A Guest Post By Lorna Campbell
A VERY pertinent question: what do trans rights have to do with women’s sex-based spaces and rights? It is a crucial question, not a frivolous one meant to poke a stick at a wasps’ nest, because I believe it holds the answer to the most controversial aspects of this non-existent debate, and that the answer is also extremely controversial, although my absolute belief is that women have the right to ask the question and demand the answer instead of propaganda, and science denial not based on fact and reason, as to why male-bodied people require access in the first place. Stonewall and its allies never answer the question.
Safety, Dignity, Privacy
When the vociferous trans lobby, headed by Stonewall, talks of exclusion and segregation, it ignores the fact that female people have willingly segregated themselves in a kind of social apartheid situation for three main reasons: safety; dignity; and privacy.In the light of that, it is extremely difficult to understand the aggressive claim that trans women, in particular, need access to female sex-based spaces and rights or that trans people are being segregated and “ghetto-ized”. Third spaces for trans people seem to me to be the solution, and governments could work towards these by making available to public bodies and businesses, tax relief or direct grants to redesign their lavatories, toilet areas, changing rooms, etc. to accommodate everyone. So, again, why is access to female sex-based spaces and rights so important to at least a part of the trans lobby that they eschew any suggestion of third spaces?
More than one set of trans gender people
My opinion, and I stress that it is just my opinion, and for what it is worth, is that there is more than one set of transgender people – specifically, more than one set of ‘transgender women’. The trans woman/woman issue has been clouded because: a) the vast majority of people are unaware of it; and, b) the law around the issue has been muddied for some time. We must pose the questions: exactly who is entitled to have and exercise women’s rights; what is a ‘woman’; and, if one male-bodied person is allowed total access to all women’s rights and spaces, what, then, are the implications for all men, trans or otherwise, being allowed access, effectively creating unisex public spaces and rights; but, crucially, for the benefit of male-born people, because women’s rights are far from being equivalent even in the 21st century? Will allowing one set of male-bodied people into women’s and girls’ rights and spaces lead to the demise of their sex-based rights and spaces across the board?
Adult human female
If we accept the rational, biological view accepted for millennia, that a woman is an adult human female, we must also accept that adult human females (and girls, by implication) require the retention of sex-based spaces and rights, as these spaces and rights were founded on the principle, in the West (and elsewhere) that biological females require their own safe spaces, away from the eyes of men precisely because it is men who are at the very root of women’s safety problems, and that it is women’s biological sex that creates that safety issue. Men (some of them, certainly not all, but enough) constitute a threat to women’s bodily integrity in a variety of ways, to their mental well-being (if they have to exist in a state of flee or fight at all times), to their sense of self and their need for dignity, respect and privacy because of the functions of their biologically-sexed body. If that principle is accepted, then there can be no access by any male-bodied person to women’s spaces and rights – and, crucially, if that principle is not accepted, why is it not accepted? Does this determination to enter female-only spaces and rights by so many sheltering under the ‘trans umbrella’ tell us more about what is really going on than we are willing to face or articulate?
Men’s sexual rights?
Lesbian feminist academic (Political Science) Professor Sheila Jeffrey’s “Enforcing Men’s Sexual Rights in International Law” is extremely illuminating in her analysis of this particular question, where she alleges: “… We have been looking at the tip of the iceberg and not noticing the growing, powerful international men’s sexual rights movement that supports what trans rights activists are demanding… There is a huge international human rights campaign backing this local trans rights activism featuring powerful individual and corporate donors, a range of very influential human rights organizations… The notion of ‘gender identity’ makes ‘gender’, i.e. the behaviours of a system of oppression, into something natural and inevitable. It eradicates the five-decade feminist struggle to eradicate ‘gender’, which was previously, and I think more clearly, called ‘sex roles’ and meant who did the housework, and chivalry etc.
