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University Fees – a rare venture into mainstream politics in terms of what I usually blog about. As a result, I have no clue how many people that read this blog will be interested but I’d like to pose an open question. Yes, I sort of already answered the question in the title but I’m by no means certain of the outcome.

I’m going to ignore the mainstream debate over who is right and who is wrong for now, partially because every time I think I’ve figured it out, some new bit of information pops up.

It’s confusing watching everyone on Twitter run around trying to figure out the angle on this when (Takes deep breath) it’s a mixed Conservative and LibDem reaction to a Labour report proposing an increase in something Labour first introduced but the LibDem MPs pledged to vote against but later agreed to abstain in a coalition agreement but then some LibDem MPs are tied by Cabinet collective responsibility… and at this point my head starts to hurt and someone mentions Labour pledged something in 2001? I have no idea what. And that’s before we get university heads saying they’re for the report but students and lecturers against…

I have the advantage that I do not hold an elected position that needs to worry about such things beyond knowing vaguely what my own views are1, so instead I can sympathise with the BBC and other newscasters too: Good luck trying to figure out nice graphics for that on the Ten O’Clock News and make it sound exciting. I suspect the average person not actively involved in politics will probably got bored and switch over to watch the sport on the other side before you get 30 seconds in.

Back to the question, could MPs voting against fees actually be positive for the party? I’ve no doubt we’ve achieved good things by being where we are, but publicising those events is tough. For example, I hear that Nick Clegg opposed plans to scrap child benefit for 16 to 18 year olds. As a result it was never even announced, but because it was never announced there were no big headlines on it.

Instead, what we do get big headlines on is the negative points of the coalition. I suspect I am not alone in getting frustrated that despite being less than 16% of the parliamentary coalition party, we’re “punching above our weight” in terms of influence on policy. Sadly, we just seem to attract the bad press – and quite a lot more than 16% of it. Yes, we’re not getting all our manifesto promises through – because we did not win a majority, nice though it would have been if we had done.

But if the parliamentary party rebels and votes down any tuition fees increases then it removes much of the wind from the sails of those that would attack the Liberal Democrats for not standing by our principles when it really mattered. Yes, it probably be a whipped vote. But you can hardly discipline over half the parliamentary party – there have been suggestions that the NUS already have the necessary 30+ LibDem MPs required to defeat fees – and I would certainly welcome what could be a positive move in terms of standing up for our values.

All good stuff, but what of the coalition agreement? I doubt the coalition would collapse over a matter like tuition fees but it might damage chances of an AV referendum in May. Would the Conservatives fail to whip their MPs as hard if the fees rebellion defeats the increase? If the AV referendum doesn’t happen that will certainly upset a lot of Liberal Democrats… and that could cause problems for the coalition.

1University should be free at the time you attend, which is I understand what the proposals say. I’m a graduate myself and do I believe graduates should at least bear a proportion of the costs of that additional education given the increased personal earning potential, if they can afford it. The debate seems mostly for me to be on how best to recover the cost as if we can increase quality by increasing fees without burdening those that genuinely can not afford it, that sounds positive to me. However, a lot of graduates simply can not afford £30k+ of debt…

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Some news on various items I’ve commented on in the past or only mentioned on twitter:

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The police’s handling of Oliver Drage is already a disaster in wider practical terms and can only get worse.

It has been all over the internet for the last couple of days so I’m sure most people reading this have already seen the story, but to summarise a teenager has been jailed for 16 weeks because he refused to hand over his passwords. He’s accused – and we have no idea what evidence the police have – of some sort of “child pornography” offence. The act under which he’s been charged, Regulation Of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, is one that really matters to me as it was my first engagement with national politics.

The handwritten reply I received when I wrote to me MP at the time to object to much of the act, whilst a nice touch, probably just indicates the level of technical sophistication of MPs voting on the bill back at the start of last decade. Jack Straw spoke of it in parliament at the time as a “significant step forward for the protection of human rights in this country“. I agree with every word of that, except “forward”.

