Ministerial and other Maternity Allowances Bill — House of Lords, 2021-02-25
Topic: Civil Rights
Robert Maurice Lipson Winston (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, first, let me say that I am more than grateful to the noble Lord, Lord True. At one point at Second Reading, he expressed a real sense of humanity, which is important here. Of course, like him, I recognise that "maternity" comes from the Latin "mater", meaning "mother", so it would be fairly ludicrous to exclude the possibility of "maternal" and other such words not being feminine Like other speakers, I have basically ditched my speech. I want to say just a few, hopefully relevant, things. In my life, there are four issues that have been really controversial and because of which I have received particularly extraordinary adverse and hostile press. The first was when I first discussed the possible causes of chronic fatigue syndrome with Professor Simon Wessely, who is now interested in helping the Government on mental health issues. That issue produced a storm of deeply unpleasant letters. Another is that being a Jewish member of the Labour Party who did not leave the party, that did not lead to anything other than some rather uncomfortable correspondence as well. I am proud of my Jewish heritage, as I am very proud to be British. In a way, this week we have seen a particularly good piece of common sense prevail in this country Noble Lords might remember that I raised the issue of bicycles on pavements. The amount of hostile stuff I received was unbelievable, including a few death threats. But perhaps the biggest single thing has been the question of transgender, which I first discussed about three years ago on the "Today" programme with John Humphrys. I had a lot of very unpleasant correspondence. I do not know who it was from. I presume it was from people who had a different sexuality, but I do not know for certain because I did not meet any of them. Many did not sign their name or give me an address, so it was impossible to know I was very upset to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, speak in the way she did, because we have agreed on many issues before. I have a massive respect for what she has done. I remind her that I was probably the first person, not only in this country but in Europe, to offer any in vitro fertilisation—it was free, of course—to lesbian couples. I am proud of that. It was important. I am certainly not a bigot or opposed to people’s different sexuality, and that certainly applies to transgender One thing I want to suggest is that, clearly, we will come back to this issue. We have forgotten something completely in this discussion that we really need to consider. It is all very well to speak about words, but they are often not being used correctly or with their proper definition. As a scientist and biologist, I recognise that there are very different views on gender, sex and sexuality, and they need to be stated very clearly For example, when it comes to sexuality, perhaps the greatest single biologist who has written on this and researched it endlessly is Professor Roger Short, a fellow of the Royal Society, who is now long retired. His work is really important—I dare not use the word "seminal", but noble Lords will understand what I mean. He has shown, in various important pieces of research, that sexuality is not a single issue. We have genetic sex. Each of us has around 30 trillion cells in our body, which will be either XX if we are female or XY if we are male. That is something fundamental that develops from the moment of embryo genesis. Indeed, what I showed in my work many years ago was that, within three days of fertilisation, a male embryo’s metabolism is more active than that a female embryo. We even thought about trying to use this as a way to determine whether a woman would have a male or female baby during the in vitro fertilisation process, but the figures were not discrepant enough for that to be scientifically useful There is also gonadal sex. It is very clear that somebody who has a testis is at least male, while somebody who has an ovary is female. An ovotestis is exceptionally rare. It happens a few times, but invariably all those who have given birth with that kind of intersex have been female. They have all been XX and they predominantly all had an ovary There is germ cell sex as well, because we have cells in our bodies that are either sperm, in the case of a male, or eggs, in the case of a female. Those do not change, except in some rare situations. In reptiles, changes of temperature can affect the sex of an egg. It is true that marsupials and some weird voles, Microtus oregoni, seem to be able to dictate their sex to some extent with the environment. However, that is quite unique and does not occur in most mammals and certainly all humans, as far as we know Hormonal sex is also important, and it starts before birth, not simply at puberty. Testosterone starts to have an influence very early on in the womb. It is important to realise that women, too, produce the male hormone. In fact, if they do not, the chances are they will be infertile, and they certainly will not be as good at debating in the House of Lords than if they did have testosterone. Somehow, testosterone seems to create a feeling of wanting to express yourself in some way. I make that as a rather ludicrous aside, but noble Lords will understand what I mean.