London:
Britain’s Conservatives will clearly define sex as biological in the Equality Act if they win the July 4 election to end an “ambiguity” that is endangering the safety of women and girls, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said.
Before the election, Conservatives are pushing for issues aimed at securing their core vote, such as policies to protect pensioners, tackling illegal immigration and introducing compulsory military service for 18-year-olds.
“The safety of women and girls is too important to allow the current confusion around the definitions of sex and gender to continue,” the party said in a statement.
“The Conservatives believe that introducing this change in the law will improve protections in a way that respects the privacy and dignity of everyone in society.”
The Conservatives, who are trailing the opposition Labor party by about 20 percentage points in the polls, say the confusion has left same-sex service providers vulnerable to challenge and legal action.
Labor defense policy chief John Healey said on Monday that the law did not need to be changed and that clearer guidance for service providers was needed.
The 2010 Equality Act already allows service providers to operate separate and segregated sex services, such as toilets, domestic abuse shelters and changing rooms, if they have a good reason for doing so and if this is proportionate.
If justified, they may also be able to exclude transgender people with a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC), the government has previously said. A GRC changes a transgender person’s gender for most legal purposes.
The Conservatives said the change in law would not remove existing protections against discrimination on the basis of gender reassignment.
The gender of those with a GRC would still be consistent with their acquired gender in law outside the Equality Act, for example the Marriage Act, as is the status quo, they said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
