Defund the DEI

The Scottish government hands millions to groups promoting a trans ideology most voters find repugnant. Why?

Before “transition”

In January last year, a nurse of 30 years’ standing, Sandie Peggie, was suspended by managers at the Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy because she objected to a man, Dr. Beth Upton, who had self-identified as a woman, being present in the women’s changing room. She was dealing with excessive menstrual flow at the time. Appalled that she was accused of “bullying” Upton, she took NHS Fife to an employment tribunal, claiming victimisation and unlawful behaviour. Ten days of intense hearings ended last week with no resolution.

The case has assumed national importance—indeed, it has become a serious test of John Swinney’s leadership as he comes under pressure, not least from opposition Labour leader Anas Sarwar, to state exactly what the Scottish government’s policy is on what is called “self-ID” and whether NHS Fife is right to insist that natal men have a right to access women’s changing rooms. Yesterday, opposition MSP’s tried unsuccessfully to force a statement in parliament.

The Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill, which asserted this right, has been stalled for the last two years, and Mr. Swinney has made it clear he does not intend to revive it. However, NHS Fife appears to believe Self-ID is already on the statute book. NHS Fife have now doubled down on their campaign against Ms. Peggie by announcing, during the hearings of the employment tribunal, a new and separate investigation into her alleged “misgendering” of Dr. Upton. This could lead to her dismissal, whatever the outcome of the tribunal, which is now in recess until July.

The Peggie employment tribunal demonstrates just how far gender ideology has infected the public sector. NHS Fife’s HR department claimed that Upton had an inalienable right to use women’s toilets. Peggie’s NHS line manager, Esther Davidson, told the tribunal last week that she was “not permitted to exclude transgender females from the changing rooms”. This is far from being the case in law, as the Equality and Human Rights Commission has repeatedly made clear. On the contrary, women have a right to single-sex spaces under the 2010 Equality Act as “a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.” The Workplace (Health, Safety, and Welfare) Regulations 1992, moreover, require public bodies to include “separate facilities for men and women where necessary for reasons of propriety.”

Dr. Upton claimed last week that he was “biologically female” and therefore that he was fully justified in undressing in a women’s changing room. Yet he doesn’t even have a gender recognition certificate. Upton may be deluded, but the Scottish NHS is the real guilty party here. The dogma that trans women are women has become so deeply entrenched in the state bureaucracy that it has become almost unchallengeable.

Like the Scottish Prison Service, large firms and Scottish universities, Fife Health Board has been schooled over the past decade by wrong-headed DEI policies to believe that employees must be accepted under their “social gender” not their biological sex. HR departments have taken their guidance from a galaxy of largely state-financed LGBTQIA groups. These include the Equality Network, Scottish Trans, LGBT Youth Scotland, Stonewall Scotland, and many other NGOs and lobby groups. Their attitudes and prejudices are now embedded in the Scottish civil service.

There is big money in transgenderism. No one knows exactly how much taxpayer’s money goes to funding these activist bodies because the Scottish government refuses to say, despite a Freedom of Information request last year to do so. However, The Times reported that LGBT Youth Scotland alone got £2 million last year from the taxpayer to spread gender ideology in schools. The Equality Network and Scottish Trans get a million or so. The Scottish Government has also been spending around £100,000 on the discredited trans activist group Stonewall.

Money has been allocated through various conduits to finance gender ideology, such as the £2 million that NHS Scotland spent on “gender identity health care improvements” last year. Then there is the cost of all those DEI advisers hired by NHS Fife and other local authorities’ HR departments. And of course the legal costs incurred in trying to defend the indefensible in tribunals and courts.

It doesn’t end there. Rape Crisis Scotland and Women’s Aid get to share £2 million annually, much of which appears to be diverted to causes other than combating domestic violence. Both were on the front line of Holyrood demonstrations promoting the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill and have been leading advocates of Self-ID. Sandy Brindley, the head of Rape Crisis Scotland, still can’t say what a woman is. Until recently, Edinburgh Rape Crisis was run by a man, Mridul Machindra Wadhwa, who “self-identifies” as a woman. Women’s Aid recently advertised for a senior manager and invited “men who identify as women” to apply. Real women, traumatised by abuse from male partners, are therefore expected to b counselled by natal men.

Scotland has been living under the tyranny of trans advocacy for too long. There should be a thorough review of the public money that has been spent on lobby groups that promote political causes. It’s time to defund DEI.

NHS Fife should use the current recess in the employment tribunal to see sense, reinstate Sandie Peggie (with compensation), and stop spending public money on notions that defy human biology and natural justice. And John Swinney must get off the fence and make clear that the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill is dead and buried. This ends here.