Fears No 10 will backtrack on pledge to protect women

RISHI SUNAK is facing calls to give a “cast-iron guarantee” he will rewrite equality laws to protect women, amid fears among some Tory MPs that he will renege on his promise.

Conservative backbenchers are planning to challenge Maria Caulfield, the minister for women, to give an undertaking in the Commons that Mr Sunak will deliver on his promised legal changes to ensure that “mothers and women are not erased from public life”.

Sources close to the Prime Minister insist he is committed to the pledge. One said advice from the Equality and Human Rights Commission was being carefully considered, and another insisted: “It’s certainly not being delayed or dropped.”

But senior Tories fear that the party will lose its opportunity to change the law if Mr Sunak fails to act swiftly ahead of an election next year.

One backbencher said: “It’s unclear how much of a row the Government wants, doing this in the run-up to an election. But, if they can’t say what a woman is by the time we go into an election, we’re in trouble.”

Mr Sunak issued a pledge during his leadership campaign last year to “ensure that the Equality Act is clear that sex means biological sex”. Campaigners and many Tory MPs say the change is needed to give clarity to a number of bodies who say the existing Labour-era legislation fails to make clear that protections given to people on the basis of their “sex” do not apply to those who identify as a different gender from their biological sex.

It has caused confusion over whether trans women can be barred from women’s sports or from entering femaleonly spaces.

On June 12, MPs will use a Westminster Hall debate to demand assurances from Ms Caulfield that Mr Sunak will deliver before the next election.

Damian Green, the former first secretary of state, said: “It’s very important that the Government makes it clear that it will clarify the definition in this Parliament, and gives us a timescale as soon as possible.”

Maya Forstater, director of the Sex Matters campaign group, said: “We would like to hear ... a cast-iron guarantee that they are going to fix the problem with the Equality Act and the Gender Recognition Act.

“They cannot leave the interaction between these two laws ambiguous any longer.”

A No 10 source said the change had to be approached “thoughtfully” and added: “That does take time.”