Women risk having their human rights violated by new guidance that allows them to be strip-searched by transgender police officers, campaigners have warned.
This guidance, seen by The Daily Telegraph, has been issued by the British Transport Police (BTP), which says its male staff who identify as female are permitted to intimately search women so long as they have a gender recognition certificate (GRC). Labour earlier this year also suggested it would make it easier for individuals to attain GRCs—which allow transgender people to have their adopted gender affirmed and legally recognised—in the first place.
Human rights charity Sex Matters believes that the policy is “unlawful” and has threatened the force with legal action. It described the intimate searching of women by transgender officers as “abuse against women,” adding that it “amounts to indirect discrimination and harassment against women because it places women at risk of fear, humiliation, indignity and harassment.”
Cathy Larkman, a retired police superintendent who is now national policing lead for the Women’s Rights Network, also told the Telegraph that the guidance risks bringing about “state-sanctioned sexual assault.”
[The BTP’s] eagerness to bring this in despite the clear warnings made indicates that they have forgotten about women’s rights, or at best that these can be dispensed with. But women have human rights too.
Similar National Police Chiefs Council guidance was temporarily withdrawn following a backlash earlier this year.
Leading Conservatives have also weighed in with criticism regarding the guidance, including shadow equalities secretary Claire Coutinho, who asked: “Who benefits from allowing transwomen to strip search biological women?”
This compromises the dignity of biological women for the sake of nothing but ideology.
Former Tory MP Miriam Cates also described the move as “yet more evidence that the Gender Recognition Act should be repealed.”
That said, it is not at all difficult to imagine such a move being pushed forward under the watch of a Conservative administration, even if it was occasionally put on hold.
Responding to criticism, the BTP said that “a person being searched can object to being searched by any officer; this officer will be replaced by another member of the team to conduct the search in their place.”
