Police Decide No Crime In Scottish MP ‘Death-Threat’ Tweet

Joanna Cherry speaks at the For Women Scotland and the Scottish Feminist Network demonstration outside the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, ahead of the vote on the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill on Dec. 21, 2022. PA Media

The police has confirmed receiving a report of a tweet that threatened to “kill” an MP, but said the message did not meet the criminal threshold.

The MP, Scottish National Party’s (SNP) Joanna Cherry, said “further threats” have been sent to the police.

The message reported to the Metropolitan Police on Tuesday was allegedly posted on Twitter under an image of  Cherry following a heated parliamentary debate on whether to define “sex” as biological sex in law.

According to a screenshot shared by Cherry, the message reads, “I'd kill her with my bare hands if I ever saw her irl [in real life].”

The account that allegedly posted the message no longer exists.

The MP told The National on Tuesday that the tweet had been “reported to the appropriate parliamentary authorities and the police.”

In an email to The Epoch Times on Wednesday, the Met said officers had assessed the content of the tweet and found that it “did not meet the criminal threshold for an offence.”

“The tweet has been logged for intelligence purposes and shared with security partners,” a spokesperson said.

The tweet was posted after a clip showing Cherry and two other MPs acting bewildered during a parliamentary debate went viral on Twitter.

In the clip, Cherry was seen rolling her eyes and saying “What rubbish” after SNP MP Kirsty Blackman said: “Another trans person came to me. ... When they heard about biological sex being included in the Equality Act and this change being made, they said, ‘What hope is left? Should I just kill myself now and be done with it?’” and claimed, “They will not rest until trans people are excluded from public life.”

General view of the LGBTQIA+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, intersex, asexual, and agender) flag outside a bookshop during UK Pride Month 2021 in London on June 1, 2021. Edward Smith/Getty Images

Cherry told The National that defining sex as biological sex will not remove the legal protection against discrimination “on the grounds of gender reassignment,” and that her body language indicated disapproval of “claims that those of us supporting the clarification petition are causing trans people to have suicidal ideation and ‘will not rest until trans people are excluded from public life.”

In an email to The Epoch Times on Wednesday, Cherry said she had received more threats.

“Further threats have been sent to the Met for analysis today,” she said.

“Sadly, all too often, politicians particularly women have to put up with direct threats on their life through social media and hateful emails. This is just one example of the repeated attempts to remove women like me who stand up for the rights of women and girls from public life. Next month I will be in court to give evidence against another man who threatened to kill me,” the MP added.

Definition of Sex

There are nine “protected characteristics” under the Equality Act 2010 (EqA), including age, disability, race, religion or belief, marriage and civil partnership, sex, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, and pregnancy and maternity.

But under The Gender Recognition Act 2004, those who obtained a Gender Recognition Certificate [GRC] would have their acquired gender recognised as their legal sex, raising confusion in areas such as single-sex sports, services, and spaces such as dressing rooms, prisons, women’s shelter, or gynaecology examinations.

The debate, on whether the definition of sex in the EqA should be defined as biological sex, was held in response to two petitions.

One of the petitions called for the terms sex, male, female, man, and women, to be defined to mean biological sex, rather than “sex as modified by a [GRC],” while the other petition called on the government to rule out the change.

The Cabinet Office initially responded to the petitions saying clarification was unnecessary as the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) had published guidance for service providers, clarifying when they could limit services on the basis of sex under the existing legislation.

The government later sought advice from the EHRC, which replied that it believes defining “sex” as biological sex would provide clarification and reduce risks for employers, sports organisers, and other service users and providers while being “more ambiguous or potentially disadvantageous” in some areas.

Edinburgh Most Concerned

Arguing for defining sex as biological sex, Cherry said two recent Scottish court cases “that have gone in opposite directions” illustrated the necessity “for the law to be clarified.”

She also told MPs that the five constituencies with the highest numbers of signatories supporting the clarification of the law were all from Edinburgh, including her own.

It “indicates the level of concern in Scotland’s capital city about the lack of clarity in the law as it stands, particularly in the light of the debate about self-identification in Scotland,” she said.

Self-identification refers to a law passed by the Scottish Parliament in December last year that would allow those as young as 16-year-old to obtain a GRC without medical diagnosis or evidence. And the requirement to have lived in the “acquired gender” for two years would have been shortened to three months for adults and six months for 16- and 17-year-olds, plus a three-month cooling-off period.

Members of the public take part in a woman’s rights demo against the Scottish government’s decision to allow self-declaration of sex in the 2022 census, in Edinburgh, Scotland, on Sept. 2, 2021. Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

As Westminster blocked the Scottish bill in January its first use of such power, the concerns in Scotland were further heightened after a convicted transgender double-rapist was remanded to a female prison while awaiting sentence. The defendant was later jailed in a male prison.

MPs supporting the clarification argued defining transwomen as women or vice versa would render sex-based services or activities, such as women’s shelters or gay marriage, meaningless and risks women’s safety by including biological males in women-only sports and spaces.

A number of MPs also rejected the notion that sexes are “assigned at birth,” with Conservative MP saying “there isn’t the sex assigned at birth, there is the only sex observed at birth determined by conception.”

Conservative MP Miriam Cates said that when the EqA was passed in 2010, “few doubted that Parliament’s intention was that sex should mean biological sex: either male or female, recorded at birth—an immutable characteristic.”

MPs opposing the clarification argued defining sex as biological sex would take away transgender people’s rights.

Labour MP Dame Angela Eagle said the change would “mandate exclusion and discrimination against all trans people, while worsening protections for women and girls,” and breach the UK’s “ international human rights obligations.”

Blackman accused her interlocutors of painting “all trans people together as potential predators,” saying it’s“to completely demonise a protected group.”

Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle said he prefers the current “flexibility for these things to be locally determined—proportional means for legitimate ends.”

But Conservative MP Caroline Ansell said the “legal grey space” meant individuals and organisations have been “forced to run the legal gauntlet case by case, isolated and alone, and sometimes at very great cost to their reputation, to their career and to their health.”

Labour To “Respond Accordingly” to Government Proposals

Labour’s shadow minister for domestic violence and safeguarding called for the protection of women’s spaces, saying “the status quo is not working.”

Labour Party Chair Anneliese Dodds said the party will wait for the government to come up with a proposal and “respond accordingly.”

Labour Leader Sir Keir Starmer was faced with criticisms from women’s groups in April after he told The Times of London, “For 99.9 percent of women, it is completely biological …  and of course, they haven’t got a penis.”

After Prime Minister Rishi Sunak suggested he would consider defining sex as biological sex, a Labour spokesperson said, “Clarification is a good thing. We will look closely at what’s brought forward.”

Dodds said the opposition party is “committed to protecting and upholding the EqA, including the public sector equality duty, its protected characteristics and its provision for single-sex exemptions.”

Speaking for the government, minister for women Maria Caulfield MP suggested it will take some time before any changes will be made.

Caulfield told MPs the “complex” issues discussed during the debate need to be considered “carefully and respectfully,” before a timeline can be decided.