Guardian briefing against Baroness Falkner & the EHRC

[GreenUp]

The Guardian's TRA journalists Libby Brooks and Peter Walker have today published two articles briefing against Baroness Falkner and the EHRC.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/may/26/uk-equality-watchdog-months-sign-off-gender-guidance-mps-fear

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/26/splits-labour-supreme-court-gender-ruling

It's concerning that they are still suggesting Harriet Harman will take over.

One senior Labour MP, Meg Hillier, highlighted the plight of a person who has long lived as a woman, uses women’s changing rooms in her job with the ambulance service, and now fears being forced to tell colleagues she is transgender.

That's on him for deceiving his colleagues. No doubt his female colleagues will be very uncomfortable knowing he lied about being a woman so he could undress with them.

Somehow I very much doubt this persons sex is actually a mystery to anyone

Didn’t Harriet Harman recently say that when writing the Equality Act they always meant sex to mean biological sex?

When will they give it a rest?? Does every institution ever want their arse handed to them legally?

Can’t they just accept defeat? The law is clear, FO out of the women’s it isn’t hard, and no one anywhere near government is going to pander to you for long time.

One senior Labour MP, Meg Hillier, highlighted the plight of a person who has long lived as a woman, uses women’s changing rooms in her job with the ambulance service, and now fears being forced to tell colleagues she is transgender.

"Oh what a tangle web we weave when first we practice to deceive."

Tough on him, although I agree with the comment, it's unlikely that his work colleagues don't know he's a man. It's just another attempt at emotional blackmail from another 'trans'maiden. 🤬

Why do I suspect that the guardian in its alliance with labour TRA is absolutely desperate for the guidance “to take months to sign off” because they hope baroness falkener will be gone by then

they hope to sew confusion and doubt so that everytime the EHRC issues guidance they can start “yeah butting” and suggesting it needs revision

they are the absolute worst

I rather suspect his colleagues have always known.

That's on him for deceiving his colleagues. No doubt his female colleagues will be very uncomfortable knowing he lied about being a woman so he could undress with them.

Exactly. Show us a picture of a grown trans identifying man, and we will immediately recognise him for what he is. But we are probably too polite to say so.

Possibly with a teenage boy trying to identify as a young woman, it might be more possible to pass but such a boy won't have reached sexual maturity anyway.

Both of these articles are so obviously a follow up to the debate on the petition about self ID.

Sadly, I kept saying but didn't want it to be true, that we cant just dismiss the event as not relevent. Nothing will happen.

Obviously they have grouped together to continue what they want to achieve - but worth remembering they dont represent all women in the Labour Party.

The article about it being the EHRC dragging it out, is just two faced cheek, as it was TRAs who said the initial deadline for consultation responses was too short.

And in fact they hope it wont be completed by the time Baroness Falkner leaves because they wont a Labour stooge in there to nullify the court ruling.

I love the way they can now find the only think to slur Falkner with is that she was appointed by Liz Truss.

As to all those briefing from inside the EHRC, if they feel it is so bad there since she took over (and challenged the embedded TRAs) why didn't they leave!

The problem is that the ruling and interim guidance are clear. All the TRAs and their hangers on dont want it to be so exact.

So they are just indulging in a smear campaign as they dont have a leg(al) to stand on.

So looks like we all need to make a date to try and listen in to the WEC on 11 June where not doubt they will try and ambush Falkner.

And the other thing is to make it absolutely clear that the idea that some on as politically and ethically challenge as HH could be head of the EHRC is just another example of how low the ethics are in the Labour Party.

Maybe we should start our own briefing campaign against HH.

Just to add it is of course obvious because its the Guardian that they didn't ask other members of the Labour Party what they thought:

“This whole thing has been about capitulation to the bullying from a loud group of trans activists, not the tiny percentage of people with genuine gender dysphoria. Lesbians in particular were central to the Supreme Court ruling and no one has apologised to us for the distress and harms caused to lesbians, who, over the last 15 years have lost our community and single sex spaces.

“The Government really needs to clamp down on this bullying. You can’t have MPs and people within the judiciary saying they are not going to follow the law. What sort of democracy can you run if people are simply going to say they know the speed limit is 30mph but they are going to drive at 60mph anyway? The Labour leadership needs to listen to its membership, not just the bullies because as You Gov polls show, the majority of people agree with the Supreme Court decision.”

