Live tweets from Day 3 of the For Women Scotland’s Judicial Review application hearing at the Court of Session in Edinburgh.
Session 1:
Welcome to the third and final day of For Women Scotland vs Scottish Ministers. FWS are seeking to have the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) policy of putting trans-identifying men in female prisons ruled unlawful. Live tweets follow.
Session 1 continues in the box below:
Session 2:
Welcome to Day 3 session 2 of For Women Scotland vs Scottish Ministers – FWS want the Scottish Prison Service guidance of putting men in women’s prisons ruled unlawful.
Session 2 continues in the box below:
Session 3:
This tweet thread will report the likely final session on the final day of For Women Scotland vs Scottish Ministers. FWS want the guidance allowing men to be put in women’s prisons ruled unlawful.
For a report on Day 1, try this:
For the Day 2 report, click here:
Proceedings for the final session are due to begin at 1.50pm – we’ll have one more hour of Gerry Moynihan KC (for the SMs) and what I suspect will be some barnstormingly withering stuff from Aidan O’Neill (for FWS) to close.
I’m watching this remotely on a live feed from court. Everything I tweet is a summary or characterisation of what is going on in court. Nothing is a direct quote unless it is in “direct quotes”.
Tedious list of abbreviations follows:
LR – Lady Ross – judge
GM – Gerry Moynihan KC SM lead counsel
SM – Scottish Ministers (respondents – so R sometimes)
FWS – For Women Scotland (petitioners so P sometimes)
AO – Aidan O’Neill – FWS lead counsel
Articles (eg Art8) – these are the articles in the Human Rights Act, sometimes known as convention rights because the HRA was formalised into UK law from the European Convention on Human Rights
The rights engaged by this court case are said to be:
Article 2: Right to life
Article 3: Freedom from torture and inhuman or degrading treatment
Article 8: Respect for your private and family life, home and correspondence
Article 14: Protection from discrimination in respect of these rights and freedoms
Art 8 includes the right to express your identity including a trans ID
More exciting abbreviations:
SC – Supreme Court
TM trans man (a female)
TG or T transgender
TW trans woman (a male)
HRA – Human Rights Act
TIF – trans-identifying female (a female)
TIM – trans-identifying man (a male)
F or W – female or woman
M – male or man
SPS – Scottish Prison Service
EHRC – Equality and Human Rights Commission (intervenors who spoke yesterday – Mrs Scott)
SHRC – Scottish Human Rights Commission (intervenors who spoke yesterday – Mr McBrearty)
ECHR – European Convention on Human Rights
EA – Equality Act 2010 – ruled on by SC in FWS v SM 2025
Right – I am going to get some soup. Back at 1.50pm
Whilst we’re waiting for the feed to come up – another abbreviation for you
MBM – Murray Blackburn McKenzie who have been quoted by FWS in this case extensively. They did some research into Scottish prisons and you can read about it here:
I suspect AO will bring them up again. Okay feed has gone live – we have sound but no vision – there’s just background chatter atmo
We have vision! Court is sitting
GM I need to correct something – I was asked with regard to SHRC if I made a concession on the convention rights – there is no concession that SHRC is correct, but there’s an obvious need for a conversation
LR so you’re saying SPS staff do conduct a convention compatible assessment even though it’s not expressly in the policy
GM yes –
GM I want to go back to accommodation – rule 126. despite the natural reading – it offers a gateway to allow TG people to be put in oppo sex prisons
GM it does NOT allow for men and women to be housed together
GM so long as we’re not going against the grain we can use difficult or challenging interpretation to achieve a result
LR [argues about meaning of grain]
GM [says it doesn’t preclude SPS from making the decision]
GM wants to move on to his s29.1-5 of the EA about providing a service, which does engage Schedule 3 – sex discrimination and unwanted conduct in relation to harassment
GM the issue is whether schedule 3 should be used rather as a defence the a positive requirement. My submission is there is no basis for that – in particular if we agree the no exception rule cannot be convention compatible.
GM there are limits to schedule 3 – as raised by Lady Hale in Coll. If one were building a prison, one wouldn’t build it just simply ignoring schedule 3 and saying I don’t need to worry until I get a sex discrim claim
GM I’d build the prison to anticipate one if I didn’t do it properly
LR that also applies to a policy.
