Rishi Sunak confirms Scotland’s gender recognition bill could be blocked by Westminster – live

The Royal College of Nursing has announced the dates of two more strikes it is going to hold in England next month. They will be on Wednesday 18 January and Thursday 19 January.

A full list of trusts that will be affected is on the RCN’s website.

Shona Robison, who as Scotland’s social justice secretary took the gender recognition reform bill through Holyrood, told the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland today that the Scottish government would “vigorously” fight any attempt by Westminster to block the legislation. Here are the key points from her interview.

The bill as passed is absolutely within legislative competence and of course was backed by an overwhelming majority, with support from all parties.

Any attempt by the UK government to undermine what is after all the democratic will of the Scottish parliament will be vigorously contested by the Scottish government.

If the UK government were to block the legislation, the dispute could end up in the supreme court. Robison said the Scottish government could be in “a very strong position” if the legislation ended up in court. She said:

I would hope we don’t end up in court. But if we do we have a very strong position and we will vigorously contest.

• She said the bill would not undermine the Equality Act. The UK government claims that it might, which is why it has said it may deploy a never-before-used power in the Scotland Act to block it. But Robison said:

The legislation makes no change to the reserved Equality Act 2010, and that principle was actually enshrined within the bill. So we are very confident of our position and it would be unfortunate, to say the least, if the UK government was to go down this road.

Robison also said the Scottish government also resisted some amendments as the bill was being passed because they wanted to ensure that it would not undermine the Equality Act, which is a matter reserved to the Westminster parliament.

As a woman who has fought for women’s rights over decades, and who is deeply concerned about the erosion of some of those rights around the world – reproductive rights, for example, that are being reined back in too many countries across the world – but this bill does not impact on women’s rights.

What it does is allow a tiny number of people in our society to be able to get a gender recognition certificate to be able to get on with their lives.

Many trans people have been living in the required gender for many, many years. This just will allow them to have their birth certificate, and indeed their death certificate, aligned to how they have been living their lives. It has no impact on women’s rights whatsoever.

Rishi Sunak is on a visit this morning and he has given an interview. As the Sun’s Natasha Clark reports, he said “lots of people” were concerned about Scotland’s gender recognition reform bill and that the UK government was right to consider the case for blocking it.

I will post the full quotes when I’ve got them.

As Libby Brooks and Peter Walker report in our overnight story, the UK government is considering blocking a new bill passed by the Scottish parliament yesterday that would make Scotland the first part of the UK to introduce a self-identification system for people who want to change gender.

In a good analysis of the dispute, my colleague Pippa Crerar says Dougie Smith, a long-serving Tory backroom fixer best known for masterminding Boris Johnson’s “war on woke”, is thought to be driving UK government policy on this. She says:

The Guardian has been told that a former adviser to Boris Johnson is behind the UK government’s response to the new gender reform laws. Dougie Smith, who coordinated the “war on woke” pursued by the Johnson administration, has been tasked with “weaponising” the issue of trans rights before the next election.

One cabinet source claims the long-term Tory fixer, who is close to Sunak, is acting as “puppet master” to the equalities minister, Kemi Badenoch, who is fronting the government’s strategy. He was said to be behind Johnson’s strategy to stir divisions on racial, heritage and cultural issues to ally the Tories with working-class voters in “red wall” seats.

Some at Westminster believe that the UK government is just posturing and section 35 will not, in fact, be triggered. But one insider says: “It’s a high-stakes game to play. If they do, then the government simply hands over the biggest justification for Scottish independence the SNP will ever get.”

On the Today programme this morning Helena Kennedy, the Scottish KC and Labour peer, said it would be “absolute folly” for the Westminster government to block the Scottish gender recognition reform bill. She said:

For many, many years Scotland has been able to pass its own laws and to operate its own legal system. And that is no different now.

And the idea that the Scottish parliament should be overridden by Westminster because the Conservative party don’t like this would really be very disruptive to the unity of the United Kingdom. And I think that that would be absolute folly.

Critics of the bill claim that, by making it easier for trans people to get a gender recognition certificate, it will increase the risk of predatory people gaining access to female-only spaces. The Scottish government says that, under the Equality Act, trans people can already be excluded from female-only spaces in some circumstances and that nothing in the bill changes that. Asked if she thought there was an increased risk to women from the bill, Kennedy said any risk was “very, very minimal”.

She said that people running rape crisis centres and women’s refuges in Scotland were generally in favour of the bill. There was always a risk to women and girls, but that was predominantly from predatory men, not trans women, she said.

Kennedy accepted that there were likely to be legal challenges to the bill. But she went on:

But it really is only about trying to make it less oppressive for trans people. The system at the moment, where they have to get a gender recognition certificate, is a really humiliating and degrading one and lasts a very long time. And so what they were seeking was something that was much more straightforward, where it wasn’t going to involve invasive medical processes, and I think that that’s the sensible way forward.

Asked if she would like to see a Labour government introduce similar legislation for the rest of the UK, Kennedy said the Scottish bill would serve “almost as a pilot”, implying it should be extend if it turns out to be successful.

Good morning. The advent calender of strikes continues to deliver, and this morning Border Force officials have started their industrial action (joining Royal Mail workers, who are on strike again, and who aren’t delivering). My colleague Gwyn Topham has the details here.

Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union, was on the Today programme this morning and he warned the dispute could carry on for six months. He told the programme:

We think that the action at the borders is going to be very effective. We hope that the government will therefore do the right thing and get around the negotiating table and put some money upfront.

But if not, we are raising money, we have a strike fund that means we can sustain this action.

Our strike mandate lasts right up until May. We will be supporting this action up to May and we would re-ballot again if we have to.

When it was put to him that this meant Border Force strikes carrying on for another six months, he said that not only was that correct, but that there could also be a “huge escalation” of strikes in the public sector if pay offers did not improve. He said:

I think in January what you will see is a huge escalation of this action in the civil service and across the rest of our economy unless the government get around the negotiating table.

Here is our calendar of December strikes.

There will be more strike news this morning, because the Royal College of Nursing is due to announce further strike dates for the new year. And we may be hearing from Rishi Sunak at some point, because he is visiting a homelessness centre.

I’ll try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.

If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.

Alternatively, you can email me at [email protected].