Back to the case in point. Even if one believes Oliver Drage is probably guilty of the crime he’s accused of, we do have a principle in this country of innocent until proven guilty. The Americans go one step further with their 5th Amendment that you shouldn’t be expected to incriminate yourself, but that’s something that we seem to have dropped ourselves as a nation.

Lets use an obvious analogy of a high-quality safe. The government is sufficiently concerned about the advanced state of the Acme-brand safe-making industry that it passes legislation forcing people to reveal to the police the code to their safe, should they be asked.

The police suspect someone of being a rather unpleasant individual who they think they can send down for several years. As a result, they decide they need a copy of whatever is in the safe they quite likely possess, so they do the usual police trick of kicking down the door at 3am.

They find and take an Acme-brand safe and lock up the allegedly unpleasant individual. But the individual knows full well what is in the safe. It might be the documents the police think he has, which could see him sent down for many years, alongside his co-conspirators. Or it might be something entirely unrelated, such as the photos of himself with the Chief Superintendant’s partner or even just some pornography (No, not the kind involving children) that he’s worried the police won’t look too kindly on. Wisely, he decides to keep his mouth shut and ends up in the local nick for a mere few weeks.

Worse, perhaps he really has nothing to hide and doesn’t use the safe, so he’s forgotten the code. This doesn’t bother him as he can reset it if he ever needs to use the safe, but an Acme-brand safe will destroy the contents so the police are not too happy with this answer and lock him up for a bit to teach him a lesson.

The story gets out and sales of Acme-brand safes rocket amongst anyone who thinks they have something to hide as the police have effectively just branded them unbreakable. From now on, every time the police kick down a door they find an Acme-brand safe inside.

Except sales don’t need to rocket as many people own one of those Acme-brand safes right now. The laptop I’m typing this on right now is encrypted. All the laptops we build for customers where I work are encrypted. When I’m performing my other job which involves putting on a uniform, all the laptops I build are encrypted. If you’re reading this on a computer running “Windows 7 Ultimate”, then you can turn on encryption in just a few clicks.

But you’d better not try turning on encryption if you don’t need it, because if you forget the code then the police will think you’re guilty until proven innocent. There’s something fundamentally illiberal about that.

The trouble is, the fix to the initial problem probably wasn’t legislation and it certainly wasn’t this legislation: You can’t kick in a digital door and the moment you kick down someone’s physical door, you’ve quite possibly lost. Technology is still developing as well and self-destructing devices are now commercially available. Unfortunately, my run-ins with some of the ideas to come out of the Home Office suggest it’s the police they’ve been asking about what they should do, not the more technically-minded.

Ask a geek rather than a policeman how to get at someone’s information and you’ll get solutions more like the film Sneakers rather than you’re average episode of “Police, Camera, Action”. Little USB key loggers which attach to the back of the machine are not new technology and can be had for a few tens of pounds. Journalists and TV programs like “That’s Life” have been installing hidden cameras for years. Get your evidence, then kick in the door.

Spying on people isn’t very liberal, but it’s more liberal than locking people up with no evidence.

Update: I’ve just run across this article from the local paper which says:

Oliver Drage, 19, told the jury at Preston Crown Court he had “forgotten” the password, when officers investigating another offence asked him to surrender it. …
Drage’s computer was seized in May last year. But by December police still did not have access to it.

Can you remember a password to a computer you haven’t used for seven months? More worrying is the judge – and I hope she’s been quoted out of context – seems to have a presumption of guilt:

Judge Heather Lloyd said: “This was a deliberate flouting of a court order compounded by your continual denial of guilt.”

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Courtesy of Andrew Godfrey at “Why The Silence Stonewall?”, we now seem to have a copy of the mysterious Stonewall consultation, which he’s also raised some good points about.