GM well…
LR the building team or the policy team MUST look at the act as a whole – including schedule 3 – then that’s a policy problem – so it’s a legit challenge
GM the easy advice to give is the risk averse advice – if you maintain a strict division between M and F – in accordance with SChedule 3 – you take the view the service cannot be mixed – then you should not get a challenge based on sex discrim or harassment
GM but a risk averse policy then potentially threatens the right of a small minority of people who are TG. The easiest thing in the world is for SM to say we should have strict segregation in the light of SC ruling
GM but the risk to that is that SM are failing to take into account TG rights. If I can look at a small sample – the risk of suicide. Did parly when it enacted the EA envisage it was creating a scenario it was increasing the risk of suicide in the population? The answer is no
… they would expect that to be managed. And part of that would be keeping schedule 3 within proper bounds. So sched3 could be applied defensively, and M shall not be housed in F – that is risk averse for sex discrim, but it creates an Art8 problem for gender ID
GM so an alt route – one cannot understand schedule 3 to provide an exception free universal rule. There has to be scope for SM to make exceptions if required by convention law.
GM if there is a general rule and a limited number of exceptions – those exceptions don’t raise an issue of compatibility if the rule itself is proportionate and reasonable.
GM there are some circs when it might be thought to be hypothetical the court will make a declaration if it can reasonably forsee that individuals other than the claimant will be reasonably affected
GM [goes to case law JR123 SC]
“If, contrary to our judgment, the appellant had made out his complaint of incompatibility, a distinct question would have arisen regarding what form of declaration should be granted: should it just address the specifics of the appellant’s case or should it declare that article 6(b) of the Order is incompatible with the Convention rights of any offender?
If, at the point of granting a remedy, the court can see that the Convention rights of any individual who is in the same class of persons as the individual claimant must inevitably be violated by the same provision which has been applied to the claimant, it may be appropriate to grant a declaration that the provision is generally incompatible with Convention rights of that whole class rather than limiting the declaration to say that it is incompatible with the Convention rights of the claimant in the particular circumstances of the case.”
https://supremecourt.uk/uploads/uksc_2023_0088_judgment_updated_562562ec3b.pdf…
“This is a question regarding the appropriate remedy in relation to an established breach of Convention rights in an individual case. An assessment to support a wider form of declaration would involve looking across the whole range of cases in which the provision would fall to be applied, including in future, and in that limited sense it has an ab ante aspect.
But it does not follow from this that the test of whether the provision is incompatible with the Convention rights of the claimant is the highly deferential test applied in Christian Institute, as the Court of Appeal thought was applicable in this case.
The test applicable in this case to identify whether the Order is incompatible with the appellant’s rights under article 8 is the conventional test (or tests) addressed above.”
[that was all par 92]
GM what I say here is we have easily identified what I would call constructs – that there may be a TG prisoner with a GRC. It’s easy to ID that there may be a long-term TG prisoner – not someone who has recently changed their ID. And it easy to ID a TM
GM and I raise a TM because AO’s challenge only covers one part. What can we do about TMs? We can’t ignore them as my friend’s submission does as an irrelevance…
GM the court could conclude that if SM would act incompatibly with the convention rights of any of those three inds by having to place them in a prison of their birth sex – so they HAVE to do it as mandated by the EA – the court could conclude there is an incompatibility
between the EA and convention rights.
GM one smiles at the SC because sometimes they will, sometimes they won’t [?] If the impediment to accommodating a T person in the prison of their acquired gender – if that is the reading of rule 126.1 the court could, following R R [case law Lady Halle] – the court could
disapply rule 126 in the case of transgender people.
GM coming back to Animal Defenders. I take it up because AO says a risk of suicide in a small number of cases is simply the price one pays for having an easy to apply general rule.
GM for whatever reason we’ve actually had 5 authorities for the same proposition – what I call the Animal Defenders position – because in each case it was in the context of a qualified convention right. It was not in Art2or3.
[lists the 5 authorities]
It’s called Animal Defenders for good reason – it was HoL – Lord Bingham in the lead affirmed by the Grand Chamber of the European Court – it established any parliament can or will legislate by general classes or bright lines
… it will bring hard cases. But if the rule is reasonable then it will be judged at that level – so the hard case has no right of complaint. Within that you have to have a rule, a rule given conscious thought and the proportionality of the rule still has to be justified.
