On Monday 16th January 2023 the Rt Hon Alistair Jack MP, Secretary of State for Scotland announced that he would use Section 35 to block the Scottish Parliament’s Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) bill.

In his statement he cites his concerns that the legislation would have an adverse impact on the operation of Great Britain-wide equalities legislation but also allows for the Scottish Government to revisit the bill in such a way that it would not have that impact. Michael Foran, a Lecturer in Public Law at Glasgow University has written an excellent report for Policy Exchange on the issues for GB legislation presented by this bill. His synopsis of the report can be found on Unherd.

It is clear from this that the government is approaching this matter overwhelmingly from a constitutional point of view. Indeed, the fact that the Scottish Secretary is taking the lead is indicative of this. There are strong political reasons for doing this. It puts the Labour Party on the spot as Section 35 is in part of their own legislation introduced under Tony Blair. It also only makes sense if the government believes that Nicola Sturgeon has rushed through this legislation precisely to force a constitutional confrontation, a view supported by the First Minister’s own response to the news and the commentariat’s discussions of it.

Many of us are not convinced however. Sturgeon’s comments over the years have led the gender critical among us to believe that she has signed up completely to gender ideology, either as a useful fool or a malicious collaborator. Let us hope that Mr Jack’s offer to work with the Scottish Government to find a way through this does not come back to haunt us.