“For Women Scotland” Supreme Court Ruling

Statement

The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Tuesday 22 April.

“With permission, I will now make a Statement to update the House on the Supreme Court judgment in the case of For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers.

This ruling brings welcome clarity and confidence for women and service providers. Single-sex spaces must be protected, and this is personal to me: before I was elected to this place, I ran a women’s refuge in the north-east for women and children fleeing domestic violence. I know how important to survivors it is, and always was, to have single-sex spaces based on biology —a place of safety after trauma, time in a sanctuary that allowed them therapeutic support, healing from unimaginable male violence and fear. I remember how hard countless campaigners had to fight over many decades to get any single-sex provision at all, in order to create women’s refuges and rape crisis centres. Later, I remember how hard it was to convince commissioners that young homeless women trying to heal from terrifying acts of cruelty should not be left in mixed-sex accommodation. I will continue to fight for that provision to ensure that women’s safety, women’s privacy and women’s dignity are always protected.

This Government will continue as before, working to protect single-sex spaces based on biological sex—now with the added clarity of this ruling—and we will continue our wider work with commitment and compassion to protect all those who need it, right across society. This is a Government who will support the rights of women and trans people, now and always. This is a Government who will support the rights of all people with protected characteristics, now and always. This is a Government who will support the rights of our most vulnerable, now and always. On that, there is no change to announce: dignity and respect for all, now and always.

However, this is a judgment long in the making. It began in 2018 when the Scottish Parliament passed the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act. The definition of a woman in this Act was overturned by the Scottish courts. Scottish Ministers issued revised guidance on the definition of a woman which stated that a woman in that Act bears the same meaning as a woman in the Equality Act 2010—and included trans women with a gender recognition certificate. For Women Scotland challenged that guidance, saying that sex in the Equality Act means biological sex, so that a trans woman with a gender recognition certificate is a man for the purposes of the Act. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court, and last week, the court ruled that sex in the Equality Act means biological sex. This means that a person will be considered as their biological sex for the purposes of the Equality Act, regardless of whether or not they have a gender recognition certificate.

I know that the women who brought this challenge have not always been treated with the respect they deserve. This Government believe in freedom of speech and in the fundamental right to protest, but in no way does that extend to criminal damage. There can be no excuse for defaced statues of feminist icons, no excuse for threats, and no excuse for harassment. Such acts seek to drag down the debate, away from common sense and the sensible view—held by the majority of the British public—that women need single-sex spaces, that those spaces should be protected, and that we can protect those spaces while treating trans people with respect as well. As such, the certainty that this judgment brings is welcome. Now, it is time to move forward.

There is now a need to ensure that this ruling is clear across a range of settings, from healthcare and prisons to sport and single-sex support groups. The Equality and Human Rights Commission, as Britain’s equality regulator, is working quickly to issue an updated statutory code of practice to reflect this judgment, and I look forward to reviewing that code of practice in due course.

Alongside these updates, our work to protect single-sex spaces across society continues in earnest, because for far too long, under the Conservative Government, single-sex spaces were anything but—and nowhere is that clearer than in our hospitals. Year after year, the Conservatives pledged to close mixed-sex wards; yet year after year, their use not only persisted but grew massively. Year after year, often in their most vulnerable moments, women were denied the privacy and dignity they deserved. Time after time, Conservative Ministers, including the now leader of the Opposition, came to this House and toured television studios telling the public that they were protecting single-sex spaces in our hospitals. The truth was very different, because as last year’s data tells us, the use of mixed-sex wards rose by more than 2,200% in 10 years under the last Tory Government. There is no better example of rhetoric divorced from reality and of a party playing politics with the safety of women, and we will never let them forget it. By contrast, this Government will protect women’s wards and NHS England will soon publish guidance on how trans patients should be accommodated in clinical settings. We will end the practice of mixed-sex wards once and for all.

It is not just in our NHS that we will act on behalf of women. In prisons, we will continue to protect women’s safety with single-sex accommodation. In women’s sport, I have always backed integrity and fairness. Biology matters for competitive sport, and sporting bodies have issued rules to reflect that. In our prisons, in our hospitals, in sport and in a whole host of other spaces, what was true before the ruling remains true after the ruling. This Government protect safe spaces for women under the Equality Act 2010.

For too many years, we have seen the heat dialled up in this debate by the Conservatives. There was no real action to protect women’s spaces, while under their watch the use of mixed-sex wards increased, an epidemic of violence against women and girls spread across the country and women’s health was neglected. This Labour Government will deliver for women through our plan for change, driving down waiting lists month after month, tackling misogyny throughout society, and once and for all delivering justice for survivors of violence against women and girls.

I know that many trans people will be worried in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, so I want to provide reassurance here and now that trans people will continue to be protected. We will deliver a full trans-inclusive ban on conversion practices. We will work to equalise all existing strands of hate crime, and we will review adult gender identity services, so that all trans people get the high-quality care they deserve. The laws to protect trans people from discrimination and harassment will remain in place, and trans people will still be protected on the basis of gender reassignment—a protected characteristic written into Labour’s Equality Act.

