Mick Hartley

More union opposition to the Supreme Court ruling:

Civil servants have defied official trans guidance from the equalities watchdog.

The Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union said interim advice issued by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) was “not fit for purpose”.

…the PCS said the guidance was “damaging” and “impossible to implement” in a statement from Fran Heathcote, its general secretary, and Martin Cavanagh, its president.

“The current interim guidance published by the EHRC is clearly not fit for purpose and is damaging in its advice, and will be impossible to implement,” the union said.

“PCS is committed to a thorough response to the announced consultation and campaign that any guidance issued puts support and dignity for all at its heart.”

The union said it was “carefully considering” its own policies in light of the ruling to make sure they were “fully inclusive”.

“As an equalities-focused union, PCS remains steadfast in promoting and championing the workplace rights of women, trans, and LGBT+ workers,” it said.

Maya Forstater, chief executive of Sex Matters, said civil servants who believed the ruling was “impossible to implement” should resign.

“PCS’s furious reaction to the EHRC’s interim guidance on the implications of the Supreme Court judgment for single-sex services and spaces reads more like a statement from a men’s rights group than one from a Civil Service union concerned to uphold the rights of all its members, including women,” she said.

“The judgment painstakingly considered how the Equality Act protects everybody’s human rights and the EHRC’s advice accurately reflects this.

“Civil servants who find a law that was passed by Parliament in 2010 ‘impossible to implement’ because of their own fringe belief system should resign and stop collecting a public salary.”

Well quite. It's the law. Even civil servants – especially civil servants – can't defy the law.