A former SNP communications director has called on the party to delay controversial changes to gender recognition rules.
Kevin Pringle, a highly respected figure in the party, used his Sunday Times column to urge the Scottish Government to “give it more time to get it right”.
A draft Bill, currently out for consultation, proposes to reform the process by which trans people gain legal recognition of their lived gender.
It would make re-assigning gender easier, and would cut the minimum age from 18 to 16.
The issue has caused divisions in the SNP and other parties, with Joanna Cherry, Kate Forbes and Joan McAlpine among leading Nationalists to have raised concerns.
Great to see @KevinJPringle, one of the most widely respected voices in @theSNP, say a few things that really needed to be said about #GRA reform – content & process https://t.co/VXPMTM6LTt
— Joanna Cherry QC (@joannaccherry) March 1, 2020
Couldn’t agree more with this much needed sense from @KevinJPringle. An issue I have painful experience of & requiring much more gentle consideration. The sort of tough call a Citizen’s Assembly may assist with. It wont pass Holyrood as stands.https://t.co/lG96VEePfx
— Andrew Wilson (@AndrewWilson) March 1, 2020
The debate has often turned bitter on social media, and Mr Pringle called for a change in tone.
“It is grimly ironic that the discussion of complex matters regarding the non-binary nature of gender has been conducted in the aggressive style of binary politics, where it’s all about absolute win or loss,” he wrote.
For over 99 per cent of people, their sex and gender are and remain the same. This is about how society treats the very small minority of people for whom that is not true.
— Mhairi Hunter (@MhairiHunter) March 1, 2020
Trans people asked for GRA reform as they believed it would help reduce the stigma that drives the higher burden of physical & mental ill health among trans people. Arguably the nature of the debate has actually increased stigma. Not sure how prolonging it would help.
— Mhairi Hunter (@MhairiHunter) March 1, 2020
Mr Pringle, who was a special adviser to Alex Salmond and served as director of strategic communications for the SNP during the independence referendum, believed ministers had treated the issue as a “technical measure” but that it raised “much more profound issues, not lease the sex-based rights of women and the protection of female-only spaces”.
He believed a solution could be agreed, but the “biggest obstacle” to reform had been the “belligerence with which the campaign has often been waged”.
“Rather than pressing on with legislation before next year’s election, the Scottish government should give it more time to get it right.”
Mr Pringle wrote: “All governments have limited stocks of political capital.
“If campaigners aren’t prepared to engage with critics and discuss legitimate concerns patiently and respectfully, all with a view to winning their case among the wider public, then Scottish ministers can ill afford to expend finite political capital on their behalf.
“The dialogue on transgender issues needs to be taken away from the rancour of social media as its primary forum, and discussed in real communities as part of a civilised debate. It would be an ideal subject for a citizens’ assembly, for example.
“Rather than pressing on with legislation before next year’s election, the Scottish government should give it more time to get it right.”