5 authorities:
Zadonka against Latvia was about Art3
Evans was Art8
Animal Defenders was Art10
RP was Art8
Priti was about Art2, 3 and 8
GM I adopt the approach of SHRC in principle – unqualified, there’s no proportionality assessment, but in relation to Art 2 if I can be blunt it’s not acceptable to kill one person to preserve the dignity of another
LR no one’s talking about killing
GM I withdraw that – it would not be proportionate to preserve a rule for one group at the expense of creating the risk of suicide for even one person
LR stepping back… imprisonment increases the risk of suicide
LR mitigating circs are put in place. The way it’s being presented is that the risk of suicide is becoming a complete showstopper
LR does it really follow that as soon as you have an art2 right – there’s a whole host of things that might bring about an art 2 right issues. Are you saying that Art 8 stops if there’s a risk of an art2 issue
GM suicide is a group thing and there are going to be hard cases.
LR i’m not saying it’s a hard case so tough, I’m saying other circs in prisons might increase suicide risk – you can’t say as soon as you ID an art2 risk you necessarily have to have a case by case approach
LR is that where you are getting to?
GM perhaps I can approach it from a different angle – one needs a general rule, secondly it must be justified – part of the answer to this – there is no existing rule saying a man cannot be held a women’s prison
LR on your construction of 126
GM yes, but invoking schedule 3 converts a defence into a positive obligation. There is no general rule saying you MUST have a separate space for M and W. You may have, but nothing says you must have
GM if there were a general rule, you must give consideration of certain things. If you imprison someone – it causes problems – mental health all the way up to suicide, but parly has considered this and decided there are good reasons
for doing so. But parly has not considered the effect of the rule that if you exclude M from W estate, suicide is an acceptable hard case. It hasn’t been considered. For Animal Defenders to apply it has to be a considered rule and parly here has not considered it.
GM it would be easy to say there must be sep faciities for men and women – toilets, changing rooms, prisons, swimming – I use swimming as an example as the SC raises it. Some clubs will have separate swimming sessions for women, but you can’t say in a swimming pool…
… men cannot swim with women.
LR you can on a particular day or time. You can’t in a prison as you’re there all the time
GM it’s the rationale tho – it’s what you may do, not what you must do. swimming clubs don’t have to segregate, but they may
To take Sched3 and expand it to a universal rule and an obligation – no because a) it’s not how parly has expressed it b) it presupposes harassment where it may be absent and it does risk a convention incompatible solution
GM In none of the cases cited by SHRC yesterday – let me just double check – Jansciuk – the sixth authority – is a discrimination case Art14 – it’s a qualified right
GM it so happens that by looking at the six – not one of these cases apply to art2 or 3 LR what’s being presented – I want to test to the more extreme position. if it were suggested… the rationale for separate prison accommodation is protecting safety and dignity of women
and that’s Art8, but there may be Art2 and 3 engagements because of the risk or perceived risk of TW…
… how are their rights balanced? What if TW are in W prisons using facilities if not cells – how are their rights engaged.
GM may i have a moment [confers with AO] my learned friend has corrected me – let’s look at X v Turkey
LR [has a tech problem] right okay I have a functioning document – AO is correct. X was a homosexual not a TG person. I turn it up to show that segregation raises art3 issues
GM in X the applicant had himself been fearful of physical abuse – he was held in seg for his own safety, but the court considered it breached his human dignity
GM a TG person has a right to live as fully as a man or woman as they wish. article8.2 invokes the rights of others – the presence of a TG person in a W prison could threaten the rights of any other prisoner and so a balance would have to be struck
GM so coming back to the stat of 75% – there is no one suggesting that all TW should be in W prisons and we know there is one TW who doesn’t want to be in the F estate
GM no one is suggesting there should be a blanket presumption that all TW should be held in the F estate.
GM the SPS policy states the care and safety of everyone must be taken into account when making an assessment – there is no part of my submission that ignores the rights of women
GM “the rights of women have to be respected, but they have to be balanced” and “the diff between the two competing petitions is that the SM ask for that balance. The Petitioners say there should be no balance – the rights of women are exclusive.”
[GM moves on to what he says is his final point]
GM this is a JR – it can go to proof – it can look at the material the SM is relying on and ask if it is reasonable. JR looks at policy, legislation or executive action by looking at material relied on
GM in this case we have that – a lengthy Equality and Human Rights impact assessment which consulted FWS and MBM and in that assessment there is a consideration on the risk of suicide
GM where my learned friend relies on Rhona Hotchkiss, AA and the Darlington Nurses case [he called them Doncaster] AO took us to a section on fact about changing facilities – that is irrelevant. Your ladyship should be v circumspect in all the affadavits advanced by FWS.
