WEC to question the EHRC Chair and Chief Executive 11 June 2025 2:20pm

I don’t know but it was disingenuous to include them as “CEOs” as pp said.

I guessing the interim CEOs were not getting the same salary as a full time CEO?

And yes I think a large part of it was the “we don’t know who has a GRC so we have to let all of these men in” which has now been thrown out. Having a GRC isn’t a pass to women’s spaces.

She challenged them on including the interim CEOs in that as they were just stepping up to a role and didn’t expect to do it permanently.

These MPs are both stupid and dishonest, so that tracks.

What is the legal basis for single sex women’s groups/facilities/protections with some men in them? They aren’t single sex. Yes, TRAs will continue to argue self serving nonsense, as they have always done. But the EHRC can clarify and hopefully there will be case law on this point in future.

The thing about the CEOs is fairly simple. There has to be an accounting officer to make sure that any spend is regular. In a Whitehall department it's the Permanent Secretary, in a body like the EHRC it's the CEO.

Therefore it's not a role that can lie vacant for weeks or months at a time. You see this all the time in Whitehall. Jack is retiring as Perm Sec of a department, Joanna is lined up to replace him, but Joanna needs to tidy up loose ends at her current job and can't start immediately. So Dave gets to be Perm Sec on an interim basis to cover the six weeks until Joanna starts.

Three substantive CEOs in five years isn't an unreasonable turnover, especially if one of them departed unexpectedly. Adding in the short term interims and presenting it as six CEOs in five years, with the impression that Falkner is a nightmare boss who nobody can work for...

MPs should know how this works, and if they're pretending otherwise, they're either being stupid or dishonest.

We certainly knew they weren't legally female, but were pushing themselves in under the cover of non-gender reassignment discrimination (disadvantaged relative to everyone, but with different comparators from GRC-holders). But did we know that their presence was totally breaking the basis for the SSEs? Or was it one of those 'we don’t know who has a GRC' situations?

All water under the bridge now, but TRAs will carry on arguing that the SSEs can still be respected by allowing in opposite-sex trans as well as babes-in-arms, cleaners, etc 🙄. A PP has already pointed out that SC's observations about SSE operation are Obiter.

The WESC have hightlighted potential conflicts in law, but are blaming the EHRC, rather than parliament.

Someone on the committee used the 30 years stealth trans person as an example. To comply with the law, they would have to inform their employer that they had a GRC, changed their documents and were not the sex they present as. The implication being does that conflict with their privacy? Is it written into the law that a person with a GRC does not have to declare they have one, and are using their changed documents as orginal.

I think we need the SC to rule about what is written in the GRA, too. But i doubt any TRA would want to risk that.

I think the reason it hasn’t been made by GC lawyers is that most of these cases up to this point have centred on belief.

I’m not sure the GC groups never pointed out that men without GRCs don’t legally count as women. Dr Nic Williams for FPFW made this point very early on.

Agree that Stonewall etc would never spell out that men without GRCs had no rights under the EA protected characteristic of female sex. There still are TRAs who think they do even now following the SC ruling because “proportional” and “legitimate”.

Stonewall Law had two strings to its bow, though:

First, not acknowledging, post-Haldane, that men without GRCs should never be in women's spaces at all (but GC lawyers never said this either: the SC were first to point it out)

Secondly, arguing that the test for excluding a man (with or without a GRC) was so stringent that exclusion was barely ever merited.

If thats what they intended, why didnt they write that? The SC isn't forcing a different meaning in the law, they are just clarify the law as written.

Political interpretation has changed over time.

The previous EHRC guidance went further than the Act, so called “Stonewall Law”. That’s why Falkner talks about the “course correction” undergone by the EHRC since 2021.

The explanatory note to Schedule 3 para 28 as originally published refers to MtF transsexuals in a women-only group, so your 'should' is doing a lot of heavy lifting!

