Tag Archives: EHRC

Meg Challinor

The modern “No Blacks, no Dogs, no Irish”

By Meg Challinor | Sat 23rd May 2026 - 2:31 pm

I, like many in the LGBT+ community am scared right now. I cried yesterday and today about the uncertainty of my future and my friends’ futures.

If you are cis or trans it doesn’t really matter, it’s clear that the guidance from the EHRC is ultimately unenforceable, however it doesn’t need to be enforced to make life uncomfortable for many people. You see, this doesn’t just make public life hostile to trans women, it erodes all women’s rights; trans and cis women alike. If we are not “performing womanhood” to someone else’s satisfaction, you can now be called trans – as if that makes you less than – and asked to leave a space.

And how would one prove they are trans or cis?  A trans person can have all the same external anatomy, legal documentation and appearance as a cis woman, and that is without even considering cis women with PCOS, countless other conditions, or even as was the case with my Mum; she was just a little on the “butcher” side of feminine preferring shorter hair, jeans and a top with no makeup for much of her life, despite being a cis-heterosexual woman she would have also felt at “risk” from this guidance.

Writing about my mum I would like to share a relevant memory I have of her, from when I was much younger; a time where in my home town of Crewe, my Mum – originally from Dublin – played darts for Cheshire Ladies and at a local club level as well.

She was playing at a nearby pub that week, as we walked into the pub with her team the barman told her that we would have to sit in the garden for the night; under an umbrella in the pouring rain, pointing at a sign. “No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish”.  My Mum thinking of me told the barman that I was English, born at the nearby Leighton Hospital, it was only her that was Irish, my Dad is English, she wouldn’t cause trouble; just let me in and I could sit with him, the barman pointed again at the sign, “No Dogs means you can take your little mongrel outside as well”.  This isn’t my only memory of my family being treated like that but it is one that burnt into my brain at a young age, because in the end it doesn’t matter if you fall into the category bigots try to exclude; it just matters if they think you are less than them – I’ve been less than them in their eyes my entire life.

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Tanya Park

The amended EHRC code is an attack on trans rights. Lib Dems should be at the forefront of challenging it.

By Tanya Park | Fri 22nd May 2026 - 12:02 pm

The amended Equality and Human Rights Commission Code of Practice on services, public functions, and associations was laid before Parliament yesterday. It will become law in 40 days unless Parliament acts. That window matters, and Liberal Democrats should be using it.

I have read the code carefully. The headline is this: it does not just reflect the Supreme Court’s ruling in For Women Scotland v The Scottish Ministers. It goes further, resolving almost every area of discretion against trans people and in favour of those who want to exclude them. It makes inclusion legally risky and exclusion legally safe. That is not what the law required. It is a choice the Commission made.

The Supreme Court ruled that “sex” means biological sex for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010. That ruling set certain parameters. It did not dictate how the Commission should weight trans people’s interests in the proportionality framework, how broadly to define legitimate grounds for exclusion, or how much guidance to give service providers on how to include rather than exclude. Those were judgment calls.

The most significant of them is in paragraph 13.131, which states that a service provided to “women and trans women” could amount to unlawful sex discrimination against women. An organisation that has made a principled, considered decision to include trans women in its women’s spaces now faces potential legal liability for doing so. Inclusion has been turned into a risk. The same logic applies in reverse to trans men: a man’s service that includes trans men is equally exposed. In both directions, the code makes the inclusive choice the dangerous one.

The proportionality framework for single-sex services sounds balanced in principle. Service providers weigh the benefits of a single-sex service against the harm of excluding trans people. But the legitimate aims available for exclusion include preventing “discomfort or distress” in other users, assessed by reference to whether those users “could reasonably object” to someone who “appears to be of the opposite sex.” The threshold is not harm, not complaint, not evidence. It is hypothetical discomfort, assessed by the service provider.

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Caron Lindsay

Lib Dems should stand up against EHRC claims on sex and Equality Act

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 9th April 2023 - 2:39 pm

In February, the Women and Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch wrote to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission to ask them to consider the current definition of “sex” in the Equality Act.

It should not be a surprise that the EHRC replied this week identifying eight areas, ranging from book clubs to sport to access to single sex spaces in which amending the Equality Act so that sex means what they call “biological sex” would bring “greater legal clarity.”

It is not an exaggeration to say that this, if implemented, would have a massive impact on trans people’s ability to live their lives. Not only that, but women who aren’t trans, but who don’t look “feminine enough” could face challenge in single sex spaces. It would essentially make life more miserable and dangerous with no gain for anyone.

Not only that, but part of the requirement for getting a Gender Recognition Certificate is that you do use single sex spaces after you have transitioned. So restricting those to sex on your original birth certificate creates a Catch 22.

The EHRC is led by Kishwer Falkner, who was once a Liberal Democrat Peer but now sits in the Lords as non-affiliated after leaving the Party over our continued opposition to Brexit. She was appointed by the Government to her current role in December 2020 and the organisation has been adding to the anti-trans mood music since.

