Labour accused of ‘letting down ladies’

Labour was accused of letting down women and girls last night after it rejected the Tories’ plan to protect single-sex spaces. 

A Shadow Cabinet member said there was no need to change the Equality Act so it would define sex according to biology rather than gender identity, a move that would bar transgender women from female-only changing rooms, toilets and prisons.

Labour defence spokesman John Healey told Times Radio yesterday: ‘We will not want to amend the Act, it’s not needed. It already provides a definition of a woman, and sex and gender are different.

‘What is needed is clearer guidance for service providers, from the NHS to sports bodies, and in prisons, on what single-sex exemptions need to be, and the best way to be able to do that is in guidance, not primary legislation. This, to be honest, is a distraction from the election campaign.’

Party grandee Ben Bradshaw described the policy as a ‘nasty little transphobic crusade’, while health spokesman Wes Streeting said it was a ‘disgrace’ for the Conservatives to claim that Sir Keir Starmer does not know what a woman is.

Labour was accused of letting down women and girls last night after it rejected the Tories’ plan to protect single-sex spaces

But women and equalities minister Kemi Badenoch hit back, saying: ‘Under Labour, biological men will be allowed access to women-only spaces.

‘Labour think protecting women is a ‘distraction’.

‘This is no surprise – Keir Starmer has flip-flopped on what a woman is, he long campaigned to introduce gender self-identification, and today he is refusing to back our commitment to rewrite the Equality Act to make clear that sex means ‘biological sex’.

‘While Rishi Sunak and the Conservatives have a clear plan to protect women and girls, it is clear Keir Starmer and the Labour Party will not stand up for women.’

In her first round of broadcast interviews of the election campaign, Mrs Badenoch said the law needed tidying up because of the growing difference between what people meant by sex and gender. She said institutions such as rape crisis centres were worried about how to deal with people who were born male but now identified as women.

A Shadow Cabinet member said there was no need to change the Equality Act so it would define sex according to biology rather than gender identity, a move that would bar transgender women from female-only changing rooms, toilets and prisons

Mrs Badenoch also claimed the proposed change to the Equality Act – which she suggested more than a year ago – would have been laid in Parliament this September had the snap election not been called.

She was pressed repeatedly by the BBC on what paperwork transgender individuals would have to provide when being assigned to a prison, for instance, given that they can update the sex listed on their birth certificate if they obtain a Gender Recognition Certificate.

Mrs Badenoch said: ‘What you are describing is a hypothetical scenario, assuming that when people go into rape crisis centres they’re bringing in birth certificates, they’re bringing in gender recognition certificates.

‘What is happening at the moment is that people come to the centres and they are visibly of a different sex.’

Helen Joyce, of human-rights charity Sex Matters, said: ‘It would be disappointing to see Labour dismiss the need to amend the Equality Act. The next government, whichever party is in power, should show leadership and fix the muddle, rather than claiming there isn’t one.’