When the Act was published, its drafters, and those drafting the guidance, clearly intended that trans people should be excluded from opposite-sex groupings only in extraordinary circumstances. The SC have had to force a different meaning because the Act is otherwise unworkable.

Thank you for the response and Yes I was talking about the Copy and Paste recommendation I will have to resubmit mine

Surely that's fairly obvious.

The Supreme Court has ruled that sex in the Equality Act is biological sex.

Therefore a single sex service can only legally be single sex using a biological definition of sex.

Therefore no male people can use a female-only space or service. If you let any male people in, then it becomes mixed sex and all males have to be allowed to use it.

Spaces and services can only legally be either single (biological) sex or mixed sex.

Describing a service or space as single sex but allowing some males in but not others is discriminatory and illegal.

As pp said and was made clear by the CEO of the EHRC yesterday, who I thought was very good, if the definition of sex is biological, that is the only legal basis for excluding members of the opposite sex under the Equality Act. A single sex space can only operate using this exception.

This is a misrepresentation of the former position. The original guidance didn’t say that having a GRC had no effect at all. It said that it was a matter of proportionality and it was possible to “even” exclude a “transgender woman” with a GRC.

It’s always been presented as a “case by case” basis. R v Green in 2013 held that a GRC was necessary for a trans identified male prisoner to be treated as a woman according to the circumstances of that case. The prison service policy in England and Wales also made GRC holders more likely to be placed in the female estate.

Honestly, read some older MN threads.

The equality act provides that transgender people can be excluded from single-sex provision if it's proportionate to do so. That had previously been misinterpreted to apply to transwomen (with or without a GRC) in female spaces. It's now clear that it should always have been interpreted to apply to transwomen in male spaces or - perhaps more likely - transmen in female spaces.

Nasty piece of work.

I think you’re probably right, but those comments were obiter and not legally binding, so not a very secure basis for such a significant change in position

@Shortshriftandlethal thank you very much, email sent.

@IwantToRetire
During that embarrassingly staged set of questions to make out the Falkner was such an appalling boss the EHRC was falling apart and all these people had left and there had been 6 directors(?) or some distortion of fact.

She was remarkably composed and made sensible comments about if people left there had to be interims, so basically it was on 3 directors(?) and one had had to leave because they had broken a or the law.

Does anyone know who that was and what law was broken.

The position was CEO. The information seems not to be public information, but putting pieces together it was Marcial Boo, who was allegedly instrumental in building the dossier against Falkner and also involved with leaking its contents, which contained classified information, to the press.

Boo signed off sick in Sept. 2023, the investigation of the case against Falker was closed in Oct. 2023, and Boo quietly quit the organization Dec. 2023 without having returned to work.

In the press release announcing the close of the investigation the EHRC said:

https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/media-centre/news/update-equality-and-human-rights-commissions-handling-concerns-regarding-baroness?return-url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.equalityhumanrights.com%2Fsearch%3Fkeys%3Dcomplaints%2Bchair%26sort_by%3Dcreated

"In the light of the conclusions and guidance shared with the Interim Deputy
Chair and Board as a result of the review, the Interim Deputy Chair, supported
by the Board, has decided that the investigation into the Chairwoman should
now close. The Board will work through any outstanding issues with all parties in confidence."

Also mentioned in the press release were a high-level list of the matters investigated, including:

whether - and in what way - the conclusions from the EHRC’s leak inquiry are relevant to the investigation proceeding;

Daily Mail:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12112707/Whistleblowers-human-rights-commission-say-boss-facing-witch-hunt-trans-lobby.html

"The allegations against Baroness Falkner have been leaked to Channel 4 News, which is believed to be planning to run a report on the issue this week – something the sources say could 'jeopardise' the investigation. "

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13053747/Chief-executive-UK-equalities-watchdog-quits.html

"The insider said Mr Boo had been responsible for 'compiling the case against' Baroness Falkner, who kept working at the EHRC during her eight-month ordeal even though some of her own staff were 'conniving against her'."