She goes on to say: “… I have called this talk the protection of men’s sexual rights in international law because the idea of what are now called transgender or gender identity rights came from men with a sexual interest in cross-dressing. Cross-dressing, which has also been called transvestism, is what is called in sexology, the so-called science of sex, [and] a paraphilia… Ten percent of porn is transgender erotica, all directed at satisfying the sexual desires of cross-dressers to experience the humiliation of being feminized, most often forcefully… There is evidence too on the websites that sell men… women’s body suits or body parts to masturbate into… Men’s cross-dressing for sexual excitement has a long history, but before the second half of the twentieth century these men did not say they were really women… “
Trans women are women
Therein, in that last sentence, lies the fundamental issue – the now prevalent ‘trans women are women’ view – and the division in the trans movement: one part represented by trans women such as Dr. Debbie Hayton and Rose of Dawn, for example, who speak out openly against what is happening, who know and articulate that they are trans women, and who have no desire to enter women’s spaces or sports or female-specific jobs or services or push themselves on to all-female reserved lists; and the other part, sheltering under the ever-widening trans umbrella, the TQ++++++ ad infinitum, which appears to be determined, aggressively and at any cost to women, even the eradication of all their rights and spaces, to gain access. For some of the latter group, it will be validation that they are seeking and they might not be particularly dangerous to women and girls (homosexual trans, for example) but the reality is that there are those who are predators and who will use universal, unquestioned self-ID to gain entry, and there are those, just as dangerous in a different way, with a heterosexual paraphilia that centres on submissive feminization: the flashers and the touchers; the voyeurs and heterosexual autogynephiles who get their kicks from a male/female sexual persona. Why exactly do these male paraphiliae constitute a women’s access problem but not a men’s acceptance one? If these are men, why are they not campaigning to be accepted by other men, rather than forcing women to “just be nice” to them? Why? It cannot be fear because allowing any and all self-ID males into female spaces would make that more acute for both women and trans women, would it not?
Trans men missing in action?
Trans men (female to male) are conspicuous by their absence in most Stonewall and other trans groups’ public pronouncements, yet it is the FtM group that has expanded by around 4000% in recent years, and they form the bigger percentage of those opting for physical transition (removal of breasts) especially in the teenage years. These girls are not in the same category as many trans girls/women (MtF). Many trans men (FtM) express their rejection of womanhood as being inferior and many articulate their anxiety-inducing early sexualization, the prevalence of internet porn and the sexual gaze of boys and adult men, with which they feel unable to cope except by giving in to it all or rebelling against it; many may well be lesbian rather than trans, but they are not being encouraged or allowed the time necessary to explore their sexuality properly to discover whether they are or are, indeed, body dysphoric/dysmorphic, and trans.
Legal consent
Youngsters are also being missed out on demands from the trans lobby: what are their special needs as young humans who may be too young to give legal consent to hormone treatment and/or surgery? The Scottish Government appears to be adopting the Nelson position and turning a blind eye, but any reform to the 2004 GRA, if it happens, must take them and their human rights into consideration, too, and establish and re-inforce their legal rights as minors in the area of legal consent.
Legal fudge
The ruling by the Employment Appeal Tribunal in favour of Maya Forstater’s “philosophical belief” (a legal fudge, if ever there was one, after she was dismissed for so-called ‘transphobic tweets’), although a victory of sorts and an important one, does nothing for scientific/biological reality or for women and others who hold that human beings are a dimorphic species (two sexes) because, of course, that is the true legal position (although one would scarcely credit it, in the prevailing political and legal climate) but, if you hold the view that biology trumps the ‘feeling’ of being transgender, which is also deemed to be a ‘philosophical belief’) one is still scuppered because one must still address a trans woman by her chosen pronouns which means, ultimately that one will still be forced to acknowledge the unreality that one’s rational self cannot acknowledge without mental conflict: the legal cleft stick, because, she, the trans woman, also holds the ‘philosophical belief’ that transgenderism is reality. Good manners might preclude not using self-selected pronouns, but the law does rather enforce their use even where a person holds a rational and biological view of sex. When the Scottish Hate Crime legislation is enacted, it could well become a hate crime not to use them, thereby forcing, through legal sanction, a ‘biological unreality’ which the vast majority of the population does not believe to be rational.
Legal reality
EHRC Statutory Code: 2.55 Sex is a protected characteristic and refers to a male or a female of any age. In relation to a group of people it refers to either men and/or boys, or women and/or girls. 2.56 A comparator for the purposes of showing sex discrimination will be a person of the opposite sex. Sex does not include gender reassignment or sexual orientation.
Equality Act 2010 Explanatory notes says: 41. This section defines the protected characteristic of gender reassignment for the purposes of the Act as where a person has proposed, started or completed a process to change his or her sex. A transsexual person has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment.
