims became enraged with a non halal policy. We compromised with ‘stun then slash’ as accepted by Muslims and Jews in Australia and other countries, but they became nasty and SDP leadership were spineless and backed down. I left.