Mick Hartley

The government is procrastinating over the Equality and Human Rights Commission guidance on single-sex spaces.

Rules that would ban transgender people from using facilities that do not match their biological sex could be delayed for more than a year, it has emerged, as ministers were accused of “undermining the law” by demanding extra checks.

Bridget Phillipson, the women and equalities minister, received statutory guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) eight weeks ago, setting out how gyms, clubs and hospitals must judge single-sex spaces based on biology.

The document has not yet been laid in parliament and many organisations, including some NHS trusts and the civil service, said they were waiting for the guidance before implementing changes after the Supreme Court ruling in April that the use of “woman” and “man” in the Equality Act refer to sex at birth.

Any excuse to delay. The law is clear, but – oh dear – it’s all so complicated now. Of course it was easy to allow men into women’s spaces when Stonewall was all-powerful, but now, well, it’s different. Then it was about pandering to men, and now it’s about being on the side of women. It’s much harder.

Claire Coutinho, the shadow women and equalities minister, told The Times: “Any delay in approving this code puts the safety and dignity of women and girls at risk. The Supreme Court ruling was clear and every organisation has a duty to comply with the law.

“Doing so is not a regulatory burden that needs assessment by government bureaucrats. Bridget Phillipson must get a grip and stop hiding behind process to avoid upsetting her backbenchers.”…

One Whitehall source said: “The reality is these things can be done very quickly if they want to, but when there’s a thorny issue it can also be used to kick the can down the road.”

Added: see Naomi Cunningham:

The proposed regulatory impact assessment looks remarkably like an act of simple cowardice. The government knows that a code of practice doesn’t make or change the law, but only explains it. It knows that this is not what regulatory impact assessment is for. It knows that many employers and institutions are currently delaying complying with the law until the new code is issued. It knows that many thousands of individuals are suffering ongoing legal wrongs because of the ongoing delay. It knows that a proportion of those will continue to bring claims, and the courts and tribunals will clog up with cases, and public authorities and private employers will continue to pour legal fees into defending them. 

But it also knows that the new code of practice will be unpopular with many of its supporters. It is seizing on the idea of a regulatory impact assessment to delay the inevitable; and to redirect the fury of its activists to the courts and tribunals, and to the brave individuals who will have to go to court at great personal cost, often one by one, sometimes in groups like the Darlington nurses, to enforce their rights. It’s a craven exercise in blame-shifting.