42. The section also explains that a reference to people who have or share the common characteristic of gender reassignment is a reference to all transsexual people. A woman making the transition to being a man and a man making the transition to being a woman both share the characteristic of gender reassignment, as does a person who has only just started out on the process of changing his or her sex and a person who has completed the process.
Irreconcilable
So, what is to be done to open the issue of trans rights versus women’s rights to the light? I believe that there is no way, at a fundamental level, that women’s rights can reconcile with trans rights in a way that allows access to any and all males who choose to self-ID as women, no way for natal men to breach women’s safe spaces and sex-based rights without destroying all of women’s sex-based rights and spaces, and eliminating, effectively, ‘womanhood’ as understood for millennia. Does that mean that trans people cannot be safe, cannot have all their rights, have easier and cheaper access to a Gender Recognition Certificate and to live their lives as they please within the law and with respect for the boundaries of others, as others should respect theirs? Of course it does not mean that. Third spaces must be the answer, as well as far greater legal emphasis on the Equality Act 2010 provisions for protection of both women and trans people – specifically acknowledgement that trans women, even those with Gender Recognition Certificates may still be excluded from women’s sex-based spaces and rights, sports and female-specific employment and services. The trans lobby needs to spell out why that is not its position; precisely why those sheltering under the trans umbrella need access to women’s spaces and rights as opposed to want access – which is a very different thing, and requires explanation beyond the supremely simplistic, and linguistic and mental gymnastic claim that “trans women are women”.
Female rights are human rights
The explanation that is usually offered, that trans people are the most persecuted and most vulnerable in society simply does not stand up to statistical scrutiny, when statistics show that well over a hundred natal women a year are killed at the hands of men, for the most part.
It would mean, of course, that trans women would not be validated as women in those spaces, although legally, they will be ‘women’. This solution would solve the issue for both groups and their competing rights, and if it is not accepted by, specifically Stonewall and its arms, and, thereafter, by the UK and Scottish governments and all public and private bodies and businesses, global and national, we, the voters and citizens, the purchasers of goods and services, the users of on-line platforms, must draw our own conclusions as to the real reasons for such a refusal, and act accordingly with the ‘weapons’ at our disposal: our votes; our purchasing power; and our right to dissent. The right to dissent would, of course, be a female human rights issue and include calls for the Repeal of the 2004 Gender Recognition Act as redundant and having been superseded by same-sex marriage legislation and data protection legislation, and, if successfully repealed, would lead to the retention of the two-year qualification and medical obstacles before a legal Gender Recognition Certificate could be awarded.
Lawful exemptions
No threat is explicit or implicit in the recognition of the need for the tightening up of the 2010 Equality Act protections for women and girls in light of intended reform to the 2004 GRA. The Equality Act sets out a range of situations where it is lawful to provide single or separate sex spaces and services such as changing rooms, hostel and refuge accommodation, intimate care, hospital wards and so on. No special procedure is needed to activate these ‘exemptions’, which provide women and girls with dignity and privacy on an everyday basis and allow for more specialist services for vulnerable women. They are what permit the existence of separate changing areas for women and men, for example. Where objectively justified, the Equality Act allows service providers to exclude all male people from certain places, including trans women with a GRC.
Lobbying and politics
The reality of our world is that women do not, generally, own huge business empires that donate to political parties, so they are immediately at a disadvantage if the high heid yins of some of these global empires are themselves deep into men’s sexual rights, with trans rights in the vanguard, or if they see mega bucks as the be-all and end-all of transgenderism. Neither are females likely to be helped by big corporate legal names such as Denton’s, which designed Stonewall’s approach to debate: that there should be none. Should governments, who are elected to serve all, be taking sides, in any case? What is the legal locus of the Scottish Government’s stance, when Nicola Sturgeon frequently talks of “standing full-square behind trans people”? Why is she not also standing four-square behind women and making videos to tell women that they are valued members of the SNP? Why the telling silence around the trans lobby’s on-line verbal and written transgressions against women, even high profile women in her party? It all seems very partisan, and we know of Liberal Democrat, Jo Swinson’s adherence to trans issues, the subsequent public records that her party received donations from certain ‘interested big business’ connected to the trans issue, allegedly, and which may not have been in any way connected to each other), to Labour’s Lisa Nandy’s support for the trans lobby, and so; and that big business, lobbying and politics are all part of the same equation.
