Legislative Definition of Sex

Angela Richardson Excerpts

Monday 12th June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Cummins. I rise to speak in support of the petition to make the Equality Act clear, and I will start by saying why. It is because I believe that trans people’s rights are human rights and women’s rights are human rights. It is possible to protect both groups in law, and I believe that that is what the Equality Act sets out to do, but one unintended consequence of pulling together a lot of equality and anti-discrimination law into one place is that it is unclear in places, and that lack of clarity is harming people’s rights. We are discussing how to restore clarity in order to uphold the rights of everyone. I have huge respect and sympathy for people who suffer from gender dysphoria or feel they have been born in the wrong body. It is right that the law protects such people from discrimination in employment and in the provision of services under the heading of gender reassignment. It is also right that the law protects everyone, whether or not they have a trans identity, from discrimination in employment and in the provision of services on the basis of their sex.

Gender reassignment and sex are two different characteristics—both important in their own ways, and separately protected. The census suggests there may be more than 100,000 people in the country who identify as transgender, compared with around 5,000 who hold a gender recognition certificate. All those transgender people are protected in the same way on the basis of gender reassignment, which is widely drawn. They have the same protected characteristics, which includes people who are at the start of their personal transition and people who have identified as trans for decades; people who have taken cross-sex hormones and had surgery, and people who have not or do not intend to; and people who pass as the other sex in some situations and people who do not. All of these people are protected equally. None has more or less rights than any of the others.

In today’s debate, it is important that we remember what the Equality Act is and what it is not. It is the law that gives recourse to anyone who is treated unfairly by employers and service providers of all sorts because of their protected characteristics, and it is the law when it is reasonable and right for employers and service providers to treat people differently on the basis of their protected characteristics. Those employers and service providers—from pubs and gyms to hospitals and shops—cannot operate without clear rules and policies that accommodate all sorts of different people fairly and to the greatest extent they can. They need to be able to explain their rules on their signs and websites, on the phone and to staff. That means being clear about where there are sex-based rules and where a service is provided for both sexes together.

The protected characteristic of gender reassignment does not give someone the right to use opposite-sex facilities or services. It requires service providers to consider how they can properly accommodate trans people—not just trans people with a gender recognition certificate, but all trans people: all those who are covered by gender reassignment. They cannot do this fairly by treating trans people with and without a gender recognition certificate differently. Anyway, it is not practical and, in some cases, it is not even lawful to ask if someone has a GRC. In simple terms, the law needs to facilitate: that employers and service providers offer separate facilities for male and female people in situations where sex matters, like toilets, changing rooms, dormitories and so on; and that they do their level best to accommodate people who do not feel comfortable in communal facilities for their own sex, without undermining the privacy and dignity of people of the opposite sex. That usually means a third unisex option. At this point, I must say that it does not mean converting the ladies’ loos, for instance, into unisex and leaving the number of men’s loos intact, as I have seen happen.

Being a trans woman is a very specific experience and it brings some challenges. Likewise, being born a woman is a very specific experience that also brings challenges. Both groups need and deserve fair and appropriate support and provisions, and protections against discrimination on the basis of their protected characteristics. That means being clear—being clear about what sex means and being clear that it is not the same as gender reassignment or having a transgender identity. That is the right and compassionate way to ensure fairness and dignity for everyone.