See more at https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5340707-lwd-statement-on-postponement-of-national-womens-conference

While Falkner and the EHRC will be responsible for drawing up the formal guidance, this must then be signed off by the government, and some believe it could end up not being in place before Falkner is replaced.

...

“Unless ministers are confident that all voices are being heard they won’t sign off on the guidance, and they are watching this very closely. It’s currently a bit of a mess.”

It's clear that this is being floated as a strategy to circumvent the SC ruling -- wait out Falkner's tenure and replace her with someone willing to obfuscate or perhaps even contradict the ruling. But as the request for feedback makes clear, the matter in question is not the interpretation of the ruling but the clarity of the guidance, especially the examples. There is no need to address every submission, particularly since a great many of them will be objecting to the substance of the ruling, not the clarity of the guidance. Much like Rowling, the EHRC seems to have already anticipated the possibility for the malicious exploitation of the process by TAs.

A number of critics have called the advice oversimplistic. One Labour MP said: “A lot of lawyers told me it is utterly ridiculous, and the supreme court judgment does not necessarily mean that.” Some government officials are also worried, with one saying the EHRC had “bungled” the advice.

Variations of this have been mentioned a number of times, but I have yet to see anyone in good faith explain what is confusing, ridiculous or contradictory. For example the GLP's objections to the advice are far from clear or obvious, essentially arguing that the ruling introduces conflict with existing non-Equality Act law that can't be resolved in the same way the SC resolved the contradiction in EA, i.e. by insisting 'woman' should be read 'biological woman'. Even granting the argument is sound, that would seem to be something to put before a judge, rather than be adjudicated by the EHRC.

Quite the contrary to the confusing claim, what I have seen for concrete objections is that if the SC's clear ruling is followed it will make trans people's lives unlivable, therefor they must not be followed. That is not a legal argument. If it's an earnestly believed assessment, then the appropriate response is to amend or change the Equality Act, which of course nobody is advocating for, exposing the intellectual dishonesty.

That brings us to the observation that in fact Falkner is doing Labour's dirty work for them. Surely some are true believers, but it would seem a remote possibility that Labour leadership, especially Starmer, will allow this to become a national issue for Reform or the hapless Tories to seize.

If this person who works in the ambulance service has also put his hands on patients while deceiving them about his sex, has he committed assault? Has he acted without informed consent, eg if a patient wanted or assumed they had a female HCP?

I'm sure Michael Foran has written about this. And of course we all remember the fragrant Dr Upton saying under oath that he'd present himself to a patient who asked for a female HCP.

It'd be ironic if these handmaidens handwringing about the poor transwoman being outed (I highly doubt his colleagues aren't aware of his sex) dragged his deception of patients into the light. Where it should be.

Sex Matters has an interesting timeline of efforts to sabotage the EHRC, up to May 2024:
sex-matters.org/about-us/what-we-are-up-against/ehrc-timeline/

All these Labour MPs saying "lawyers are telling us the SC ruling is really complicated, and the interim guidance doesn't reflect the law" -

Stop paying attention to Jolyon. Or, if you're tempted to, look at his track record of winning cases.

I think someone requiring treatment from the ambulance service has bigger things to worry about. It’s also not like every ambulance crew is made up of one male and one female. In an emergency, I don’t care who is treating me.

That's nice for you, but some people do care who is treating them, and informed consent is a thing.

Do you think a hijabi woman, or an orthodox Jewish woman, or a woman with a history of being abused by males, might have a different view?

Patients have a right to make informed decisions about their own care, and ambulances don't just go to people in extremis who need best interests decisions made in an instant.Patients don't exist to validate the gender identity of HCPs

I completely understand why someone would be uncomfortable being treated by a male. I certainly am in some situations.

It’s important to feel comfortable with the people treating you, but I think you’re overestimating the amount of choice there is when receiving treatment from the ambulance service. It’s so overstretched most people are waiting hours and they’re not turning down practitioners based on sex.

You suggested a TW could be committing assault by put their hands on a patient who didn’t know they were trans. Should that trans woman be required to tell every patient their sex at birth was male?

I think a patient who has only consented to a female HCP should only get a female HCP. So a transwoman should not examine that patient.And a patient who is being examined by a male HCP would usually be offered and expect a female chaperone, so a transwoman should not chaperone that patient.

