A year ago, the Supreme Court settled what most people already knew: sex means biological sex. That should have ended the argument. Instead, the Labour government has spent the past year dithering, delaying and hiding behind process, because it is too frightened to enforce the law.
This is not a grey area. The Supreme Court judgment was exceptionally clear, and the failure to enforce it is a complete failure of leadership.
Until the judgment, we had the ridiculous situation where serial rapists like Adam Binnie Bryson – who went under the moniker Isla – were being housed in a women’s prison simply by claiming to be women. Even now, HMP Downview, a women’s prison in Surrey, reportedly houses a man who identifies as a trans woman.
Nurses are being forced to undress in front of men. They are having their reputations dragged through the mud, hauled through employment tribunals, and ostracised at work by their employers and colleagues, simply for asking for basic privacy at work.
Women like Sandie Peggie and the Darlington Nurses never wanted to be activists – they are simply front-line staff trying to do their jobs without having men in their changing rooms.
In council-run gyms, women who want to undress in peace without a man lurking behind them are treated as the problem, called out for “bigotry” and, in one absurd case, punished for speaking out by being banned from their local leisure centre.
In sport, while the women’s Olympic podium might finally now be protected from men, lots of deserving girls don’t stand a chance of ever getting there.
In amateur sport and at county level, girls are routinely forced to compete against boys. Young girls are tackled in rugby by biological men, punched in an amateur boxing ring by an opponent with a Y chromosome. Sport is not played by identities, it is played by bodies.
For vulnerable women, the consequences are even more serious. I know of a mother whose local council cannot guarantee that her severely disabled daughter will receive intimate care from a woman. Women who have suffered abuse at the hands of men worry they might be housed with men in female-only rape crisis services.
Sex matters. For privacy, for dignity, for safety and for fairness. It matters in hospitals, in changing rooms, in refuges, in prisons, in sport, and in how we collect data and protect vulnerable people. These are the basics of a civilised society.
In 2023, as equalities minister, I said that Stonewall does not decide the law in this country. A year ago, the Supreme Court made that explicit. Activists do not get to override statute.
The question now is whether the Government has the courage to act on that. So far, the answer is no.
When the UN tells Keir Starmer to hand over the Chagos Islands, he tries to spend £35bn of our money to comply. When the country is gripped by an energy supply crisis, the PM hides behind legal process rather than approve new drilling licences in the North Sea.
But when the Supreme Court says sex is biological, Starmer sticks his fingers in his ears. Our lawyer Prime Minister only enforces the laws he likes.
The Equalities Minister, Bridget Phillipson, has had the code of practice that tells the public sector how to enforce the law for months. Instead of getting on with it, she has delayed, revised and kicked the decision down the road.
In the week of the anniversary of the Supreme Court judgment, Phillipson has announced that she will make another announcement after the local elections. It’s pathetic.
The Government’s dithering is having a dire impact. Across the country, public bodies and organisations are acting as if the judgment were optional: from NHS trusts and councils to charities and regulators. Across the country, women are paying the price.
And while ministers hide, ordinary people are left to deal with the consequences. People go to work to do their jobs, not to referee ideological disputes about sex. Employers should not be left second-guessing the law. When ministers lack the courage to enforce clear rules, public services will suffer.
I will not wait any longer for the Government to stop dithering. I have asked Conservative-run councils to adopt and publish clear, lawful policies on single-sex spaces across the services they run and fund. That is what enforcing the law looks like.
The law is clear. What has been missing is the courage to enforce it. Under my leadership, the Conservative Party will ensure the law is clearly applied. There will be consequences for those who do not follow it. I said before that Stonewall does not decide the law in this country, and it is time the Government stopped behaving as if it does.
