Minister backs charity’s single sex consultation as Tories accuse it of failure

A minister has welcomed Rape Crisis Scotland’s consultation on single sex services, after the Conservatives accused the charity of failing to reassure survivors on safety.

It comes after reports the charity has dropped a pledge to issue a definition of a woman.

The Telegraph reported that the charity did not want to pre-empt a Supreme Court decision on the legal definition of a woman and are instead focusing on dedicated spaces for “women born as women”.

Last year, Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre’s chief executive, Mridul Wadhwa, stepped down after a review found she had failed to protect women-only spaces and set professional standards of behaviour.

On Thursday, Tory MSP Pam Gosal asked the SNP’s Equalities Minister Kaukab Stewart about Rape Crisis Scotland’s definition of a woman.

Ms Stewart said the government is “clear that access to separate or single sex provision for survivors is a legitimate and proportionate response when providing response to rape survivors”, but it cannot intervene in independent organisations.

She continued: “We therefore welcome that Rape Crisis Scotland is currently consulting with members groups and survivors to agree a clear approach to this matter within the terms of the Equality Act of 2010.”

Ms Gosal referred to the Telegraph report and said the charity had faced “a series of scandals over the service’s embrace of gender ideology”.

She continued: “This does not give reassurance to survivors of rape and sexual assault that this charity will be a safe single sex space for them.

“Therefore I would like to ask that the minister agrees with me that ‘adult human female’ is the only appropriate definition of the word woman.”

Ms Stewart replied: “My response is that woman is an adult female, that is clear.

“But it is simply a fact that trans people also exist and have always done so. This is not new.”

In September last year, Ms Stewart said it was “totally unacceptable” that survivors were let down at Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre, after an independent report found it had failed to adhere to national standards.