The Welsh government looks set to redefine women to include transgender females using a planned new law.
Transgender women were included in a leaked draft of its bill on gender quotas, which proposed that half the candidates in any list to be members of the Senedd must be female.
It further stated that transgender meant “a person who is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning [their] sex to female by changing physiological or other attributes of sex”.
The bill also revealed that a constituency returning officer could not challenge or make any inquiry in relation to a statement made by a candidate.
But David TC Davies, the Welsh secretary in Westminster, said he had “grave concerns” about the report and was meeting members of various groups to discuss the proposals.
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“One of my greatest fears is that the plan will have a detrimental impact on women’s rights across our country,” he said. “Those rights have been hard-fought for and I fear could now be undermined by the Labour-run Welsh government’s ill-thought policy.”
The plans are similar to those put forward by the Scottish government to make it easier for people to legally change gender.
Those plans were blocked in January by Alister Jack, the Scottish secretary, who argued that the bill watered down protections for single-sex spaces and contravened UK-wide equality legislation.
Mark Drakeford, the first minister of Wales, has long argued that he believes “transgender women are women”. Last year he told the Senedd: “My starting point is the same as Penny Mordaunt’s, the UK minister responsible at the time, who said that the UK government’s starting point was that transgender women are women.
“That’s my starting point in this debate. It is a difficult area, where people feel very strongly on different sides of an argument — and an argument that divides people who agree on most other things.”
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Cathay Larkman, Welsh co-ordinator of the Women’s Rights Network, expressed concern that the Welsh government’s move would undermine the bill’s gender equality intent. She said it would likely lead to men self-identifying as women to improve their chances of selection.
“Firstly, it undermines the rights of half of the population of Wales,” Larkman said. “Secondly, they are hijacking legislation that should benefit women and increase female participation in public life in order to embed a toxic and misogynistic ideology.
“Thirdly, they don’t have the legal powers to push this through anyway and are making a calculated risk that no one will oppose them. We are putting the Welsh government on notice: women will organise to fight this attack on our rights. This is a first step towards full self-ID in law.”
A Welsh government spokeswoman said the leaked draft was not the latest version of the report and the wording of the bill was not correct, but she would not say whether that related to the section on transgender women.
She said: “Our proposed model for quotas is designed to maximise the chances of achieving a Senedd comprised of at least 50 per cent women. Work is ongoing on the bill.”