Lopsided scales of justice?
The Scottish Government, however, has not clearly stated how it believes that the single-sex exemptions should operate, but it has made it very difficult (deliberately?) to implement the Equality Act sex-based exclusions and make them work for women, when it insists on publicly-funded bodies allowing access to services and other facilities by gender reassignment, the latter being protected by data protection legislation so that sex and gender are (deliberately?) confused. In essence, the Scottish Government has not done its homework in relation to legal due diligence, and has let women down very badly, nor on legal consent for young people: the scales of justice are down for women and young people and up for trans women, courtesy of the SNP administration, when they should be of equal weight.
Agree 95%. Well said.
I object to ‘Legally women’ tho. It takes away women’s gains on equality of representation by saying a TW IS legally a woman. So ‘no’ to that as well.
Otherwise, yes indeed. Thank you!
Monica, intrinsically, I agree with you, but we cannot turn back the clock and take away rights from people who have them: that would, indeed, be taking away trans people’s human rights. The 2004 GRA is, to all intents and purposes, redundant, superseded by subsequent legislation, and will become more so, with self-ID, yet the trans lobby wants to hang on to it. Why?
The point is that whether a trans woman is a woman for legal reasons (changing birth certificate, etc.) that should not mean that there is no way to know the legal birth sex of that person for statistical reasons. Also, it should make not an iota of difference to the 2010 Equality Act exemptions based on sex, rather than gender. This is where the trans lobby is concentrating its firing power and it is the reason that I keep asking: why do they want access to women’s spaces and rights when their needs can be accommodated within third spaces? Simple validation just does not cut the mustard here, and we are being bulldozed into something that will have severe repercussions for all women and girls, and for all children of either sex. Why?
If we can prise an answer out of the trans lobby led by Stonewall and its arms, I think we will be on terra firma, and the real reasons for wanting access to women’s spaces and rights has far more than validation (trans women are women) at its core. We should avoid getting hung up on the minutiae, although I absolutely agree that it, too, is important, and look at the bigger picture, which is crucial if we want to come through this terrible time with our spaces and rights intact and with trans people not deprived of their rights either.
Absolutely brilliant Lorna .
Would that * Feminist to her fingertips * N Sturgeon had the bravery to debate this with you in a public forum : you would intellectually tear her apart and expose her for the shallow , virtue-signalling ” No debate ” fraud she undoubtedly is .
For which reason she would never expose herself to such a – for her self and public image POV – risky encounter
Thank you, Robert. I was the only member of my school debating team who never debated; I supported. Still find it hard to speak in public.
Thank YOU Lorna .
As a nondescript * boring * , old ( well , middle-aged ) white , heterosexual , working class Scottish man I at times wonder if I simply don’t understand the complexities of contemporary cultural changes .
I remember when I was a teenage participant in and advocate of * Hippie * values , with all the attendant disagreements with my parents and * straight * society that entailed , and have thought ” well , am I just missing something here , am I , like my parents , incapable/threatened by something outwith my own experience/understanding ? ”
Your thoughts and articulate expression have been invaluable in giving me , and I’m sure many others , a clearer perspective and rational assessment of this * issue * , which seems to me of an entirely different character to the ” Drugs are good v Drugs are evil ” disagreements of my generational history . For one thing ….nothing about the * Drug Culture * threatened the very existential reality of Womanhood in the way * all that * does .
Again , thanks and more power to you – and all women , for fighting back against – can’t think of an adequate description- have to settle for ….unhinged delusion
Robert: I do believe that this is not a generational thing at all, and that many young people, allowed to make up their own minds, will see that, too, eventually. Fads and new ideas will always find a way to make themselves known. I have heard trans advocates state that this is very like the persecution that homosexual people (men, in particular) suffered. It is not; it is nothing like that. The authorities do not persecute trans people. They have all their human rights and civil rights. Society, I think, actually tries to understand without condemning. I know I was very supportive till all this turned ugly. Third spaces are the solution, but if the trans community argues against those, which can be funded by tax relief and/or grants, then we really need to know, as a society, why that should be so. The fear of ‘ghetto-ization’ is no answer because women have ghetto-ized themselves in their own spaces for very good reasons, so why can’t trans people? No, the determination by the trans lobby to gain access to all women’s spaces, rights, employment, board places, etc. specifically (no push for the same access to men’s spaces for either trans women or trans men) suggests this is something very different and much more sinister. If it really is not, they need to explain why they want access in the first place and start to show women some respect and stop demanding that we be nice to them. We are not their handmaidens.
