Mick Hartley

Baroness Falkner speaking out again. She oversaw the ECHR Supreme Court judgement that, for single-sex spaces, sex means biological sex, and now has to watch as the government does nothing.

The former head of the equalities watchdog has said the judge in the Sandie Peggie employment tribunal was unlikely to have reached his “highly surprising” conclusion if the UK government had not been so slow in publishing new guidance on single-sex spaces.

“Highly surprising”. That’s a tactful way of putting it.

Baroness Falkner of Margravine, until last month chairwoman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), told Times Radio that Kemp had been unable to draw on the commission’s updated, but as yet officially unpublished, guidance on the use of single-sex spaces because of UK government delays….

“On the face of it, it’s extremely surprising and unusual as a judgment, if you looked at the submissions, if you looked at the evidence that there was before it.” Falkner said. “It’s a highly surprising judgment.

“I do wonder, as do other people in this space, if EHRC’s code of practice had been there, been published, been available for the courts and tribunals to use, I really do wonder if they could so likely have dismissed or seem to reinterpret the Supreme Court’s guidance.”