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by Louise Wilson
29 April 2025
Maggie Chapman survives attempt to remove her from equalities committee

Maggie Chapman has been deputy convener of the committee since 2021 | SST / Alamy Stock Photo

Maggie Chapman survives attempt to remove her from equalities committee

Maggie Chapman has survived an attempt to remove her from the parliament’s equalities committee.

Members of the committee voted by four to three for the Green MSP to retain her role as deputy convener.

The vote was forced by Tory member of the committee Tess White, who described Chapman’s position as “untenable” after comments she made following the Supreme Court ruling that the definition of ‘woman’ in the Equality Act is limited to biological sex.

Chapman argued that while she did not agree with the judgment, she had “never questioned the court’s right to make the ruling”.

She has been under fire since she said at a protest in Aberdeen that “bigotry, prejudice and hatred” is “coming from the Supreme Court and from so many other institutions in our society”.

When asked about her comments last week, the MSP doubled down on them, adding: “I’m not going to apologise.”

It led to the Faculty of Advocates saying her words were “not compatible” with her role as deputy convener of the committee.

Speaking to her motion, White described the comments as a “totally unjustified attack on the rule of law”. She said Chapman has offered “no apology and no remorse”.

White added: “Her comments about the Supreme Court weren’t just rabble-rousing, they were dangerous and incendiary… As deputy convener of the equalities committee, there is a high bar for conduct. Words matter, tone matters. There must be boundaries around behaviour and rhetoric.”

Chapman, who was attending the meeting remotely, said the ruling had not taken place in a “vacuum” and was part of a wider “culture war”.

She said: “Our courts reflect our society. We’ve probably all criticised court judgments in the past, when racist or homophobic laws were upheld, when women didn’t get justice for the abuse and violence they’d faced, when coalminers were convicted of offences during the miner’s strike of the 1980s…  That’s not to say that the courts did not have the constitutional right to make those judgments – of course they did – but we would surely all hope that if those rulings were to be made today, they would have been made differently.”

The Green MSP added that while she did not expect members to agree with her views, she had a right to express them and MSPs should uphold that right.

Labour MSP Paul O’Kane said he was “concerned” by the comments made by Chapman at the protest, and requested she withdraw them – which Chapman did not do.

He added: “She has a right to express her views… But fundamentally I believe that in order to retain confidence, particularly in terms of this committee’s role on civil justice, she must take the opportunity to clarify the points I have raised.”

White, O’Kane and Tory MSP Pam Gosal voted in favour of the motion to remove Chapman from the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee, but Chapman and SNP MSPs Karen Adam, Marie McNair and Evelyn Tweed voted against.

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