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

[IwantToRetire]

The Women and Equalities Committee (WEC) will question the Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Baroness Falkner of Margravine in Parliament on Wednesday, 11 June during its annual scrutiny session of the EHRC.

Venue: The Thatcher Room, Portcullis House
Watch live: Visit parliamentlive.tv Women and Equalities Committee

The Women and Equalities Committee (WEC) will question the Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Baroness Falkner of Margravine in Parliament on Wednesday, 11 June during its annual scrutiny session of the EHRC.

MPs on the cross-party committee, chaired by Labour MP Sarah Owen, will discuss the EHRC’s work and resources and wider equalities policy, including the implications of the For Women Scotland Supreme Court judgment and the EHRC’s subsequent consultation on the Code of Practice.

The Committee will hear from the EHRC’s Chief Executive, John Kirkpatrick, alongside Baroness Falkner.

Witnesses
Starting at 2.20pm
Baroness Kishwer Falkner of Margravine, Chair, Equality and Human Rights Commission
John Kirkpatrick, Chief Executive, Equality and Human Rights Commission

https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/328/women-and-equalities-committee/news/207403/wec-to-question-the-ehrc-chair-and-chief-executive/

(I came across this by chance whilst looking for a date for the WEC interview with Mary-Ann Stephenson but could find nothing - anybody know when it will be.)

Shameful. Owen and the rest are smug fools.

They are so clueless that Falkner needs to start spelling things out very simply for them: no, you can’t have a “transwomen-inclusive” women’s walking group; no, they haven’t lost the right to use women’s toilets because they never had it in the first place.

These are things we all know but, shockingly, the WESC haven’t grasped the very basics.

Sections D and E outline an MPs responsibilities, and it it is to these that any complaints against Sarah Owen should be made. She is in clear breach and must be held to account because her ignorance and conduct are bringing her role and the committee into disrepute:

publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5803/cmcode/1083/1083.pdf

For me the performance of the chair was shameful. Referring to the fact the SC ruling had nothing to do with sport or toilets just representation on boards was appalling. I have sent a very brief and incredibly polite email to Sarah Owen - the chair. [email protected]

I have asked why she was unaware of the contents of the ruling.

We dont know if members of the WESC are just performing for TRA or believe their line of attack. And we dont know if they are just ignorant or reflecting government policy.

Integrity
Holders of public office must avoid placing themselves under any obligation to people or organisations that might try inappropriately to influence them in their work.
Objectivity
Holders of public office must act and take decisions impartially, fairly and on merit, using the best evidence and without discrimination or bias.

D - Rules of conduct

1. Members must treat their staff and all those visiting or working for or with Parliament with dignity, courtesy and respect.
2. Members must base their conduct on a consideration of the public interest, avoid conflict between personal interest and the public interest and resolve any conflict between the two, at once, and in favour of the public interest.

10. A Member who is the Chair and Registered Contact of an All-Party Parliamentary Group must ensure that the Group and any secretariat observe the rules set down for such Groups.

Sarah Owen, for one, has form. She is an established TRA and has been quite outspoken previously. She is the chair of the committee, and yet it is clear she has not even read or understood the ruling.

@Shortshriftandlethal excellent post. I hope Sarah Owen is able to be further educated by someone close to her showing her this. For her own professional sake.

My big takeaway was to fill out the EHRC survey (and to reference the clarity of the answers given to the committee yesterday). It takes about 30 minutes if you want to add extra comments, otherwise you can tick satisfaction level for each individual question

Owen is full on TWAW so I’d imagine is livid with the SC ruling.

@lanadelgrey I just googled the survey and one of the first hits was a link to ‘guidance’ on how to complete it……

https://transactual.org.uk/equality-act-campaign/responding-to-the-ehrc-consultation/

Here is the EHRC survey link. If you can complete it - in your own words - I suggest it would be helpful

https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/equality/equality-act-2010/codes-practice/code-practice-services-public-functions-and-associations

@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'."

@Shortshriftandlethal thank you very much, email sent.

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

Nasty piece of work.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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”.