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WATCH: Dawn Neesom hits out at GB News guest for slamming 'gender-critical ideology'
Dec 19, 2025
GB News host Dawn Neesom has shut down trans rights campaigner Steph Richards in a heated row over Labour's block on gender guidance.The Women and Equality Secretary has been accused of blocking the new guidance to force businesses to provide women only bathrooms.FULL STORY HERE.
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The guidance has been sitting on the minister's desk now for some eight months
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I mean, what is going on? It's not helpful for anybody. Yeah, good afternoon and thank you for having me on
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And indeed, happy Christmas to you. Well, the guidance or the draft guidance, the Code of Practice, is very comprehensive
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We understand it's over 300 pages long. it's fought with issues around human rights and trans rights and sex-based rights as
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advocated for by the gender critical ideology movement and she also has to refer that code
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of practice to the devolved governments both in scotland and wales and there could also be
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implications to Northern Ireland and possibly the Good Friday Agreement as well. So it's much
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much harder to do than perhaps what people think. And I suspect that's actually the real reason
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why there's such a long delay. We obviously look forward to viewing the code of practice
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and challenging it if we feel that it's transphobic in any way
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It is interesting, isn't it, that we're getting sort of snippets and leaks and that the government is just sort of sitting on its hands
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It feels like the government is sort of walking a tightrope because there are two sides here that are about to breathe down the neck of the government
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sort of which other way it falls. It's almost, it's a bit like the story we were just talking about
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delaying the local elections because they don't want to face the music. I mean, in some ways with this guidance
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perhaps they just don want to sort of deal with the consequences because maybe they don know their own minds Well I think the case Tom is that you got to remember there a legal case out there at this moment in time
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the Good Law Project has got a case out against the interim update
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that was put out initially by the Equality and Human Rights Commission
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which was subsequently withdrawn, almost certainly because it was illegal. The EHRC are now under due stewardship
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with Dr Mary Ann Stevenson. There'll be a new bank of commissioners
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into the EHRC quite shortly. And I'm sure they're going to be really working really hard
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to get this right for, you call it the two sides, where there's an awful lot of cisgender women
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that actually support transhuman rights. And indeed, when I came on... When you say cisgender, that means women who were born as women
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just to be clear. You are biological women, as I said, but..
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Yeah, we're just women, basically, yeah. Well, yes, you can put it that way, Dawn
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The Supreme Court did say we were biological women, so that's good enough for me
2:47
Well, indeed, but that was in regards to a particular issue around quotas and didn't actually infer on trans people
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as much as what perhaps is being propagated by certain gender-critical ideology movements
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Sorry, Steph. Sorry, Steph. Dawn, no, with due respect. Yeah, with due respect, you've used that phrase twice now
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gender-critical ideology. Being gender-critical isn't an ideology. Being a woman is a fact of biology
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Well there 72 women cisgender women biological women women then by all means who has actually signed Not In Their Name
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Collective saying that they don't agree with gender critical ideology movement. And it is a movement, Dawn, with great respect
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because I was women's officer at Portsmouth Labour Party for three years
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and I was elected in that position by women. OK, meanwhile, Steph, we can sit here and argue the pedantics
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of the whole thing, but meanwhile... I'm not going to argue, Dawn. No, no, we'll discuss then, discuss
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But meanwhile, we still have male prisoners who are identifying as women being held in women's prisons
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If this guidance was published, then the authorities, you know, the hospitals, the prisons, the local authorities
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sporting facilities, would know exactly where they stood. At the moment, women are still being put at risk
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by men who identify as women in their prisons. Well, can I just remind you that trans women
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actually suffer crime twice the way... I didn't say they didn't. I didn't say they didn't suffer crime
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How many women are... Trans women are actually in women's estate? Dawn, would you like to tell me
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Well, I don't actually know the exact numbers at the moment, but... I can tell you, Dawn, the five
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and they've got vaginas just like you. Right, OK, well, I don't want to go and personally check
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but they are biologically men and that is where the confusion is. Well, and trans people also have the protected characteristic
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of gender reassignment under the Equality Act. Steph, is that true? Only five transgender women..
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Is that because the transgender women who haven had the surgery to be specific are in the male estate Yeah and those 29 of those trans women are suffering sexual abuse
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But the bottom line area, Steph, is that if this guidance were published
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everybody would be clear about whom should be allowed to go where
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Well, indeed, and it's a fine balancing act, And we obviously want to get it right. And I actually am a human rights activist, not just CEO of Translucent
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I'm a former CEO of a women's health charity, and I'm very keen that we get this right for everyone
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And I'm sure that the Secretary of State isn't exactly trying to do the same thing
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It's a toxic debate, which we need to take the toxicity out of
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And I'm going to do everything possible, as indeed my team will do at Translucent, to do exactly that
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OK, Steph Richards, thank you very much. That's CEO of Translucent there
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OK, interesting debate. Let us know what you think. GBNews.com forward slash your say. Yesterday, the government were doing everything for women and girls, protecting our safety
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Today, we learn that they are sitting, Bridget Phillips, sitting on that report for eight months
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that would let local authorities, prisons, hospitals, etc. have clear guidance as to where transgender people should be going
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Yeah, and I think the clarity is what's missing. Yeah, totally. I think there's no-one that would disagree with that
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The government spokesman has said the EHRC has submitted a draft code of practice to ministers
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and we're working at pace, at pace, to review it with the care it deserves
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