Mick Hartley

After the Guardian's misleading headline, the Telegraph gets it right – Supreme Court ruling has taken nothing from trans people ‘except a false belief’, says equality watchdog chief:

Trans people have been “lied to over many years” over their rights to enter female-only spaces, a senior member of Britain’s equality watchdog has said.

Akua Reindorf, one of eight commissioners at the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), said transgender people had been misled about their entitlements and there “has to be a period of correction” to recognise the women’s right to single-sex spaces.

Ms Reindorf made the comments at a debate about the Supreme Court ruling that the word “sex” in the Equality Act refers only to biological sex, and not to a person’s gender identity.

The ruling confirmed it was lawful for female-only sports teams to exclude trans women and for trans people to be barred from lavatories and changing rooms for the opposite sex. This was later backed up by interim guidance from the EHRC.

Asked by an audience member about concerns that the ruling could roll back the rights of trans people, Naomi Cunningham, a barrister and panellist at the debate, said trans people “will have to give way”, adding: “It can’t be helped, I’m afraid.”

Ms Reindorf, speaking next, agreed, saying: “Unfortunately, young people and trans people have been lied to over many years about what their rights are.

“It’s like Naomi said – I just can’t say it in a more diplomatic way than that. They have been lied to, and there has to be a period of correction, because other people have rights.”

Naturally there are dissenting voices:

But Chiara Capraro, the head of gender justice at Amnesty International UK, criticised Ms Reindorf’s comments.

She said: “The EHRC has the duty to uphold the rights of everyone, including all with protected characteristics. We are concerned that it is failing to do so and is unhelpfully pitting the rights of women and trans people against each other.”

It was, of course, the trans activists who pitted the rights of women and trans people against each other, by demanding that trans women – men in dresses – have access to women's toilets, women's sport, women's prisons, lesbian groups, by misrepresenting the law. Now they know better. Or should know better. But Amnesty have lost the plot on this, as on so much else.