Exclusive:Scottish Trans warns 'urgent' UK gender law change needed if single-sex guidance not revised

Scottish Trans has warned the EHRC proposals could “result in trans people’s human rights being breached, and indeed sometimes the human rights of others”.

The organisation representing transgender people in Scotland has called for the law to be "urgently” amended, if the UK’s equalities watchdog refuses to set out how trans people can be protected under updated guidance.

Scottish Trans has responded to a consultation launched by the Equalities and Human Rights Committee (EHRC) in the wake of the Supreme Court judgment in April that defined a woman in the Equality Act as referring to a biological woman.

People taking part in a trans rights demonstration in Edinburgh | PA

Scottish Trans has warned the EHRC it “would be failing to uphold its statutory duties if it did not urgently alert the UK government that the ruling has resulted in an equality and human rights framework that will leave trans people facing discrimination, inequality and human rights violations”.

The organisation said “this would need to be rectified with primary legislation”.

In response to the judgment, the EHRC issued a controversial “interim update” that included guidance saying that in some settings such as hospitals, trans women “should not be permitted to use the women's facilities". The EHRC also said “in some circumstances” trans women should not be able to use men’s facilities.

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The head of the EHRC, Baroness Falkner, who was appointed by former prime minister Liz Truss in 2020, said trans people should themselves campaign for “third spaces”.

Last week, the EHRC was forced to revise its interim guidance, abandoning a previous recommendation that employers must provide single sex toilets.

Campaigners celebrate the Supreme Court ruling about the definition of the word 'woman' (Picture: Henry Nicholls) | AFP via Getty Images

In response to the EHRC consultation ahead of its new code of practice, Scottish Trans has told the organisation the proposals will “cause trans people significant harm” and "significantly increase the inequality and discrimination that trans people face”.

The response said: “Trans people would frequently be segregated from others or excluded from services – particularly where these are provided on a separate or single-sex basis, as a huge range of critical services and facilities are.

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“The totality of these impacts would certainly, in our view, result in trans people’s human rights being breached, and indeed sometimes the human rights of others.”

Manager of Scottish Trans, Vic Valentine, told The Scotsman if the EHRC’s proposals were to be adopted by services and organisations, “trans people’s lives would be made very much worse”.

They said: “It would turn back the clock at least 30 years to a time where trans people could not go to work safely, use services that meet our needs, or use public spaces freely.

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“If we are constantly treated as our ‘biological sex’, excluded from services and spaces that align with who we truly are, or segregated from others, this will have massive impacts on our wellbeing, safety and just our general quality of life.”

Valentine said the proposals “throw up questions about how we’re supposed to use services everyone needs – like toilets and hospital wards” and “would also make Scotland and the UK an outlier when it comes to how it treats trans people”.

They said: “The EHRC will be failing to properly protect the rights of everyone, as it is required to do, if it does not include just as much information in the code about how to include us as it does about how to exclude us.

“If we’re wrong about that, and the Supreme Court ruling really means that this is what has to happen going forward, then we believe the law needs to change – and urgently.”