Rishi Sunak has backed Harry Potter author J K Rowling after she challenged police in Scotland to arrest her over her views on transgender issues.
The SNP introduced new hate crime laws under the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act, which creates a new offence of “stirring up of hatred” for protected characteristics, or “misgendering” trans people.
An SNP minister admitted that Rowling could be investigated after she described a series of transgender women as men on the day the laws came into force.
In a mocking post on social media, the author encouraged Police Scotland to arrest her.
But Sunak threw his weight behind the Harry Potter author, saying the Conservative Party would always protect free speech.
The Prime Minister said: "People should not be criminalised for stating simple facts on biology. We believe in free speech in this country, and Conservatives will always protect it."
Yesterday, Rowling posted images of 10 trans people, mocking their claim that they are women.
She referred to rapist Isla Bryson as a "lovely Scottish lass", but at the end of the list wrote: "April Fools! Only kidding. Obviously, the people mentioned in the above tweets aren’t women at all, but men, every last one of them." She also used the hashtag "#arrestme."
She used the hashtag #arrestme.
Hitting out at the new legislation, Rowling said the MSPs who had voted for it had put a "higher value on the feelings of men performing their idea of femaleness, however misogynistically or opportunistically, than on the rights and freedoms of actual women and girls".
She added: “The new legislation is wide open to abuse by activists who wish to silence those of us speaking out about the dangers of eliminating women’s and girls’ single-sex spaces, the nonsense made of crime data if violent and sexual assaults committed by men are recorded as female crimes, the grotesque unfairness of allowing males to compete in female sports, the injustice of women’s jobs, honours and opportunities being taken by trans-identified men, and the reality and immutability of biological sex."
She claimed that self-identification would have "serious consequences" for women's rights and spaces, claiming that the "strongest impact" will be felt by victims of sexual assault and female prisoners.
Rowling added: "It is impossible to accurately describe or tackle the reality of violence and sexual violence committed against women and girls, or address the current assault on women’s and girls’ rights, unless we are allowed to call a man a man.
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"Freedom of speech and belief are at an end in Scotland if the accurate description of biological sex is deemed criminal.
But First Minister Humza Yousaf said the legislation "absolutely protects people in their freedom of expression" while guarding "people from a rising tide of hatred that we’ve seen far too often in our society".
The act was supported by MSPs from Scottish Labour and the Scottish Liberal Democrats, as well as the SNP.
It also creates a new offence of “threatening or abusive behaviour that is intended to stir up hatred” on the grounds of age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity and variations in sex characteristics.
