Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 7:13 pm on 18 January 2023.
Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke
Labour
7:13,
18 January 2023
My Lords, this is a very difficult issue to get your head around. In a previous incarnation, I was a non-executive director of the Scottish Prison Service. I saw the terrible vulnerability of women in prison, many of whom had been abused since being babies. They wanted to be in prison because they felt safe there.
In this morning’s Scottish edition of the Times was the very distressing case of a 22 year-old woman, a sex offender held in Cornton Vale women’s prison, who was up on a charge when she was male for attacking somebody in the male Division of Polmont young offender institution. The sexual offences she committed were on a 10 year-old and a 12 year-old in supermarkets in Fife. If we look at this legislation as it stands, there is nothing that can give the kind of protection that is needed for those women. She had male genitalia and there was no third-party verification, as there is not in this new Bill.
Let me be political. I have a very real concern that we have been caught in a trap. Nobody in Scotland is talking about the fiasco over the ferries, the fact that the Scottish education system has gone from being one of the best in the world to one of the worst, or the chaos in our National Health Service, despite the fact that the National Health Service in Scotland gets more money than elsewhere because of the Barnett formula. What will the Minister do about it? This is attacking the devolution settlement. I find it quite odd that the First Minister wants to support devolution; she is against devolution—she wants independence. The irony is that she can now say that big, bad Westminster is interfering in good Scottish Parliament decisions. How will the Minister get out of that one?
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The House of Commons votes by dividing. Those voting Aye (yes) to any proposition walk through the division lobby to the right of the Speaker and those voting no through the lobby to the left. In each of the lobbies there are desks occupied by Clerks who tick Members' names off division lists as they pass through. Then at the exit doors the Members are counted by two Members acting as tellers. The Speaker calls for a vote by announcing "Clear the Lobbies". In the House of Lords "Clear the Bar" is called. Division Bells ring throughout the building and the police direct all Strangers to leave the vicinity of the Members’ Lobby. They also walk through the public rooms of the House shouting "division". MPs have eight minutes to get to the Division Lobby before the doors are closed. Members make their way to the Chamber, where Whips are on hand to remind the uncertain which way, if any, their party is voting. Meanwhile the Clerks who will take the names of those voting have taken their place at the high tables with the alphabetical lists of MPs' names on which ticks are made to record the vote. When the tellers are ready the counting process begins - the recording of names by the Clerk and the counting of heads by the tellers. When both lobbies have been counted and the figures entered on a card this is given to the Speaker who reads the figures and announces "So the Ayes [or Noes] have it". In the House of Lords the process is the same except that the Lobbies are called the Contents Lobby and the Not Contents Lobby. Unlike many other legislatures, the House of Commons and the House of Lords have not adopted a mechanical or electronic means of voting. This was considered in 1998 but rejected. Divisions rarely take less than ten minutes and those where most Members are voting usually take about fifteen. Further information can be obtained from factsheet P9 at the UK Parliament site.
