Mea culpa: my part in the rise of the trans cult

The Gender Recognition Bill looked harmless enough. If only I'd known. . .

Double rapist Isla Bryson, sent to a women’s prison (initially)

When, in February 2004, the Commons came to vote on the Second Reading of the Gender Recognition Act, I was conflicted.

The previous weekend I had driven down to London and in the car had listened to an interview with Lord (formerly Norman) Tebbit, who was talking about his objections to the Bill. I confess that I had given the subject almost no consideration at that point. Nevertheless, I took notice of what the former Tory chairman and Thatcher ally was saying because it struck me as true. Parliament was about to legislate, for the first time in its history, to allow people to lie.

People who had been born either male or female but who had subsequently decided they were, in fact, the opposite gender – “born in the wrong body” – would be able to amend their birth certificates in a dishonest way so that, after they transitioned, the incorrect sex at birth could be displayed. The same would happen with those individuals’ passports.

Even then, I had no particularly strong feelings about the subject, mainly because I did not possess a time machine and was therefore unable to foresee the chaos and damage – particularly to women’s rights – that the genderists would inflict in the next 20 years or so. I happened to have dinner with the government chief whip at the time, Hilary (now Baroness) Armstrong, on the evening before the vote and raised the issues addressed by Lord Tebbit, informing her of my reservations about the legislation. Her only advice was not to endanger a future ministerial career by voting against the government on such a trivial subject.

I sat in the chamber for some of the Second Reading debate, not intending to speak, but rather to listen to the various arguments that supporters and detractors made on the Bill’s provisions. Having heard the debate, I was reasonably content to support the government but I confess I wouldn’t have done so had I not been instructed to do so by the whips. Such are the realities of parliamentary life.