But don’t get too excited, as it looks like it’s just been a surveymonkey.com link mailed around to current donors some time yesterday. The second page of the survey contains a list of objectives for people to rate in terms of importance. “Civil Partnerships” (I don’t know why it’s called that and not Marriage Equality) is one of twelve choices, amongst usual Stonewall items such as tackling Homophobic bullying and working with the Media. “Civil Partnerships” gets just two lines of explanation, describing it as “Work to extend the legal form of marriage to gay people” without much of the colourful positive spin put on the other options which all rate at least four lines of description.

Is this Stonewall trying to justify their position by carrying out a survey they hope will support them? I don’t know. It could equally be that this is a long-planned survey and the short shrift given to Marriage Equality is because it’s been added in quite close to the deadline following all the recent fuss.

It might even be that Stonewall are preparing to U-Turn on Marriage Equality and need the completed consultation so they have some way of saving face in their press releases. I can imagine what they’d write already:
“Now we have completed our consultation on Stonewall’s priorities, we’re pleased to support this campaign…“

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Brick (Image courtesy Art by Steve Johnson http://www.flickr.com/photos/artbystevejohnson/)Imagine, if you will, the common or garden house brick. Wikipedia tells me that they have been around for over ten thousand years and they have many useful features, including strength and a convenient size for a bricklayer to handle.

And then we have Stonewall, who have about as much political ability as a brick as well as being used similarly constructing barriers to progress.

But what has spawned this new found interest in politically active house bricks? The events of last week: If you announce something in a meeting and that creates a storm of protest, then anyone with political ability developed much beyond that of a house brick might realise that it would be good to back-pedal a bit or at least not mention it again. But not Stonewall. Summerskill mentioned during the LGBT Labour fringe on Monday that they’d been consulting with government ministers over the Gender Recognition Act, an event which immediately spawned a Facebook group for a protest outside their awards ceremony next month. For those that don’t know the history, there was already a protest outside their awards in 2008 over nominating a transphobic journalist for an award, but Stonewall’s sole defence at the time was “we don’t represent Trans people and don’t claim to”. For those of us manning the barricades during that 2008 protest, having Stonewall now talk to people about Trans issues is a major insult.

OK, so Summerskill is under pressure because he apparently messed up by announcing the “five billion pounds over then years” figure as a cost of equal marriage at the Liberal Democrat fringe event a couple of weeks ago. That figure is something that it now appears may well be a complete fabrication. Perhaps he just misspoke under intense questioning? But no. Last week saw the publication of a long awaited letter in response to the “Why the silence Stonewall?” campaign. Stonewall have had weeks to work on this and you’d think would be carefully worded to calm the storm but the claim is repeated:

While writing, we should mention that we’re as concerned as you are about the gross unfairness of transgender people having to divorce upon changing gender. Our clear view is that there is a much simpler, and quicker, method of resolving this unfairness than through gay marriage. We have raised face-to-face with both ministers and officials in recent months the minor amendments we believe could be made to the Gender Recognition Act to secure this.

Brick in Wall (Image courtesy Tim Green aka atoach http://www.flickr.com/photos/atoach/)Stonewall, meet brick. It will be your mentor during your Applied Politics 101 course.

This has now gone mainstream, with an couple of articles in the Independent this morning – one from their own reporter and one from Scott Roberts from Gaydar Radio news. Jae Kay has already covered the problems with the reporting, which pretty much boils down to it being weak on facts and the paper having only spoken to Stonewall for a quote and nobody else. What I’d like to see, and this is probably more of a Guardian than an Independent style, is running a few hundred words from Stonewall and a few hundred words from one of us on the same day.

Sadly, I know this won’t happen as actually engaging with the community and in debate is not the sort of thing Stonewall do. We could ask someone else… only there is nobody else as on this, Stonewall stand alone.

We do get one interesting snippet from the Independent coverage though: Stonewall have said of their mysterious “consultation” with their 20,000 members – none of whom anyone seems to have ever met or conversed with online – that it “will finish…later this month.” Are Stonewall leaving themselves an out? It seems odd that after all this pressure they’ve only just mentioned that there is in fact a deadline on this supposed consultation. Perhaps there are hints of non-brick behaviour after all although I won’t hold out much more than a small hope that Stonewall will finally back Equal Marriage after all.

