Business Secretary Peter Kyle has defended the long delay in the publication of the government’s single-sex spaces guidance and praised the document as “light touch.” He told Sky News:
“It’s very common sense, and it won’t affect the vast majority of businesses because they will already conform… I think the majority of changes will be quite light touch such as signage. So I think it’s going to be quite easy to adapt to and I think the the guidance it’s quite long guidance but I think most businesses will find it quite straightforward.”
As for the delay Kyle said “it’s much more important that we get these things right and we wanted to do this with sensitivity.”
The updated Code of Practice corrected the 2011 code, which told service providers to treat trans people according to their presented gender role – advice the Supreme Court ruling confirmed was wrong in law. If a service provider admits trans people of the opposite sex into a single-sex service, it can no longer rely on the Equality Act’s single-sex exceptions and is very likely committing unlawful sex discrimination against others…
The code confirms that women may reasonably object to male presence in contexts involving undressing, vulnerability or trauma recovery, and that providing only a mixed-sex service in such situations could itself constitute direct or indirect sex discrimination against women, or unlawful harassment. In competitive sport, sex-based rules should be applied on the basis of biological sex; trans people should not be included in single-sex competitions for the sex they identify with. Though organisers are told to consider alternatives like mixed-sex categories…
Women’s rights group Sex Matters flags one legal error in the guidance which is a claim that information about sex is likely “special category data” under UK GDPR, but Article 9(1) doesn’t list sex as a special category. It covers sex life and sexual orientation, which are distinct. The death of the culture wars continues…
Paula Barker, Liverpool Wavertree MP backing Andy Burnham, told Times Radio there wouldn’t be trouble from the markets under Burnham:
“The markets will have to fall in line.”