GM I would ask you to rely on Impact Assessment and if the other side find anything in what we’ve submitted which they think there is a weakness we have no problem with that.
LR the petitioners are asking me to look at their supporting material which looks into background and consequence – are you saying be circumspect about this?
GM yes – because if we get into consequence we’re getting into fact [I think he’s suggesting this would be the wrong…
… court in which to do this]
GM to give sex discrim as an example – you asked LI yesterday about the right to elect to have a case heard in a sheriff’s court or go to JR. It is established if an individual is claiming damages, they go to the sheriff’s court or wherever.
GM to assert that guidance causes unfavourable treatment requires factual evidence LR are you inviting further procedure? is RH’s affadavit contested? [link briefly went down]
[sorry big tech issues – twitter went down]
LR where does your argument go in the implicit treatment in all of this
GM the difficulty I have is in the word implicit – it does deal with cases as part of the historical narrative – I do
not suggest the SC was blind to HRA issues, but they open by saying they’re defining the words of the EA. It’s binding so far as the ratio is concerned, but the ratio does not concern human rights. EHRC
called it magesterial and that is apt, but there is no passage which deals directly of the issues in this case – so we are dealing the consequences of this case. I would not criticise it. I couldn’t in
this court. It covers most of the practical applications, but not this one. But what are the SM to do – they act unlawfully whatever they do. They act unlawfully if they contravene SC and they act
unlawfully if the contravene the rights of TG people.
Does it grapple with the issues in this case? No.
LR Thank you Mr O’Neill
AO Life is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing. Not quite sure why that phrase came to mind.
LR Orwell and Shakespeare is all very well. I want the law.
AO does art 2 give the right for the right to move into a W prison. No.TIM 3 give the right to a TIM the right to move into a W prison. No. Does art8 give a TIM the right to move into a W prison. No.
And we can be confident of that if we look at Christianou – “there is no HR guarantee that a TW serve her sentence in a W prison” that’s where we are – that’s where we start and that’s where we
end. Everything GM has argued is on the basis that there is a convention right to be in a W prison and he was pressed on that and eventually… what did he go for? Oh well it’s all to do with what
Baroness Hale said in RC. It’s about an individual with a GRC who objects to the fact her DSS coding that she was formerly a man and she says that’s a terrible invasion of my privacy and s9.1
of the EA. says for all purposes I am regarded as a woman and I’m being outed and that’s secret info covered by the EA. The claim was unsuccessful. DSS staff needed to know that.
It’s not about putting a TIM in a W prison. It was about how DSS staff operated their systems. That and only. that. The quotations taken out of context by GM were obiter observations about a
GRC in that case. So this policy is not confined to those who have a GRC or not. This policy is the reintro of self-ID – what the scott gov has said for years TWAW TMAM and non-binary identities
are valid. That policy, that approach, that sloganeering was found to be unlawful by the inner house in 2022. A decision which went against the SM, but they did not seek leave to appeal.
Presumably they accepted the decision. But they didn’t. The policy here is based on the 2011 guidance and the general understanding put forward by Stonewall and the EHRC at the time that
a GRC was for all purposes. That’s what the policy says. If a TIM or TW comes into custody they will be placed in the F estate.
LR is it not more limited than that – this is about contravention of human rights
GM it is now – they’re trying to retrofit the convention onto the policy – when they wrote it, they didn’t have to
LR is this not about timing then
GM no I’m just explaining how they got there [moves on] you have the right to your own ID – clothing, pronouns etc is all fine, but there is no right to be moved into the W estate. They don’t
want to talk about specifics – but somehow having a male murderer in the female estate is about his rights, but 75% maintain their ID in the male estate. We know they can have their identity
respected somewhere other than a women’s prison. The issue is not about being allowed to choose which estate you get into even if you threaten suicide – you can still have your rights in a different space if the male estate isn’t good enough.
The six hours we’ve just had with extraordinary re-interpretation of statutory law – is all sound and fury signifying nothing. There is no right for a TIM to be in a W prison. They’ve not actually said it’s
just one small step to have such a positive right – it’s a massive change. They’ve just asserted it. And when pushed we get frankly insulting threats about suicide
Art 2 says the state must take reasonable steps to protect life. it’s not whatever steps a person threatens to do. It’s not a get out of jail card. On his analysis if someone says let me out of jail or i’ll kill myself they’d have to
LR is it not more sophisticated than that – it needs to be assessed in a risk and sometimes the only reasonable step would be placing them in a female prison
AO despite the effects it has on other prisoners
LR if there is one person and that is an extreme risk – what then?
