Proponents of the Scottish gender reforms argue we must accept anyone who says they’re a woman as a woman. That is the point of First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s self-ID bill, which removes the need for a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria to get a gender recognition certificate. It allows any man with nefarious motives to change his sex for legal purposes on the basis of self-declaration, without any meaningful safeguards. This confers extra legal rights of access to women’s spaces, services and sports, including women’s prisons, domestic abuse refuges, hospital wards and changing rooms. It also makes it unlawful to exclude them at all from membership-based single-sex clubs and associations, such as domestic abuse support or lesbian social groups.

There has been public outcry after double-rapist Adam Graham aka Isla Bryson was remanded to a women’s prison

Women’s grassroots campaigners have been trying for years to highlight the impact this will have on the safety, privacy and dignity of women and girls. No woman or girl should be expected to undress, receive medical care, or support with sexual trauma around strangers of the opposite sex unless they choose. Yet these reforms will make it harder to exclude, for example, men who want to commit voyeurism and self-exposure in spaces where women and girls are undressing. In California, where these reforms have already happened, a woman who raised an alleged case of exposure in front of a teenage girl by someone who we now know is a convicted male sex offender was dismissed as “transphobic” in the international media.

Sturgeon has in recent months variously dismissed these concerns as invalid. Last month she stepped it up further, tarring her opponents as “homophobic” and “racist” – but without being able to give any examples. But Sturgeon has finally been forced to confront the grim safeguarding realities of self-ID as a result of the Scottish Prison Service’s policy of placing male offenders who say they are women in women’s prisons, so long as they meet a laissez-faire risk assessment. This is not required by law; the Scottish Prison Service – for which Sturgeon is accountable – has run ahead of the law, very possibly breaching female prisoners’ legal right not to be subjected to degrading treatment.

There has been public outcry after double-rapist Adam Graham – who now styles himself as Isla Bryson – was remanded to a women’s prison, and after the prison service approved the transfer of another extraordinarily violent male offender who claims to be a woman. Sturgeon has been forced to commit to a review of prisons policy on this, but is refusing to acknowledge the wider safeguarding implications of giving men like this enhanced legal rights. There is still a massive hurdle for her self-ID reforms to clear, though. The Conservative government has used the Scotland Act to stop their ratification by Royal Assent. Section 35 allows Westminster to block Scottish legislation that “modifies the law as it applies to reserved matters” so long as the Scottish secretary has “reasonable grounds” to believe it adversely affects the operation of law in the UK. No one quite knows the substantive nature of this legal test as it has never been adjudicated by the courts. But many distinguished legal experts, including two former supreme court judges, think that the cross-border implications of the reforms, and their impact on women’s legal protections guaranteed by Westminster, mean the Conservative government will likely win any legal challenge brought against them by the Scottish government.

Child refugees at risk in UK
“I think once I got here I might have been welcome. But… I might have been stuck in Calais,” said Lord Alf Dubs back in 2020 in relation to the Government’s approach to child refugees. Dubs is one of the 10,000 Jewish child refugees brought to the UK as part of the 1939 Kindertransport to save them from the Nazis. He has been a lifelong campaigner on refugee policy, particularly in relation to unaccompanied child refugees who have family in the UK.

Sadly, it seems Dubs may have been too optimistic about the welcome his childhood self might have received in 2020. An Observer investigation last month revealed that scores of children who have arrived in the UK by themselves to claim asylum have been kidnapped by criminal gangs from the Brighton hotel in which they have been accommodated by the Home Office. In total 200 children are still unaccounted for across the six hotels being used by the Home Office (176 of whom are Albanian). This has dramatically revealed the way the system fails to monitor and safeguard thousands of young people escaping terrible human rights abuses. The greatest numbers fleeing to the UK are from Iran, Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. Under UK law they should be protected and cared for by their local council, under the 1989 Children Act. However, Kent County Council warned in 2020 and 2021 that it no longer had the capacity to care for unaccompanied children arriving in small boats crossing the Channel. So, the Home Office has instead been – very likely unlawfully – putting them up in supervised hotels where no one has corporate parental responsibility for them. The Observer has also highlighted the terrible emotional and racial abuse alleged to have been inflicted by staff on these children in one of the hotels in question. We may like to think Britain is a country that would welcome unaccompanied children fleeing war zones. The appalling reality tells a different story.

Sonia Sodha is chief leader writer at the Observer and a Guardian/Observer columnist. She also presents Analysis documentaries for Radio 4