To close, I should mention that tomorrow is the LGBTory fringe event. Having apparently gaffed with the five billion pronouncement at the Liberal Democrat fringe and claiming to speak to the government on behalf of the Trans community at the Labour event, is there some new and exciting pronouncement to spring forth from the lips of Stonewall and further enrage the LGBT community? If anyone can make it to the Broad Street Novotel in Birmingham at 12:45 then you may be the first to hear.

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Sorry, couldn’t resist the alliteration in the title. I have a longer post planned for tomorrow morning which includes discussion of Stonewall’s response and the Independent article, but in the interim here are a couple of updates from Twitter and other sources that may be of interest:

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As my last post seems to have struck a chord with some people, it’s become hugely popular and some good points have been bought out in discussion in numerous places. Rather than try to reply in all those places, I’ll put a post up here.

Firstly, I’ll keep up any comment that’s reasonable debate and not a personal attack. Here’s a hint though, if your comment includes phrases like “Suck it up”, it’s going to get deleted. My blog, my rules. Deal.

It also seems some people misinterpreted the post to mean that I no longer identify as a woman. The point is that I do, but the Equalities Act 2010 now brands me a “Transsexual Person”.

On the act itself, much of it isn’t directly regressive in terms of primary legislation but goes against what had been a gradual swing towards equality over the last few years. In terms of equality, things like best practice and secondary legislation are as important if not more important in what happens out there in the wider world than what parliament originally passed. The commencement of this act means all that best practice is being rewritten – to include all the “you’re allowed to discriminate against anyone who you think might be Trans” points. We’ve been over the specifics informally with a few people, including lawyers, since the original posts went up and they broadly agree with the interpretation – not that there is really much to disagree with, given the examples in the explanatory notes are quite graphic. I’ve heard a couple of dissenting voices, but always people I’ve not managed to sit down and go through the act with. Equalities people tend to be quite surprised when we point out the specifics.

There’s been some confusion over access to services in that the act compels discrimination. It does not do this, it just allows for it to take place. However, bitter experience within the Trans community shows that we’re often the ones to suffer if someone objects to our presence. It’s rarely the loud, problematic and transphobic individuals who get excluded from spaces if they create a fuss but us, because we’re seen as an easy target. Someone objects to a fellow patient on a single-sex hospital ward who they think might be Transsexual? Who do you think the hospital are going to move? It’s worse with rape counselling services as such organisations are usually (Understandably) run by feminist-minded people. Whilst the vast majority of feminists are pro-trans there are a few second-wavists who are rabidly anti-Trans, because our very existence disproves some of their most deeply-held beliefs. Under the guise of “Some people might not feel comfortable”, they’re allowed quite legally to operate a blanket ban across the organisation for anyone with non-binary gender expression or to selectively exclude anyone they don’t like.

I’ll resort to the usual cliché here, updated to reflect modern Britain – would it be OK to exclude all Romany (Or people of colour or Hispanics if you’re American) because people might be uncomfortable or because of some constructed fallacy that all sexual assaults are carried out by a particular group? (Hint: Not all sexual assault is men assaulting women) Clearly not, so why are we so special that we deserve to be singled out for discrimination in the laws of the land?

There’s one area that is very obviously regressive though, to the point that one lawyer suggested that it may even be a drafting error in the legislation. (Many thanks to Darren Newman for spotting this one) I’ve mentioned this but never blogged about the details so I think some people are unclear on it. The specific section is Schedule 6 of the Gender Recognition Act 2004. This updated Section 7 of the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, itself modified by the section 4 of the Sex Discrimination (Gender Reassignment) Regulations 1999, with the upshot of the whole thing being that you can’t discriminate against someone at all if they have a Gender Recognition Certificate. Rather than progressively extending protection to other areas, the Equalities Act 2010 undoes the changes put in place by the Gender Recognition Act such that a Gender Recognition Certificate is no longer useful.