AO it gets assessed within the law. If you take it hypothetically – if you have someone saying – I can’t take it anymore let me out, and if not… suicide. Why does the threat of suicide give you a
power to do what you want
LR it may not be a threat. let’s leave that aside. Where – objectively – with mental health expertise etc if that analysis says so unwell they need to put put in the W estate
AO that is not the solution – before we get to that we’ve got a suicide prevention strategy and plenty of ways of dealing with suicide risk. Prison heightens the risk of suicide across all groups.
T people are not especially at risk. The idea that you make prisons mixed sex in practice for one person is bizarre.
We have to stick to the law. The case law does not even get them off the ground in this, but still we had six hours of someone saying because there is a hypothetical person who has a
convention right which is not made out and we can disapply the EA and here’s a clever way how.
There is a rule in 2011 which sets it out that – men and women should be in separate
accommodation. I think he’s trying to get round the comparator difficulty which is the SC saying it would not be a problem to exclude any man from the W prisons. So they so no it would be PC of
GR discrimination. What’s the comparator? A man who does not have a PC of GR or does not claim trans gender ID. And he’s being treated exactly the same as a man. That’s why it doesn’t
even get off the ground. There is no gender ID claim at all.
[I’ve missed the last 5mins whilst pasting all that into tweets, but I have heard a lot of AO talking about the other side’s “nonsense”, apologising for saying so and suggesting to make sense of their arguments we really have to follow them down the rabbit hole, through…
… the looking glass and into Wonderland.]
AO convention does not require activation of schedule 3 we are running around trying to catch these will o’ the wisps – in J123 Lord Sales says:
“However, the issuing of a formal “declaration of incompatibility” other than under section 4 of the HRA served no proper purpose in the present case. A declaration is a discretionary remedy and the exercise of the discretion whether to grant one should accord with general principles. As explained above, a declaration made under section 4 has a legal function as a trigger for the operation of the powers under section 10, but what has been described as a common law declaration in the present case does not have that function or effect.
A formal declaration issued by a court is a declaration of rights under domestic law. However, if section 3 of the HRA does not authorise a conforming interpretation of a provision of domestic law, if section 6 of the HRA does not apply to make conduct of a public authority which is incompatible with Convention rights unlawful in domestic law and if no issue regarding validity of action under the devolution legislation arises then properly speaking the Convention rights play no role in domestic law.”
LR help me with this – in this list of three in Jr123 – take me through it again.
AO because there is no convention right for a TIM to go into a W estate that means there is no space for a conforming regulation…
AO there is nothing in art2 or 3 which gives a TIM any right so there’s no emergency brake and rule 126 is not in breach, therefore… just apply the law.
AO the law is reasonably forseeable rather than a circus trick of acrobatics as appears to be put forward by my learned freiend
AO jumping around – the R(C) decision on the way DSS was dealing with her data.
Baroness Hale’s remarks were not made about the rights of anyone else. Our case is that putting a TIM into a W estate has an obvious and immediate impact on all the women there.
LR do any of the cases do that dual exercise of taking into account the convention rights of another group?
AO none of the cases dealing with gender ID do
LR okay
AO it’s all about how the state treats them
AO there is an ECG case involving SNCF and gender as registered on a travel card – but there are no strasbourg cases and B is about a GRC case
AO there’s no conflict or balancing of rights. Women’s issues never seem to raised at all.
AO that might be changing.
AO the claim that Animal Defenders’ bright line rule only applies to qualified rights. That was just made up. There’s no law on that. Animal Defenders was about life and death, but saying art 2 was not engaged is not taking into account the reality…
… of the situation. That was people in extremis seeking for a right to die with dignity and notwithstanding that they were told the bright line rule can stay.
AO the absence of case law is what this case is founded on there is no right for a TIM to be put on a W prison. I could go through all this stuff about how to apply the EA – in response to Ms Irvine’s stuff – do you really want me to
LR I am interested in GM’s point on procedure – the explanation given in response to the EA and the use of schedules as a defence – it does seem to me that where I do need to grapple with what I am being asked to do is the q of what I do with factual material
LR and who can avail themselves of EA remedies and relying on a schedule as their reason for discriminating… if anything which rests on me accepting facts – if that’s contested – I need to know what you want me to do.