Indeed Lorna .Again you make all the relevant points .
Hope you’re able to continue your excellent work/insight on this issue . It doesn’t look as if the zealots are going to stop anytime soon .
Excellent as ever from you, Lorna. I used to subscribe to ‘The National’ and entered into discussions on its online Comments page. I applauded your frequent contributions.
Unfortunately I haven’t read your views for a while. For years and for the sake of supporting a pro-Indy newspaper, I subscribed to the National despite its misleading headlines, grammatical howlers and increasing servility towards Nicola Sturgeon. Articles by such as Joanna Cherry made it worthwhile and although I don’t agree with many of Michael Fry’s views he writes articulately and it’s good to have one’s views challenged by an intelligent writer. The quality of journalism hit an all time low, however, when the National gave Stephen Paton a platform. For me it was the final straw. I stopped supporting the newspaper.
Thanks to Barrhead Boy for affording me an opportunity to access your writing once more.
I still buy the hard copy, Joan, and may well subscribe at some point. Print journalism close to my heart, and still some excellent pieces in The National.
Agree. But spaces includes (to me) more than just physical areas. I also don’t want to see 50/50 boards, etc, become half men and well, half men, limiting female choices and chances. This was never a problem with the small number of people with a GRC. If this number drastically increases, I worry. Women’s representation should be done by women who grew up as girls as no one else can understand our particular issues and situations. Sympathize, yes, but there’s nothing like ‘I’ve been there’ to provide support. Hopefully this can be stopped as well, but the more men who are legally women, the harder this will become. Retroactively protecting the 6000 or so people with certificates may be the answer. I don’t know the answer. But allowing men to legally become women was never a good idea in my view. A short-sided answer to a problem.
Best wishes. And thanks for this brilliant article. I’m passing it on to my friends as you explain so much better than I ever could!
Absolutely agree, Monica. My definition of ‘women’s spaces’ would include female-only representations on boards, female-only employment, etc. No way should trans women get in the back door, as I suspect this is part of the aim, too, to actually push women out of all public representation everywhere. Third spaces and rights are the only way to prevent this, with trans people campaigning for their own representation. Everyone else had to do this, including women, black people, disabled people, and so on. Why should trans people piggy-back on our rights and spaces? The arrogance and sense of entitlement is breath-taking.
Thank you, Lorna and of course Barrhead Boy. I have not until now, been able to understand Sturgeon’s staunch stance in this discussion. It seem it’s simply the “same old, same old” – ie follow the money. The SNP spends a huge amount on top salaries so they have to look around in order to remain in business. The desire to retain power seems to blind some people to all else. Sad but also risky when the truth is revealed.
Lorna I have read and enjoyed many of your comments over the years and I agree with what you have written here ,the problem I have is that to capitulate in any way is ALWAYS taken as a weakness and the current shower of lunatics have shown they will not debate or consider alternative views , their stance is dogmatic , threatening and immovable , they cannot be reasoned with as sturgeon and cabal have proven
As an elderly male who has appreciated real females all his life , friends and family , I am disgusted and enraged that these deviant biological deniers can hold so much sway over governments and institutions
(MAPS) or paedophilia the correct disgusting and proper terminology is waiting in the sidelines when these lunatics get their way
Excellent article Lorna. I have read and commented on some of your writings in other media and have always enjoed reading what you have to say. I too agree with most of your comments and was going to point out the TWAW with which I personally have great difficulty. Without meaning to be insensitive, I think it is a nonsense for us to say that men cannot become women but on the other hand they can have the legal position of being called women. However, you have made the valid point that it would be removing trans people’s human rights. I agree that the question surrounding trans people’s demands to have access to women’s single-sex spaces, has never been properly answered. Other women’s validation, we are told, is important to them but women know there is something more that men do not wish to be discussed. Third spaces are the only answers but when I have suggested this to others I have been told that Stonewall and trans people will never accept that. Their silence and refusal to enter into discussion about it, merely convinces women of their right to refuse access to men who say they are women. This is where we are at present and, as the predatory behaviour of men has not changed, women are in no position to give up their single-sex spaces. Thank you for a very good read.