I have spent my adult life campaigning for women’s rights and I’m far from being done. The Scottish Lib Dem Women constitution cites smashing the patriarchy as an aim and I am here for that.

I know what it is like to be on the receiving end of threatening behaviour from men in a public place and to actually fear for my life.

None of that makes me think it is ok to stop trans women accessing women’s spaces, or fail to do them the most basic courtesy of respecting their identity. Because if you don’t accept them as the women they are,  how on earth are they supposed to go about their lives? What facilities are they supposed to use?

Falkner says in her letter to the Government that she wants to see a more informed and constructive debate on these issues. One way to do that would be to target the misinformation and fear being spread by anti trans groups and to recognise that this is part of a global effort to undermine women’s rights and LGBT rights.

Liz Barker pointed this out in her International Women’s Day speech in the Lords:

Women have different life experiences, different economic circumstances and all sorts of differences between us, yet we have common aspirations for safety, health, autonomy and prosperity. It is important to bear that in mind as we have this debate, because it takes place against the background of a campaign originated and orchestrated by Christian nationalists in the United States, Europe and across Russia, which is very definitely about curbing the aspirations and autonomy of all women.

In the United States and places like Poland and Hungary the focus is on anti-abortion activities. In Africa, the focus is against equality and LGBT rights. In the US and UK, the key focus of this campaign is anti-gender.

The constant drip feed of anti trans stories in the media brings to mind the constant drip feed of anti EU stories over many years. And we know that didn’t end well.

It is therefore hardly surprising that trans people are worried and fearful about their safety in this sort of environment as hate crimes against them soar.

Women are equally understandably worried and fearful about their safety as violence against women and girls increases. The threat to women’s safety is not trans women though – it is predatory men in a society structured in such a way that those men are rarely  held to account for their behaviour.

If we turned our attention to dismantling the power structures and the culture that enables that to happen rather than picking on trans women, the world would be a lot safer for all women.

EHRC officials met LGBT representatives the day after the letter was released. And it is fair assessment, from Jane Fae’s account, that they do not fully understand what they are talking about. I am in awe of our own Helen Belcher for keeping her cool through that meeting and calmly and forensically questioning them on their assertions:

Well, I can understand that might be an aspiration but when your letter talks about reasons for, erm, excluding trans women from women’s spaces, how, how do you expect me to live my life? How do you expect me to be a councillor and represent my constituents? How do you expect me to do my work in Parliament if I cannot use women’s facilities? …

That’s a really basic element of human rights and the proposal seems to me to demand that I am openly identifiable as trans in any interaction with public services. So how does that square with my right to privacy?

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Issan Ghazni

Equalities – how the ‘General Duty’ was saved

By Issan Ghazni | Fri 26th April 2013 - 10:21 am

It was fitting that, on the 20th anniversary of the death of Stephen Lawrence, the government decided to listen to campaigners and save a key element of our equalities laws.

Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats (EMLD) played a leading role in the campaign to save Section 3 of the 2006 Equality Act which provides a vision and mission statement for Britain’s equality watchdog.

This is known as the ‘general duty’ and both informs the work of the watchdog – the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) – which itself is responsible for setting the standard for the rest of our public services.

That is …

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Jo Swinson MP

Jo Swinson MP writes…Equality is about more than ticking boxes

By Jo Swinson MP | Thu 17th January 2013 - 11:14 am

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) would never have become a valued and respected national institution if it was allowed to continue on the path it was on. Labour’s tired old way of working was turning equalities into a burden. When people heard the word equality they also heard bureaucracy and red-tape. Instead of being about fairness it was more about frustration.

If Labour’s method of ticking boxes and filling out forms led to equality, then why did they leave behind a society with so much inequality across the board? Twenty percent wage gaps between women and men, nonexistent social …

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Caron Lindsay

Lynne Featherstone to reform Equality and Human Rights Commission

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 17th May 2012 - 12:53 pm

The Guardian reported on Tuesday that Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone is to reform the Equality and  Human Rights Commission, cutting its budget and removing some of its responsibilities, most notably its obligation to assess how Government policies would affect the poorest.

Now, if ever there was a quango in need of reform, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission is that body. Dysfunctional seems to be the best word to describe the EHRC. Wasteful would be another. For three years running, the National Audit Office qualified its accounts. Last year was the first year since its formation in 2007 when it managed to …

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Mark Pack

Equalities and Human Rights Commission fails to get its accounts right for third time in a row

By Mark Pack | Sat 25th June 2011 - 10:23 am

The news this week that for the third year in a row there are huge problems with financial control at the Equalities and Human Rights Commission raises questions not only about the future of its senior management but also about the paucity of political debate over its future.

There have only been three sets of annual accounts since the EHRC was formed – and each time the National Audit Office has refused to approve them so deep are the problems with the EHRC’s financial (non-)control.

It’s a perfect record: three sets of accounts, three sets of problems:

In 2008, a year after the

…

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