Join our Call for a Review into the Lib Dems’ Treatment of Gender Critical Members

We are writing to Party President Mark Pack to ask him to revoke the legally indefensible and illiberal “Definition of Transphobia”, end the hostile environment for gender critical Party members and commission an independent review of how this situation has been allowed to emerge.

Our Party has now received formal legal advice from leading equalities barrister, Karon Monaghan KC, that makes it clear that the Lib Dems have for some years been acting unlawfully in the way they have treated - and continue to treat - members who believe that there are two sexes, that they are immutable and that sex matters. What is particularly shameful is that the party’s actions have been not only unlawful but have also violated what should be key principles of a Liberal party, namely free speech and open, reasoned debate.

The Lib Dems’ Definition of Transphobia is both a tool of censorship, and also a symptom of a much wider issue of bullying and marginalisation of gender critical members. It both epitomises and exacerbates the problem.

We are writing to Party President Mark Pack to ask him to waste no time in revoking and repudiating this Definition, which exposes the party to reputational damage and legal challenge at members’ expense, and to commission an independent Review into conditions for gender critical Party members that considers how such unlawful restrictions to speech were ever considered appropriate in the first place. 

Click here to sign the letter. Read on for further context… 

The adoption of a “Liberal Democrat Definition of Transphobia” was announced in September 2020 by the Disciplinary Sub-group of the Federal Board, despite never having been debated at Conference or even discussed by the Board itself, but slipped through without scrutiny. 

Responding at the time, an analysis by legal collective, Legal Feminist, noted that the Definition appeared to be an attempt to engineer policy by preventing debate about it:

“The document therefore effectively requires certain policy positions to be supported, on pain of a finding of transphobia and potential expulsion.  Dissent is to be rooted out, not by reasoned discussion and debate, but by the exercise of power.  It is authoritarian, and illiberal, for a Party to close down internal debate in this way on issues of live political controversy.”  

An article in the Spectator pointed to similar constraints on policy discussion imposed by the Definition, while James Kirkup considered how it relates to our electoral positioning, suggesting that our party had become “fixated on things that are of no urgent interest to the majority of that public.” He also asked “How on earth does a Party that can count JS Mill among its forebears end up seeking to outlaw the use of the phrase ‘biological man’?”   

The debate and the legal landscape have since moved on significantly. The ruling on Maya Forstater’s EAT case against her employers has confirmed that the belief that biological sex is real, important, immutable and not to be conflated with gender identity, is protected under the Equality Act. The decision in Bailey v Garden Court Chambers underlines that this includes the expression of such beliefs, even if some people are offended.

The advice from leading equalities barrister Karon Monaghan focuses on the impossibility of requiring members to accept this extreme “definition”, under which the Equality Act itself appears to be transphobic, without discriminating against Party members who hold legitimate and legally protected gender critical beliefs. In practice, censorship of and unlawful discrimination against such members has been going on from well before the Definition was adopted, but there can no longer be any possible excuse for the Party not to recognise how unacceptable this is and take steps to put its house in order.

Critically, the advice states: 

“[Treating] a member less favourably because they hold gender critical beliefs will be unlawful direct discrimination.”

“As such the application of a policy, including by way of disciplinary action, or even the threat of such action (given its ‘chilling effect’), by the Lib Dems for the mere expression of gender critical views and for engaging in discussions, even robust discussions, around these matters, is unlikely to be justified. Accordingly, such a policy when applied to a particular member with gender critical beliefs is very likely to amount to unlawful indirect discrimination (if it is not direct discrimination). The same will be true in the case of criticising the Lib Dems’ policy on transphobia and, for example, on changes to the Gender Recognition Act, access to single – sex spaces, sport etc and the expression of concern as to their impact on females, all apparently falling within the scope of the Lib Dems’ policy on transphobia.” 

There is already significant evidence that the Party has been acting in ways that this advice makes clear are in breach of its legal obligations under the Equality Act, by silencing dissenting voices. For example, heavy-handed moderation on online Party forums routinely sees views which differ from those of trans activists excluded or deleted. At the Party’s virtual Conference in 2021, the record of the debate on a Constitutional Amendment to reinstate the word “sex” as a protected characteristic in the Constitution shows that every comment by any gender critical person on the chat forum was deleted by the moderators as soon as it was made, while personal, abusive comments against such members were allowed to remain. Many other debates and discussions followed a similar pattern. At Autumn Conference 2021, not a single speaker was called to oppose a motion on “banning conversion therapy”, while six speeches in favour of it were heard - an imbalance excused by the conference managers as due variously to “technical problems” and “running out of time” - more detail on this here.