Did the HCP concerned examine patients who had consented to being examined by a woman? Or chaperone for patients who were being examined by his male colleagues? We don't know and I doubt we'll ever know since the NHS is completely captured by gender ideology. But if he did he should not have done so.

Yes, she did.

An MP who is a KC who was an advisor to ehrc until recently claims that the update to the guidence is wrongly interpreting the law. He takes the sumption-ish view that the EA (even after the ruling) requires that there needs to be a proportionality test in order to exclude trans women from women's spaces.He wrote to ehrc asking them to withdraw the update. Baroness Faulkner replied pointing him to rhe consultation fir the new statory code.

I'm sure quite a few labour mps whose instinct is to want this to be true will rally around this idea.

x.com/tonyvaughanMP/status/1918736529121276137

But isn’t the proportionately test the same as that to exclude men from women’s spaces? I thought that was the whole point. If I let in men with a GRC to my same sex service for women, then it would be discriminatory to exclude other trans women who do not have a GCR and indeed any men at all. And this makes the law incoherent. But regardless, excluding men needs to be proportionate to achieve the aim of the service if it is a same sex service.

unsurprising that the guardian is concerned about a long wait for trans people and not for women... seemingly unaware that there are two groups affected by this clarification of legislation

That's because that is what they intended.

That's why that whatsapp group went into meltdown.

If they hadn't meant that men with a GRC were "for all purposes! a (legal) women then it wouldn't have been necessary to have within the SSE the grudging admission that maybe, just maybe, there may be occassions (only when proportionate of course) that a service could be just for biological women.

They have never denied this.

This comes up on endless threads. Those who were part of drafting this have confirmed this.

Starmer etc., who are professionally 2 faced are now trying to say well the law has clarified their intentions.

But in fact it was about social engineering so as to move towards self id. By prioritising trans rights over biological rights.

The Supreme Court in ruling that in the EA sex = biology is to make it a protected characteristic with as much status as the others. Not one than can be impinged on by certificate.

No other protected characteristic has to play second fiddle to another one.

And (I assume) that is why the ruling is only in relation to the EA because it is about the conflict between 2 protected characteristics.

And that's why (although Labour doesn't want to talk about it) the EHRC, having been told to provide clear guidelines of single sex services wrote back and said the law is a muddle and the best step is to disapply the GRA / GRC from the EA. (not that it should ever have been there as it is defined as a medical problem)

I suppose it is a sign that in fact Baroness Falkner isn't able to speak as she would like, because otherwise she would be crowing that from a different angle the Supreme Court has confirmed what they recommended. Sadly the SC ruling is less radical and the GRC is still in the EA rather than being got rid of.

There is another thread where some European "experts" write about how in the UK there is this conflict in the EA.

Maybe to counteract the well orchestrated push back against the SC judgement we should start a campaign that the logical next step is to disapply the GRA & GRC from the EA. ie promote something even more radical than the methodical, this isn't logical, process of the SC.

Or start a petition on the Parliament web site?

Although even if it got 100,000 signatures I bet not one MP would turn up to discuss it in a debate.

(as an impartial observer!) it is so obviously the logical next step.

But yes, absolutely Labour always intended for GRC sex to be the same as biological sex.

Which just shows you how long the political class has been captured.

@Talulahalula But isn’t the proportionately test the same as that to exclude men from women’s spaces? I thought that was the whole point.

Yes. In fact the entire ruling revolves around the finding that if there is a proportionate need to provide a singles sex service, then it is proportionate to exclude trans identified people of the opposite sex (as per the GRA), that to presume otherwise is incoherent.

Vaughan is right that there's no need to exclude one sex from a unisex service. That's obvious. And in fact is illegal. He appears to be trying to imply that you could label a unisex service as a 'woman's' service (as opposed presumably to 'biological woman's' service) and be in technical compliance with the law, that's dubious. But it's besides the point. The spirit of ruling is clear -- if you provide a service based on sex then you should be clear it's a sex based service, there should be a proportionate need to make it sex based, and you must exclude all members of the opposite sex. And that's what's reflected in the EHRC's code of practice which, after all, is not written with the intent of subverting the SC ruling.

I also don’t care if a male or female is treating me in an emergency. I do care, however, who is trying to deceive me…