This Government will offer trans people the dignity that too often they were denied by the Conservatives. Too often, trans people were a convenient punchbag and the butt of jokes made in this place by the Conservatives, culminating rather shamefully in the previous Prime Minister standing at this Dispatch Box trying to score cheap laughs from his Back-Benchers at the expense of vulnerable people. By contrast, this Government are clear that trans people deserve safety, opportunity and respect.

This verdict is about clarity and coherence in the eyes of the law, but the Supreme Court judges delivered along with that verdict a vital reminder: this is not about the triumph of one group at the expense of another. It is not about winners or losers, and it is not about us or them. That is the message I want to reinforce today in this House. Everyone in our society deserves dignity and respect. Those values are not and never will be a zero-sum battle. Dignity and respect for all—those are the values that lift us up and set us free. Those are the values that define and distinguish any modern and compassionate society. Those are the values that this Government will do everything to promote and protect, now and always. I commend this Statement to the House”.

My Lords, we on these Benches warmly welcome the Supreme Court’s ruling and congratulate For Women Scotland and the many others who have campaigned tirelessly on this issue despite suffering abuse and threats at the hands of activists. I know that noble Lords across the House will agree that there is no place for threats and abuse in public discourse. I take the opportunity to thank the lesbian groups who came together as the Lesbian Interveners for the For Women Scotland case. These included the LGB Alliance, the Lesbian Project and Scottish Lesbians.

Many people, including many within the Conservative Party, have acted to protect the rights of women and girls, at great personal cost. In government we rejected Labour’s calls to introduce self-identification and ordered police forces to stop recording offences by trans women in female crime statistics.

We welcome the clarity that the Supreme Court judgment has given. This ruling is an important step forward for women and girls. We on the Conservative Benches have always known what a woman is, yet we regret that something as simple as biological sex has become so politicised. The Supreme Court ruling is a powerful victory for the many determined women who stood up for what they believe in, and for those across the UK who recognise the importance of protecting women and girls’ privacy and dignity.

However, we must acknowledge that this ruling follows years of struggle. It is only now that the Labour Party has listened. The judgment was a vital affirmation of the rights of women and girls to access single-sex spaces and have those rights protected. Biological sex matters in sports, in our prisons, in our hospitals and in our changing rooms. Unfortunately, women have had to struggle with the NHS, their employers and other organisations, and ultimately through the courts, to protect their privacy and dignity.

We hope that this ruling will safeguard the rights of women and girls and protect their dignity, ensuring fairness and preventing harm, but this ruling is just the beginning. We must now ensure that policy reflects this clarity, strengthening protections for single-sex spaces, safeguarding women’s sports and ensuring that our institutions are not clouded by ideology.

My Lords, the Statement, which we have not had the privilege of listening to in this House today, said that the ruling was not a zero-sum game. That is a phrase I have been using for quite a long time in this context, and I totally agree, but the practical repercussions of the ruling have been left to others to sort out—for women, trans people, non-binary, intersex and anyone else who may not pass muster through no fault of their own.

We need guidelines, as the noble Baroness has just mentioned, for the management of single-sex spaces and for institutions such as hospitals, the police, operators of gyms and so on. Then there are everyone else’s human rights, such as the right to privacy and to safety—if you are a trans woman being forced to use men’s toilets, for example—and not to be subjected to degrading treatment. How will the Government organise these guidelines? Can the Minister say what the timescale is? In the meantime, what is the advice to those who are now not allowed to use single-sex facilities? Are they to lose their right to public life, including as advisers to this House?

My Lords, this ruling brings welcome clarity and confidence for women and service providers. Throughout my life, not just as a Minister, I have campaigned and worked for women’s rights and for the need for single-sex spaces, including, given my great age, when it was not the mainstream concern that it has become now. Like many of my sisters on these Benches, some of my earliest political campaigning was for the single-sex spaces necessary in refuges and rape crisis services to protect and support women.

The Government will therefore continue as before, working to protect single-sex spaces based on biological sex, now with the added clarity of this ruling. We will continue our wider work with commitment and compassion to protect all those who need it, right across society.

This is a Government who will support the rights of women and trans people, now and always. We will support the rights of our most vulnerable, now and always, and on that there is no change.

However, this is an important judgment, long in the making. It began in 2018 when Scottish Ministers issued guidance on the definition of a “woman” in the eyes of the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018. That guidance stated that a “woman” in that Act bears the same meaning as in the Equality Act 2010 and included trans women with a gender recognition certificate. For Women Scotland challenged that guidance, saying that “sex” in the Equality Act means biological sex, so that a trans woman with a gender recognition certificate is a man for the purposes of the Act. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court and last week the court ruled that sex in the Equality Act means biological sex. This means that a person will be considered as their biological sex for the purposes of the Equality Act, regardless of whether they have a gender recognition certificate.

My Lords, we are now moving on to 20 minutes of Back-Bench questions on the Statement. I remind all noble Lords about language and that the House expects the usual courtesies to be respected. This is Back-Bench questions, not speeches. If our questions are short, succinct and to the point, I hope we will get in at least 16 contributions from Back-Bench Members. To assist noble Lords, the first question will be from the Conservative Benches, and I will then go to the Labour Benches, then to the Liberal Democrat Benches and then to the Cross Benches. At that point, I will see where we go next.