Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill — House of Lords, 2021-11-22
Topic: Law and Crime
Brian Paddick (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, for introducing my speech. This amendment is designed to compel police forces to "keep a record of the sex registered at birth" of anyone who is a crime victim or who is arrested by the police for a crime. It also forces the police to "keep a record of the acquired gender of each person with a gender recognition certificate" who is a crime victim of crime or is arrested for a crime It also says that providing this data to the Secretary of State will not be an offence under the Gender Recognition Act. Again, I want to try to focus on the amendment and not get drawn into the wider debate, as far as I can. As the noble Baroness pointed out, I was a police officer for over 30 years, so I want to look at this from the perspective of the police How will a police officer know what the sex registered at birth is—thumbscrews, or a chromosome test—even without the consent of the victim? Maybe they could force victims to give their fingerprints, in the hope that they may have had their fingerprints taken before they transitioned and that will prove it—except they may have had them taken after they transitioned, and that will then show their acquired gender, so that will not work. Will victims have to produce their birth certificates before they are even allowed to report a crime? Of course, if someone has acquired a gender recognition certificate and used it to have their birth certificate changed, as they are legally allowed to do, the birth certificate will show their acquired gender, so that will not work either. How exactly will police forces keep a record of something they do not know and have no reasonable way of finding out unless the victim or perpetrator volunteers the information If the victim or the perpetrator is a trans person, they are legally protected from having to disclose that information. "Well, it’s obvious," some people will say, "you can tell, can’t you?" I have met trans men who you would never believe were assigned female sex at birth and trans women who you would never believe were assigned male sex at birth. I have also, embarrassingly, been with a lesbian friend of mine, assigned female sex at birth and who has always identified as a woman, who was stopped going into a women’s toilet in a top London restaurant because they wrongly thought that she was a man. The supporters of this amendment may say that if they do find out, maybe the police can record it—that maybe the victim is reporting a transphobic hate crime or for some other reason volunteers that information The second part of the amendment is totally unnecessary. Section 22(4) of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 already states: "But it is not an offence under this section to disclose protected information relating to a person if … (b) that person has agreed to the disclosure of the information"— for example, if they are the victim of a trans hate crime—or, as stated later in the same section, at paragraph (f), "the disclosure is for the purpose of preventing or investigating crime" So the police can use that information already, without fear of being prosecuted. The amendment is not necessary if the victim or perpetrator volunteers the information My noble friend Lady Brinton asked if she would have to declare every time she becomes a victim of crime, even if it is a burglary, that she has a disability? What about me? Will the next step be that I have to tell the police that I am gay before I can report that my flat has been broken into? For what purpose should victims have to out themselves? What if I get caught stealing a bottle of Marks & Spencer Prosecco?