Lib Dems reject ‘discriminatory and unworkable’ EHRC guidance on transgender people

Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, holds a Q&A session at the party’s autumn conference in Brighton. Photograph: Phil Lewis/SOPA Images/Shutterstock View image in fullscreen Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, holds a Q&A session at the party’s autumn conference in Brighton. Photograph: Phil Lewis/SOPA Images/Shutterstock Lib Dems reject ‘discriminatory and unworkable’ EHRC guidance on transgender people Motion passed at party conference calls for new approach to implementing ruling that legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex only The Liberal Democrats have rejected official guidance , calling it “discriminatory and unworkable”. The motion, passed overwhelmingly at the party’s annual conference in Brighton, makes the Lib Dems the first of the big three parties in parliament to call for a new approach to implementing last year’s ruling that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex only. The Greens have previously done so. Formal guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), put out in May, is intended to tell service providers and others how they must balance the rights of trans people with the requirement for some spaces to be single sex. It has attracted criticism for being a de facto bar on trans people being in many public spaces -sex toilets and changing rooms must exclude transgender men and women when gender-neutral facilities are not always available. The motion to the conference called the EHRC’s code “discriminatory and unworkable”, saying it “places an undue burden on service providers”. It calls for a revised code, plus a dedicated cross-party parliamentary committee “to review how the law should better protect trans people’s rights”. Proposing the motion, the party member Lucas North condemned the EHRC guidance and noted a rise in anti-trans hate crimes. They added: “The rights of women and the rights of trans people do not have to be placed on opposite sides of a manufactured culture war.” Another speaker for the motion, Rebecca Jones, said that as a trans woman she was “tired of being a culture war prop”. She said: “You now fear using public spaces. You fear anyone that looks at you too much in case they hate trans people enough that they put you at risk. Earlier in the day the party leader, Ed Davey, told the BBC he broadly supported the motion, calling the EHRC guidance not “fit for purpose”.