Or, to put it another way: Trans folk are made to jump through hoops to get a gender Recognition Certificate, including going through the trauma of state-mandated divorce just to get our Human Rights back. Then, a few years later parliament passes a law which basically tells us it was all for nothing and we’re not going to get our rights back.

Think we might be a little pissed off with this? You bet we are.

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As of today, I am no longer a woman.

Today, I can be refused entry to a hospital that only operates single sex wards, despite being at a hugely increased risk of violence.

Today, I can be refused rape counselling, despite being at a hugely increased risk of sexual assault.

Today, I can be refused entry to sheltered accommodation, despite being at a hugely increased risk of domestic violence.

As of today, the Equalities Act comes into force and I am a “transsexual person”, despite holding a full Gender Recognition Certificate.

And if you think this can’t happen to you because you’re not transsexual? You don’t need to be, someone just has to believe you are – or claim to believe – and it’s perfectly legal.

Featured on Liberal Democrat VoiceUpdated 3rd October 2010: For anyone not getting the point of the above, see this clarification post. There is also more background in my original Equalities Act post and the followup post from the same day.

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I’ve received responses to my FoI requests to the BIS and also the Treasury, who forwarded it on to the Government Equalities Office. The overall tone of the responses is best summarised by this line from the GEO response:

There have been no studies or impact assessments on the cost of implementing “full marriage equality”.

We pretty much knew this already, following Brian Paddick’s revelations in the Pink News last week. But let’s just quickly remind ourselves of the contents of Stonewall’s “clarification” from last week.

Ben pointed out, factually, that there was a cost to including provision of civil partnerships for opposite-sex couples in the motion. He suggested that ministers should publish the Treasury Impact Assessment that will have been carried out.

I guess they felt pretty safe making that suggestion, given it’s not possible to publish something that doesn’t exist. What we do have and has been published is the 2004 impact assessment of the Civil Partnerships Act. On top of one-off costs of £20 million, it estimates the worst case total cost would rise to just shy of £22 million a year by 2020 – more than an order of magnitude less than Stonewall’s calculated figure. (£22 million is the £7.7 Million Pension/Bereavement and Divorce costs plus the £14 million employers cost)

This calculation is based on an assumption of around 43,000 people in civil partnerships. (Taken from section 6.1, figure 1) To get to the kind of numbers Stonewall are talking about we need to multiply by 23 – which means we’re talking about one million people, or half a million extra civil partnerships by 2020, making 50,000 per year. By comparison, the marriage rate is not quite quarter of a million ceremonies per year.

Note that we’re erring on the side of caution in all the above: We’re ignoring separation and aiming for a figure of £500 million per year by 2020, rather than a £500 million average by that date. Despite this, Stonewall seem to think that allowing heterosexual couples to enter into Civil Partnerships will increase the combined Civil Partnership and Marriage rate in the United Kingdom by 20%.

I suggest that Stonewall should publish the Impact Assessment that they have carried out. I’d like to see their assumptions.

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With obvious parallels to the case in the Middle East just a few weeks ago, a rather worrying news story has appeared on BBC News. The headline, “Woman faces sex by fraud charges“, doesn’t sound too bad but the first paragraph is somewhat more chilling for anyone Trans…

A 25-year-old woman has appeared in court accused of tricking two women into sexual contact – by pretending to be a man.

Firstly, the obvious: a “woman pretending to be a man” could well be a transman but however they identify, it’s likely they’re on the Trans spectrum somewhere.

Secondly, even after an hour of searching through statute and case law, I can’t figure out what the person accused of this offence is actually guilty of. The case is in Scotland which has different laws from England and Wales and there is a history of “Rape by Deception” in case law, but nothing I can find written down. (If it was England or Wales, it would probably be Section 36 if the other party had mental health troubles) The article says the other people involved “cannot be named for legal reasons”, which would suggest something unusual.

It may be that it’s been misreported by the BBC and the “deception” isn’t relevant to the actual offence but whatever the specifics, this is quite worrying.