Bill to create gender-balanced Senedd to be published next week

Martin Shipton

The Welsh Government will next week publish a Bill aimed at creating a gender-balanced Senedd amid speculation that it will drop a commitment to allow transgender women to identify as women without a medical certificate.

In November 2023 the publication of such a Bill was unexpectedly postponed because, it is understood, Presiding Officer Elin Jones was advised that it could be beyond the Senedd’s powers under the devolution settlement to pass it.

Under the Senedd reform package agreed between the Welsh Government and Plaid Cymru in their Cooperation Agreement, the number of Senedd Members will increase from 60 to 96, the voting system will change and a number of other measures will be introduced, including reverting to a four-year term of office. A piece of legislation covering these reforms called the Senedd Cymru (Members and Elections) Bill has just passed its second stage.

Omitted from the Bill was another major commitment aimed at creating a gender-balanced Senedd via the voting system.

Seperated

Sources have suggested that this element of the reform package was separated from the main Bill because of concerns that aspects of it might be seen as beyond the Senedd’s powers. One element seen as potentially problematic was the proposal that transgender women could identify as females without any kind of medical certificate.

An early draft of the second Bill, passed to Nation.Cymru, included a section which said: “For the purposes of this section … ‘woman’ includes a transgender woman. ‘Transgender woman’ means a person (T) who is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process or part of a process for the purpose of reassigning T’s sex to female by changing physiological or other attributes of sex.

“An order under Section 13 [of the Draft Bill] must make provision requiring a person (P) as part of the process by which P is nominated as a candidate to declare either that P is a woman or that P is not.

“A constituency returning officer may not challenge or make any enquiry in relation to a statement made by a candidate in accordance with an order under Section 13 that the candidate is a woman.”

Hannah Blythyn, the Deputy Minister for Social Partnership, was due to announce details of an updated version of the Bill in the Senedd in December 2023. Journalists were due to receive a technical briefing about what is known as the Senedd Cymru (Electoral Candidate Lists) Bill on the morning of November 30. But the briefing was postponed on November 29, with a brief statement that said: “We’re still working on the Senedd Cymru (Electoral Candidate Lists) Bill, but we won’t be publishing it on December 4 as anticipated.”

This week Nation.Cymru received a tip-off that this second Bill would now be published in the week beginning March 11, and that has been confirmed by the Welsh Government. When we asked whether the Bill included allowing transgender women to identify as women without a medical certificate, a government spokesman would not comment.

Scrutinising

Cathy Larkman from the gender critical Women’s Rights Network in Wales said: “We will be scrutinising the exact details of this proposed legislation very closely. Should there be any attempt to interpret the definition of ‘women’ to include self-identifying men, then we stand ready to challenge this legally.

“The Welsh Government’s previous attempts to introduce this Bill had to go back to the drawing board after it was made clear that they did not have the competence to meddle with equalities legislation and should not be attempting to redefine ‘woman’ to include men. Similar attempts in Scotland have failed spectacularly but our Welsh Government has failed to learn from that.

“It is simply appalling that a Bill which ostensibly sought to improve the representation of women in political life included men, and that they were trying to introduce self-identification into legislation in Wales by the back door.

“Self-ID is not only not the law in the UK, but has real life consequences for the rights of women to single-sex spaces and services where these really matter. We await the details of their latest attempt with interest.”

Glass ceiling

At the time it was announced that there would be a separate Bill covering gender balance at the Senedd, Dr Lisa Cordery-Bruce, a trustee of Pride Cymru, said: “Trans women are women. Trans women have a right to stand for election as their authentic selves. There has never been an openly transgender person elected to our national parliament and it is a glass ceiling that needs smashing.”

A spokesperson for the LGBT campaign group Stonewall Cymru said at the time: “We fully support any measure to empower all women, including trans women, to take part in politics and seek election in the Senedd.

“Trans women make up 0.1% of the population in Wales. However, it is important that legislation such as this is inclusive of trans people and of other minority groups to ensure that our communities are all reflected within the Senedd.”