I would love to know why the EHRC has lost the plot so badly. It all seems to lead back to Stonewall.
To answer your question, thePurported, the EHRC was one of the first organisations to fall. It was established with the Equality Act 2006, which included gender reassignment under the characteristic of sex.
However, the Equality Act as amended in 2010 split this category into two separate protected characteristics and so undid a lot of the damage the Gender Recognition Act 2004 and the Equality Act 2006 did to the rights of women.
It is only rational therefore, to seek to influence the Equality and Human Rights Commission as soon as it was set up. And trans rights organisations were incredibly well placed to do so. They enjoyed unparalleled access to power, they knew all the players and they had credibility - in the runup to the legislation that would become the Gender Recognition Act, politicians as well as civil servants had established good working relationships with these organisations and gotten into a habit of seeking their views and listening to their concerns.
Of course in and of itself, there is nothing wrong with advocating for the rights of your own interest group and there is nothing wrong with the state listening.
As long as there is balance.
Unfortunately for us, there was not an equal lobby for women's rights. And so from its inception, trans rights organisations have been in a position where they could work to shape the EHRC in their favour. Which continues to this day.
Despite this, the Equality Act 2010 has proven invaluable to our protection by specifying that our rights are sex-based and by outlining that the protected characteristic of gender reassignment does not trump that of sex. Which is why it has been so intensely targeted and why one of the greatest achievements by trans rights organisations was the commitment by the Labour Party to amend the protected characteristic of sex in the Equality Act in the direction demanded by these groups.
In Rebecca Bull's Briefing Note: Impact of Gender Recognition Reform on Sex Based Rights presented in the Scottish Parliament recently, she discusses this undue influence on the writing of the statutory codes which are arguably at the heart of one of our biggest problems - the correct interpretation of law and application of our legal protections.
Moreover, it is apparent from the Equality Act Codes of Practice post Consultation Report (2011) that the Codes were more reliant on the input from various lobbying groups than on strict attention to the statute in that the Codes were amended in line with responses received to an original draft Code:
“Various transsexual stakeholder groups responded to the formal consultation and also participated in the parallel consultation events taking place on the non- statutory guidance.”
“Feedback from the consultation events was incorporated into the employment and services codes where appropriate, particularly on issues of confidentiality, use of single sex services and the legal definition of transgender.” (2011:11)
The report also states that: ‘A number of concerns were raised about the exceptions, in particular the exceptions for.. single sex services and separate services. These sections have been revised as a result.” (2011; 13).
Rebecca concludes
In my view the Code does not adequately reflect the EqA 2010 and it seems that it has been deliberately edited in order to take into account the views of only one stakeholder group (gender reassignment) over those of women. Indeed there is no record of women’s groups’ involvement in this particular aspect of the Code. In my view the Code is fundamentally flawed and has departed from statute.
The note can be downloaded here