Kemi Badenoch has said that a future Conservative government would change the Equality Act 2010 to define ‘sex’ as biological sex.
The women and equalities minister said the reform would provide new protections for biological women in same-sex spaces such as toilets and changing rooms.
Writing in The Times today, she said: “The law is confused because times have changed and words in law are being re-interpreted to meanings quite different from what legislators intended.
“Clarification is required. Not just to protect the privacy and dignity of women and girls, but also to protect those people with gender dysphoria for whom the law was set up to protect. These trans people were going about their lives in peace until predators started exploiting loopholes in the law by calling themselves trans with no evidence beyond their self-identification.”
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She added: “Sex and gender, terms once used interchangeably in the law, now mean different things with significant implications. This is being exploited by all sorts of activist organisations, most notably Stonewall for their own agenda.”
Last year, Badenoch wrote to the Equality and Human Rights Commission requesting it to consider whether the Equality Act’s definition of sex strikes the right “balance of interests between different protected characteristics”.
Badenoch referred to the Scottish Parliament’s passing of the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill and the subsequent section 35 order by the UK government which stopped the bill becoming law.
In response in April 2023, EHRC chairwoman Baroness Kishwer Falkner said that since 2010, society has evolved considerably in matters relating to the protected characteristics of sex and gender reassignment.
She outlined how the Equality Act refers to trans people as “transsexuals” and uses the terms “sex” and “gender” interchangeably, citing how the “gender pay gap” relates, in fact, to pay differences according to “sex”.
However, the EHRC said there was “no straightforward balance” and that if sex is defined as biological sex, it would bring “greater legal clarity” in many areas but could “create ambiguity and be potentially disadvantageous” in others, specifically in relation to equal pay and sex discrimination.
On redefining sex as biological sex, Badenoch wrote today: “Many will ask, ‘Why hasn’t this been done already’? Or claim it is an announcement just for the election. Far from it. I first started work on this issue two years ago, as the [Scottish National Party] were bringing in their disastrous gender recognition bill.
“Most of the last 18 months has been spent preparing the case, to stop its adverse effects across all of the UK, and then defending it from appeal afterwards. But the order we put in place is just a stop-gap. A permanent solution is required to stop devolved governments messing around in this space.”
She said a future Conservative government would take “bold action” and introduce primary legislation to clarify that the protected characteristic of sex means biological sex. For the purposes of the Equality Act, it would mean “the provision in the Gender Recognition Act recognising legal sex will be disapplied”.
Shadow defence secretary John Healey told the BBC that the change was unnecessary and that it was “an election distraction from the really core issues that matter to people”.
He added that the Equality Act “already protects single-sex spaces for biological women” but said that Labour would produce “clearer guidance”.
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