The Green Party has called for “ill-considered” guidance on single-sex spaces access for trans people to be withdrawn immediately.
Party co-leader, Carla Denyer, said that the “impractical” guidance issued by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) would put trans people at risk of discrimination or abuse.
The guidance, published over the weekend, recommends that trans women be banned from women’s facilities and that trans men be banned from men’s facilities. It also recommends that, in some circumstances, trans women should also be banned from men’s facilities and that trans men be banned from women’s facilities.
Speaking on BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Denyer said she believed the “rushed and ill-thought out” guidance flies in the face of the “strong tradition of tolerance” in Britain.
“It’s been really obvious that they have not listened to trans people,” she said.
The Green Party issued a statement following Denyer’s comments saying that the EHRC’s guidance would cause “distress” and “further confusion” for employers and businesses.
It called for the guidance to be withdrawn “until the EHRC can produce something more thought-through which takes into account the voices of all those affected,” according to the BBC.
EHRC guidance ‘appalling’, trans charity says
The EHRC’s guidance was widely condemned for recommending that trans people be banned from all gendered toilets. While the guidance is not law, its purpose is to advise “statutory and non-statutory” policy, including future legislation.
Commenting on the guidance, trans charity TransActual said the “appalling” guidance set out by the EHRC, which has previously come under fire for its policies on trans people, is a “bigoted attempt to segregate trans people in public spaces” and is, it says, “almost certainly unlawful.”
TransActual chair, Helen Belcher, also accused the government of inconsistency after prime minister Keir Starmer said he welcomed a Supreme Court ruling on the definition of women and sex in the 2010 Equality Act which determined that the definition of a woman is solely based on “biological sex.”
“The ball is now very firmly in the Government’s court,” she said. “Trust in them is at an all-time low. Either they were lying when they said they supported trans people before the last election, or they are lying now.
“They have clearly not thought through any of the vast and disturbing consequences raised by the Supreme Court ruling. The idea, as promoted this week by Keir Starmer, that there is no clarity as a result of this ruling and we can all just get on with our lives is pathetic.”
The Green Party was briefly embroiled in controversy and criticism after Carla Denyer’s fellow co-leader, Adrian Ramsay, appeared to refuse to definitively say whether trans women are women.
Asked to give his position on the ruling, Ramsay said the court had provided “some clarity in terms of the Equality Act” while urging people “not to get hung up in divisions, in definitions.”
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