EHRC guidance might be delayed for over a year

[OhBuggerandArse]

Ministers really can't cope with acknowledging the law, can they?

https://www.thetimes.com/article/d7cd9e2f-2635-409d-a624-a833611a09fc?shareToken=f3f89ea86fb5c264c18866395c93194d

I hope this is just a flag they're sending up to evaluate how much pushback there might be - let's make sure that the pushback is noisy, articulate and effective.

Not sure which thread to add this to, but thought better to add here than start yet another thread (although if this goes on any longer will need a thread index just for this aspect)

Government seeks costs assessment before approving updated EHRC Services Code

The government has asked the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to produce a costs assessment to help decide whether a full regulatory impact assessment is required before approving the draft Code of Practice on services, public functions and associations.

Continues at https://www.vwv.co.uk/insights/articles/government-seeks-costs-assessment-before-approving-updated-ehrc-services-code/

Is this just a ploy not only to delay but be able to blames the EHRC for the delay?

There is a cost to not releasing reliable guidance on how to adhere to the law. In fact that's the entire point of the guidance. It's remarkable that the government is seeming to demand that the EHRC publish costs on providing useful and correct information. This is the newspeak that people are revolted with, it boggles the mind that ministers can't see that.

The good thing is that Labour now owns the issue. There will be an obvious political price to pay and their future whining about how they aren't the ones making trans an election issue it's reform/tories - that they just wanted to get on with business - will be quite the spectacle.

For myself I plan on relaxing my usual prohibition against schadenfreude and will delight in the exquisite electoral agony that they are willingly bringing on themselves.

It seems obvious that the Govt tried to stymie the implementation of updated EHRC guidance by asking for an necessary assessment but it backfired politically and attracted a lot of criticism. So this seems to be their next attempt at delaying implementation.

Labour backbencher complaints are behind this delay and the Govt is probably dreading the nature of the 'debate' from their own side on the EHRC guidance when it's laid before Parliament.

I'm not understanding the 'costs' arguments. The cost of providing extra toilets suited to 'trans' people was incurred, or mandated, or however you want to look at it at whatever time it was agreed that such people wouldn't use toilets set aside for their sex. If it has been agreed.

It's nonsense to let trans people unlawfully use the wrong sex toilets and then claim there's a cost to putting things back to how they always should have been.

Have the government factored in the legal costs of all the organisations who are currently breaking the law because the govenment wont say "right, we've all been told what the law is, now consult your lawyers and make sure your policies comply from now on" and is still letting them get away with "oh it's all too hard. we need EHRC guidance"

Like the NHS for example, who are already embroiled in multiple very expensive discrimination cases as a result of their own workplace policies.

EHRC guidance is mainly intended for organisations who can't afford to get their own legal and professional advice. It's not an excuse for big companies and large public organisations to piss about.

Why is it too expensive to let women have their legal rights?

Because to permit the law to work means now producing additional facilities for all the men they have been permitting to break the law?

Women have been expected to use facilities they were deeply upset and uncomfortable about all this time (and are still expected to crack on with this while Labour fuck about), so it's time the men took a share of the load until this is all worked out. They can use the facilities for their sex and cope the way that women had to until whatever needs to happen has happened. Stop dumping the fucking burden on women.

Ffs, this government are bloody pitiful.

This is it really.

Two pronged approach.

First, organised sueing by women of everyone in sight not meeting women's rights and expecting them to just suck up the ongoing issues because caaaaan't until men are happy and everything is perfect for them. That won't go well in a court room.

Second, no taxation without representation. If this world is only intended to work right for men, they can fucking keep Rachel afloat.

I just saw a typo in my post from last night, I meant to type, 'by asking for an UNnecessary assessment". 🙈

So glad that other posters were able to make sense of what I was trying to say.

WTF is going on here!

"Zoe Leventhal KC, representing the minister for women and equalities, argued that the guidance may have been too simplistic in suggesting that, for example, a trans woman should not use a women's toilet in a public space. She suggested that it could be judged on a case-by-case basis."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cddrjq9764yo

BBC making a small, grudging nod to there being women involved in this thing about should they have single sex spaces or not, but carefully not putting the same amount of emotive and influencing information as they do for the poor menz.

I really don't know what is gong on here, I had no idea the government was involved I thought it was just GLP/EHRC

I'm not sure how representative/voice of the government the WEC is, but it is well known for being captured and batshit. There are two sex realist MPs in there who must be tearing their hair, but the output of the WEC is full blown activist, and like most things with the name 'women' in them, was captured to avoid them doing anything inconvenient like actually standing up for the needs and voices of real women.

I understood that the GLP and its hangers-on would be desperately trying to undermine the EHRC, but to have the Minister for Equalities actually joining in is quite something.

Yes, but that is the Committee, not the Minister. Philipson had previously appeared to put some distance between her position and that of the Committee (eg, she ignored their position on the appointment of the new Chair of the EHRC).

May one say at this point for fucks fucking sake! Is the minister actively trying to undermine the law?

I suspect she’s trying to sit on the fence, and that this comes from Starmer.

thats worked so well for him so far.

Case by case is so ludicrous. Would they have to decide how well someone passes? Who would be the arbiter of that?

Case by case = you’re on your own woman faced with a TiM in your loo. Take him on yourself if you dare! We’ll think about whether you had a point afterwards or whether you should be shunned for unkindness and bigotry. Gee, thanks W&E group!

Lucy Hunter Blackburn's take: https://x.com/LucyHunterB/status/1989285115747581966

Interesting.

The downside is that it makes the government look confused or dishonest, with no idea what it thinks or why, or what it intends to do, while briefing against each other to the public.

The LHB take is both comforting and enraging.

I put this on the other thread but thought I would also drop it here. There are practical considerations to sort because previous legislation and building regs based on health, safety and welfare did not consider that we’d get to a point where people were arguing it was their right to go into the toilet of the opposite sex.

If you have both sexes in a toilet cubicle or room, you have to change the design of every toilet to be a mixed sex design. That means scrapping Designs C and D in Document T, variations of which cover most of the toilet provision in the country.

The alternative is to change Health and Safety legislation and Building Regulation and ignore doing risk assessments and Equality Impact Assessments in the process.

When you get to the nitty gritty it’s no wonder there’s a delay.

The use of the arguement "case by case" was the one Labour TRAs and others tried to use to say that the Single Sex Exemptions used to say a women's support service or refuge should be applied on a case by case basis was a fallacy.

How can you offer / advertise a service or a refuge on a case by case basis.

Its nonsense.

What is so disheartening is that these dedicated TWAW loyalists have not listened to or paid any attention to the legal cases and the legal briefings.

Can you imagine the Ladies Toilets in a railway station having to react to each new customer and rush is in and announce sorry ladies when you came into this toilet it was a women only, but by the time you leave we have been pressurised by one individual to turn it into trans inclusive.

Just bonkers.

Why is Labour backtracking on single-sex spaces?

Bridget Phillipson appears to be acting against the Supreme Court’s ruling on the protection of women’s rights

So why is Phillipson’s legal representative now advancing a wholly unnecessary and impractical practice of a “case-by-case” assessment of which men get to use women’s toilets?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/14/why-is-labour-backtracking-on-single-sex-spaces/
and at https://archive.is/XaKRZ