'There should never have been the slightest doubt as to the meaning of the 2010 legislation.'
No there shouldn't but it's worth remembering Trevor Phillips' foundational part in the confusion. C&P from a post I made the other day:
On Trevor Phillips' watch, it was EHRC's job to write the statutory code for the new equality act. It says things like this:
'If a service provider provides single- or separate sex services for women and men, or provides services differently to women and men, they should treat transsexual people according to the gender role in which they present. However, the Act does permit the service provider to provide a different service or exclude a person from the service who is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or who has undergone gender reassignment. This will only be lawful where the exclusion is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate.
'any exception to the prohibition of discrimination must be applied as restrictively as possible and the denial of a service to a transsexual person should only occur in exceptional circumstances. A service provider can have a policy on provision of the service to transsexual users but should apply this policy on a case-by-case basis in order to determine whether the exclusion of a transsexual person is proportionate in the individual circumstances.'
I found the consultation documents on archived EHRC pages. Put the following links in web.archive.org for archive pages with downloadable links:
https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/publication-download/equality-act-codes-practice-post-consultation-report
http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/legislative-framework/equality-bill/equality-bill-codes-of-practice-consultation/
The original draft of the stat code was very sensible and just went through what the EA says in clear language. That's not the version we ended up with. The post-consultation report says:
'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.
'A number of concerns were raised about the exceptions, in particular the exceptions for charities, single sex services and separate services.
These sections have been revised as a result.'
At the end of the document there is a list of those consulted which includes Press for Change, GIRES and a:gender (the civil service TRA org).
So it's a bit rich to hear Trevor Phillips talking about people who should know better who have allowed their organisations to become captured when that is exactly what happened at EHRC under his watch. It's easy to point at Stonewall etc., they have been dreadful, but the damage was done right from the start in EHRC's statutory code. It gave the TRA orgs a really solid basis on which to build their misinformation campaigns. Stonewall etc. have spent the past decade telling us that their guidance is fully compliant with the EA stat code and the worst of it is they were right.