Tories move to protect women’s sports and single-sex spaces

MINISTERS are preparing to overhaul New Labour’s Equality Act with proposals to protect single-sex spaces and women’s sports.

The Government is hoping to amend the 2010 legislation ‘to make it unambiguously clear that sex means biological sex’ and ‘remove the current vagueness which is exploited to undermine women’s rights, security and competition in sport’, the Sunday Telegraph reported.

The policy – which may end up in the Tory manifesto ahead of this year’s election – will make it easier to bar those born as men from women- only spaces and female sporting events. The discussions were revealed just days after Liz Truss accused Labour MPs of ‘filibustering’ her private member’s Bill which sought to protect single-sex spaces and prevent teachers from helping a child change gender.

Under the current wording of the Equality Act, people can be protected on the basis of their ‘sex’ – but it is unclear whether this relates to biological sex or the gender someone identifies as.

Equalities minister Kemi Badenoch wrote to the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) for advice on changing the wording to specify that it protects ‘biological sex’. The EHRC has suggested such a change could bring ‘legal clarity’ in areas such as sports and single- sex spaces. Such a move would fulfil a pledge Rishi Sunak made during the 2022 Conservative leadership contest. He said: ‘Too often, existing legislation is used to engage in social engineering to which no one has given consent.

‘The worst offender in this regard is the 2010 Equality Act, conceived in the dog days of the last Labour government.

‘It has been a Trojan horse that has allowed every kind of woke nonsense to permeate public life. It must stop.’