We will take time to get trans guidance right

Education Minister Bridget Phillipson said the government was “taking the time to get this right” before introducing guidance on the use of single-sex spaces by transgender people.

Times reported The latest guidance, sent to ministers nearly three months ago, will allow places such as hospitals and gyms to query trans women about whether they should use single-sex services based on their appearance.

Phillipson said he would consider the code of practice “thoroughly and carefully”.

She added that it was important to ensure women had access to single-service services such as rape crisis centres, while ensuring transgender people were treated with “dignity and respect”.

The 300-page document was prepared by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), chaired by Baroness Falkner, after the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that women should be legally defined by biological sex.

The EHRC needs to provide practical advice to businesses and services on how this should work in practice.

He has previously said that single-sex spaces should only be open to people of the same biological sex, otherwise they would cease to be single-sex spaces.

This means, for example, that a transgender woman who is a biological male who identifies as female cannot use women’s restrooms and locker rooms. But they said they should offer transgender people suitable alternatives wherever possible.

The EHRC said transgender people, who are also protected by equality law, should be treated with dignity and respect.

According to the Times, the new guidance says that if there are concerns, decisions about access to areas may need to be made based on how the person looks.

It also states that if a transgender person is excluded from a venue, the organization should consider alternatives and that depriving the person of basic services such as toilets would not be proportionate.

The report says the guidance acknowledges that it may not always be possible to provide alternatives due to space constraints or cost, and that determining a person’s sex may be hampered by the fact that “there are no official records or documents of any kind in the UK that provide reliable evidence of sex”.

Last month, Baroness Falkner called on the government to speed up approval of the new law, warning that some organizations were operating under old guidance that had become illegal in light of the court ruling.

The new guide will only gain legal force when it is signed by ministers and presented to Parliament for 40 days.

Conservative shadow women and equalities minister Mims Davies has previously suggested Phillipson chose not to sign the guidance because she did not want to damage her chances in the Labor Party deputy leader election, which ended last month.

A source close to Phillipson described the claim as “complete nonsense”.

Approval of the guidance may not be welcomed by some sections of the Labor Party.

During the co-leadership contest, Lucy Powell, who eventually surpassed Phillipson in the job, said: “I think we used language that was inaccurate on some of the issues around this and particularly around some of the guidance that was going to come forward.”

Last month 32 Labor MPs wrote to the EHRC arguing that the interim guidance it published in April would “open the door to discrimination and harassment against transgender people”.

Interim guidance published by the EHRC in April and withdrawn in October being challenged in the courts.

The lawyer representing the government during the hearing in the High Court suggested the interim guidance could be very simple and access to areas such as toilets could be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

Speaking to Times Radio, Education Minister Josh MacAllister said the government was working “as quickly as possible” but there was no deadline to reach a decision.

“We want to get this right, and if we don’t get it right, this risks going back to the courts and creating greater uncertainty for people.”

Asked if the government was avoiding making a decision in the hope that the problem would be forgotten, he said that would be “really bad policy, because the problem will not be solved.”

“These are huge issues… When you dig into the examples of how this can be implemented, it has big implications for individuals, it has big implications for businesses and public services,” he said.

“As written, the guidance has implications for both how physical premises are set up and how staff in these environments should determine and judge whether a person may even resemble a woman.

“And so we want to avoid being in a position where restrooms are monitored by humans.”