The poem goes, ‘first they came for the communists – and I did nothing’
But it fails to address the elephant in the room.
First they came for the women (always and everywhere)… and I did nothing because it was so indemic, I failed to notice.
I’ve mentioned it before, but I think the course of action being pursued by Stonewall etc to hound women and others who are Self ID Gender Concerned – amounts the crime of Terrorism.
Great article Lorna, wings have set you free.
Agree, Daisy, it is, indeed, a form of terrorism, with misogyny at its root.
As usual, your dissection of the problems of sex/gender ideology is razor sharp! Excellent article, well articulated in a way I cannot, and expresses most of what I believe to be the case for/of Stonewall.
This is a dangerous time, in Scotland. I agree with you as to the answer – third spaces, but I see absolutely no signs of Scotgov accepting that as a balanced & non-threatening answer to the problem. I believe they don’t want balance, but simply intend to give Stonewall what they want. Why would that be, I wonder?
Scotgov are in financial trouble. And dare I say that lobbying & getting governments on board certain… ‘equality’ issues, could prove very lucrative and at the same time, serve the party very well. This is a fight that WOMEN will have to make. Because, as I see it, Scotgov are showing no signs & have no intention of changing direction.
Thank you Lorna, for putting a huge problem in such a succinct manner & proving there IS an answer… if an answer is what all parties are looking for.
Katie: this is, indeed, a fight that women will need to make – and win, crucially. The Bloggers, and many other men, have backed us, and we are all very grateful; this is a human issue, not just a woman’s one. That any government, that exists to serve all its people, that uses everyone’s taxes, including women’s, to fund projects and day-to-day government, should be so in thrall to one lobbying group because it has rich and influential backers, says much for the current climate in which we live. It is almost certainly illegal, and also morally disgusting.
All the nonsense we believed about the Scottish government being different has proved to be so much chaff in the wind. It is exactly like the UKG, except that the UKG, the Tories, are not pandering to this lot in anything like the same way. You could say it is because they are right-wing. Maybe, but the women who feel abandoned are from all parties, all political creeds and are as diverse as even Stonewall could wish for, but don’t actually mean women, only trans women, so not even trans men either, who are going to be in no hurry to occupy male spaces and rights, like prisons, changing rooms, etc.
When a so-called trans woman says of natal women that they are sex dolls that you can’t use for a week each month, that should leave us in no doubt about just who wants access to our spaces and rights, employment and everything else. These people are utterly shameless, entitled and arrogant. This person also claims to wipe off his penis on door handles and deliberately pee on seats to get at women for our temerity to try and keep him out of our loos. Horrible misogynists, misguided fetishists, and worse, or genuine body dysphoric/dysmorphic men? How can we possibly know, Nicola Sturgeon? Explain that one, please before you introduce self-ID and five quid Gender Recognition Certificates. If she does try to go ahead with this, we must get out on to the streets and call for the entire abolition of the 2004 GRA as having been superseded by subsequent legislation, and for repeal on the grounds of its redundancy. Plus, the introduction and funding of third spaces.
Exodus over transgender advice continues as Government pulls out of Stonewall diversity training.
https://archive.ph/GLt9S
The Cabinet Office confirmed that it and the UK Government Equalities Office have ended membership of the controversial LGBT charity’s Diversity Champions scheme.
It comes as Liz Truss, the women and equalities minister, suggested all Government departments cut ties over growing fears that the scheme lobbies for workplace policies that risk being at odds with the 2010 Equality Act.
The programme counts 250 Whitehall departments and public bodies among its 850 members, who pay at least £2,500 a year for guidance on pronouns and gender-neutral facilities.
Nice little earner as minimum the Rainbow Mafia will be getting in ‘protection money’ is 850 x £2500 = £2,125,000 p/a!
Yes, Jockanese, it is a very lucrative business they have there, and who wants to sabotage their own business with honesty and open debate when they can just walk all over women with impunity? The Scottish Government, however, will just entrench itself if past glories are anything by which to judge. Most of the legislation around this issue is UK-based and originated in Westminster: 2004 GRA; 2010 Equalities Act; and human rights as pertaining to the UK as a whole, albeit Holyrood does have some input. If Westminster does change the legislation, Holyrood will either follow suit or introduce its own – which would be interesting in the light of the controversy. Perhaps they should have stuck to being impartial.