The temperature in the General Election campaign was raised somewhat yesterday when UK Women and Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch unveiled plans to take legislation around gender reassignment out of the hands of Holyrood and reserve the power to Westminster.
The move sparked an angry reaction from First Minister John Swinney.
Today, however, one of our readers welcomes the plan.
Jill Stephenson of Edinburgh writes:
"There is a new hate figure at which the Scottish nationalists can vent their spleen. Kemi Badenoch, minister for women and equalities, has proposed that the provisions of the devolution settlement enabling Holyrood to legislate on issues of gender recognition be revoked.
There will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth at the suggestion that any devolved powers be removed. Yet what has Holyrood shown on this issue? That it has a real talent for producing and passing bad legislation. The complicity of Labour and the Liberal Democrats in passing this, even after their ameliorating amendments had been rejected by the SNP/Green coalition, was shocking, and it revealed that their parties' leaders could not reliably explain what a 'woman' was and was not. The facilitation of biological males’ access to women’s refuges, prisons and changing rooms, and their participation in women’s sports, was little short of grotesque. Thank goodness the Scotland Secretary struck it down.
It pleases the SNP to behave as if Holyrood is a sovereign parliament. It is not. It is a devolved, subaltern assembly. And this issue above all demonstrates why it should stay that way."
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