AO there is no necessity for standing requirements – they seem to suggest you don’t have standing because you’re not an individual.
LR no it a relevancy point that stops us from drawing conclusions
LR if there is anything in determining the points at issue in principle if that turns in any way on facts which might be disputed in terms of the consequences for an individual or group – what is being put I shouldn’t accept it
… is there a common view – do you want a hearing on the facts. Napier v SM was a JR on slopping out and turned into a six week hearing. all you can do is look at the evidence. Minimum Unit Pricing started with a lot of factual stuff.
which had more and more added to it. There is no authority for saying that only the evidence adduced by the SM is worth looking at. First point – the idea that you can only look at Linda Pollock and not Rhona Hotchkiss. No. Of course you can look at both.
It’s not incompetent – you don’t say it in the last 5 minutes of your talk. We put all this in ages ago. This is the first time they’ve said disregard it. Or put it to proof. We are where we are.
LR not sure GM was saying disregard
AO I thought he was at one point. It moves. I would like to have x-ed Linda Pollock
LR but you didn’t ask
AO no we put in the AA affadavit instead which answers – you can regard it. If the court feels there is contestation on this its open
… to the court to decide to test it. JR is a flexible procedure.
AO [moves on] – there was a reference to Roddy. It was not an EA claim it was a HRA claim. The sheriff can make any order open to court of session. so individuals can take sheriff court actions,
… it still envisages that others will take the public law interest points from an issue to JR.
AO the whole structure of the EA envisages group and individual cases.
LR there’s a number of loose ends about procedure here still. Just give me a moment…
LR is the answer just in… is there a short circuit through all this which is to do with the nature…
LR just to do with the nature of the EA and the nature of the rights it confers.
AO it was analysis put forward by Ben Cooper KC for Sex Matters in the SC hearing and the SC fell on it with gratitude.
LR can I read from that and across into this case where we are discussing rights of groups
AO absolutely – that is the way into it group rights are protected and anyone in the public interest can point to group rights – s26 and s27 as the court says is about
… the protection of women as a group and this is set out in Darlington Nurses in terms of socio-cultural attitudes.
AO that’s why it’s wrong to say s26 and s27 are a defence – they are foundation for the possibility of single sex structures – it’s not a just in case provision – its about women’s right not to exist in a harassing environment and privacy safety and dignity
AO so we have rule 126 and s26 and s27 and we say may becomes a must and we’ve set that out in our Note of Argument. [he starts tum-ti-tumming as he looks through his notes]
AO on margin of appreciation on trans issues – that’s just not the case – there is no narrow margin…
… of appreciation when it comes to TIMs in W prisons. There is nothing against a bright line rule. Most recent decision on trans issues is TH v Czech republic – but there’s no narrow margin here.
AO final thing is and I think it’s a matter of agreement – there’s nothing which can disapply rule 126 – and you have to keep women incarcerated as a group separate from men for vulns that are special to them.
AO that’s it sorry for taking longer than planned
LR anything to add GM. Mrs Scott?
JS we have written our thoughts down – we pass them to you. May I have two minutes
LR yes
JS this is a policy challenge
JS it’s competent, it’s not an enforcement provision, the argument that Sched3 is a shield not a sword does not help SM. The EHRC’s concern is that the SPS policy removes the shield.
… that’s why we want to get involved. It would cause great difficulty for the EHRC if it was applying the same provision in different ways. (think this is a ref to rule 126). It would be difficult for the EHRC if it had to say to the public we construe rules in diff ways.
JS that’s it
LR Mr Brearty?
KB no your ladyship unless I can assist with any q
LR no. Alright. Thanks to all speakers over the last three days and thanks to EHRC and SHRC for responding at fairly short notice.
LR of course the applications came in at fairly short notice. To all parties – many thanks for the submission. There will perhaps be different points of view that this is all very simple and can be addressed quickly and with a short opinion. I hope it will be understood…
… it will take a little while as the arguments are complex. I am not going hold myself to any timeframe, but I would not want any expectation that this will be out very rapidly.
Many thanks indeed.
[court rises]
That’s it from me. I will now go and write this up. If you would like to join the mailing list and/or help power my work on this case and other gender-related matters, please consider a one-off donation here:
Thanks!