Debate contribution: Custodial Facilities: Protection of Rights and Safety

Debate contribution by Mr Timothy Gaston on 20 January 2025.

MLA

Mr Timothy Gaston

Party at the time

Traditional Unionist Voice

Date

20 January 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Custodial Facilities: Protection of Rights and Safety

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4744812

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Having listened to today's contributions, and considering the fact that my opponents simply did not engage with my arguments, I am more convinced than ever that there is nothing loving about housing men in female prisons. There is nothing progressive in rolling back rights that were won by women in the 19th century. There is nothing inclusive about excluding the words "women" and "girls" from policy papers, such as the one that I referred to, that have serious ramifications for what should be female-only spaces, such as women's prisons. In his novel, '1984', George Orwell described how the state created Newspeak, a controlled language of restricted grammar and limited vocabulary that was designed to limit freedom of thought. It involved removing words from vocabulary and defining words that remained, forcing people to accept ideas that they knew made no sense. He summed it up:

"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it."

That is why the Health Minister referred to "people who menstruate". That is why the Finance Minister introduced a Civil Service inclusive language guide, which she was permitted to do without objection from Executive colleagues. Civil servants are advised that, instead of the words "mum" and "dad", they should use "parent", "adult" or "caregiver". They should not talk about "husband", "wife", "boyfriend" or "girlfriend" but "partner" or "spouse".

Civil servants should not ask for a "Christian name" but for a person's "forename".

I thank the Member for his input. Members always seem to want to get away from the issue that is before us. It is a woman's rights issue; nobody else wants to talk about that, but that is what we always need to come back to. I am grateful for the support of DUP Members in the debate, but I ask them to reflect on what is happening in their Ministers' Departments, particularly Education. Prior to the last Assembly election, some of them were prominent in the Let Kids Be Kids campaign. However, what have we seen? We have a DUP Education Minister who washes his hands of questions about a policy that allows pupils to be referred to by names and pronouns that do not match the biological reality. He does not know and has no desire to find out how many schools —

— have introduced gender-neutral bathrooms. The Minister needs to get serious. The Education Authority is accountable to the Education Minister. It is not a body that he can conveniently palm difficult issues off to when he does not want to deal with them.

I will move back to prisons, Mr Speaker. In the 1961 musical 'West Side Story', a character sings the lines:

"My sister wears a mustache, My brother wears a dress! Goodness gracious, that's why I'm a mess!"

To bring it back to the idiocy that we are dealing with, I am far from convinced that labelling those lines as offensive and transphobic in 2025 represents any sort of progress. To be a lot more serious, I think of the words of Christ in Mark 10:

"From the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female."

In truth, few of today's contributions sought to engage with the points that I made, but I will respond to some Members who did. I say to Deirdre Hargey that, as I made clear when I moved the amendment, I see the issue purely as one involving women's rights. Joanne Bunting made a number of common-sense remarks about the need to protect female spaces, which were sneered at by the Justice Minister from the nasty party. Maurice Bradley raised concerns about how the panels function, but he missed the key point: the fact that those panels have to be "gender-balanced". Are there two genders? How about nine? Are there over 150? I will give way to any Member who wants to put into Hansard how many people will need to be on those panels.

I thought that I would get an extra minute, Mr Speaker, because I took an intervention.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.

707 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Qualifying Gender, sexuality, abortion and related social issues

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:51 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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