In 2019 Baroness Lynne Featherstone sent an email to all members telling them that gender critical members’s views were “not welcome” in the Party. More recently, credible evidence has emerged that members of Party staff held a blacklist of party members known or suspected to be gender critical, in order to ensure that they could be excluded from particular roles and activities.

A further episode involved the Party breaking an agreement to allow two charities to rent stands at Conference following complaints from transactivists, potentially  breaching the Equality Act in its role as a service provider (more on this here).

Individuals have also been penalised or excluded for their gender-critical beliefs. Several allegations of transphobia made against activist Natalie Bird were dismissed by the complaints procedure, but when in 2019 she wore a T-shirt bearing the definition “Woman: adult human female” to a Party meeting, she was told that she could not hold or seek election to internal offices, or seek election as a Lib Dem to any external post, for a period of ten years: a sentence double that which might have been imposed for electoral fraud. The Party continues to take her membership subscription, but she receives none of the advantages (such as communications, or the opportunity to attend events and conferences) that other members do. Her attempts to appeal against this decision have been ignored, and she has now resorted to legal action. We hope Party leaders take careful account of the Monaghan advice when deciding on their response to this.

Another activist of very many years who is a practising Muslim, was told that he would be suspended from the Party until he had satisfactorily completed LGBTQ+ awareness training, after stating that he had reservations, based on his religious beliefs, about aspects of sex education in schools and about the impact on women of male inclusion in areas such as women’s sports and changing rooms. He refused to undergo such re-education and was eventually successful in appealing against his suspension, though only after more than a year.

In another case, a longstanding Party activist was very heavily sanctioned by a disciplinary panel for the offence of showing scepticism over the importance of pronouns as a political issue. A group of Senior Adjudicators saw these sanctions as excessive and brought their own appeal against the initial decision. The decision by the Party’s Federal Appeals Panel upholding their appeal was made in July 2021 but published only recently. It includes the following important and refreshingly Liberal statements: 

“The Liberal Democrats’ formal disciplinary process is not set up to punish people for being unsympathetic or unkind characters. Nor is it designed to deal with ‘political’ policy disagreements, personality clashes, inadequate job performance…”

“A Liberal Party cannot be in the business of policing the thoughts or beliefs of its members”, and “no person has a right never to be offended by other people’s speech, or to have others agree with their point of view”. 

It called compelled speech “an affront to freedom of conscience and expression, and contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights”, and went on to say the Party “may not compel its members to express beliefs (including about gender) that they do not hold, nor to use language or grammar that they do not wish to use (including newly-coined third-party pronouns such as ‘zer’)”. The report concludes: “The Preamble to the Federal Party Constitution states that the Liberal Democrats believe in a ‘free, fair and open society’, ‘in which no-one shall be enslaved by…conformity. We champion the freedom, dignity and well-being of individuals, [and] their right to freedom of conscience….We will at all times defend the right to…write…freely’.”

Sadly, continuing actions by the Party’s hierarchy since that was written suggest that many of those in positions of influence do not share these values.

The impact of policies informed by the novel and untested concept of “gender identity” on women, children and society at large is broad ranging and serious. But the Lib Dem Federal Board and Federal Conference Committee have made internal discussion of it impossible, partly by imposing the Definition of Transphobia, and partly by presiding over a hostile climate for anyone who queries policy in this area. This consistent censorship and abuse of gender critical members, especially women, has been happening for several years, despite Ed Davey stating publicly that he supports a respectful debate on our trans policies. 

There is no doubt that this issue can elicit strong feelings. But that is not a reason not to recognise the legitimacy of differing views or to forbid respectful debate on the detail of policy. As a major UK political party we have a responsibility to democracy to uphold freedom of thought and speech and to debate all issues properly. Any attempt to “keep a lid” on a topic for fear of annoying activists or of exposing disagreement within the Party is a dereliction of the Party’s responsibility to democracy, and a betrayal of our Party’s name. 

As long as the Definition is allowed to stand it will continue to risk bringing the Party into disrepute and exposing it to costly legal challenges. Members, volunteers and donors should not have their efforts undermined by this unnecessary and unlawful affront to free speech and women’s rights. The first necessary step by the Party is to revoke this deeply illiberal document. The next will be to consider how this shameful situation was ever allowed to emerge in the first place. 

Sign our letter to Mark Pack, Party President and Chair of Federal Board here.