A former Labour MP who quit the party over Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership has welcomed the landmark Supreme Court ruling on the definition of a woman as a “victory for feminists”.
Rosie Duffield, now the independent MP for Canterbury, said the judgment helped resolve the “lack of clarity” that has existed in the politics around the issue “for years”.
She was speaking to Ali Fortescue on the Politics Hub on the same day the UK’s highest court delivered its verdict on one of the most contentious debates in politics.
Politics latest: MPs respond to Supreme Court ruling on gender
The judges were asked to rule on how “sex” is defined in the 2010 Equality Act – whether that means biological sex or “certificated” sex, as legally defined by the 2004 Gender Recognition Act.
Their unanimous decision was that the definition of a “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 refers to “a biological woman and biological sex”.
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Asked what she made about comments by fellow independent MP John McDonnell – who said the court “failed to hear the voice of a single trans person” and that the decision “lacked humanity and fairness” as a result, she said: “This ruling doesn’t affect trans people in the slightest.
“It’s about women’s rights – women’s rights to single sex spaces, women’s rights, not to be discriminated against.
“It literally doesn’t change a single thing for trans rights and that lack of understanding from a senior politician about the law is a bit worrying, actually.”
However, Maggie Chapman, a Scottish Green MSP, disagreed with Ms Duffield and said she was “concerned” about the impact the ruling would have on trans people “and for the services and facilities they have been using and have had access to for decades now”.
“One of the grave concerns that we have with this ruling is that it will embolden people to challenge trans people who have every right to access services,” she said.
“We know that over the last few years… their [trans people’s] lives have become increasingly difficult, they have been blocked from accessing services they need.”
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Delivering the ruling at the London court on Wednesday, Lord Hodge said: “But we counsel against reading this judgment as a triumph of one or more groups in our society at the expense of another. It is not.
“The Equality Act 2010 gives transgender people protection, not only against discrimination through the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, but also against direct discrimination, indirect discrimination and harassment in substance in their acquired gender.
“This is the application of the principle of discrimination by association. Those statutory protections are available to transgender people, whether or not they possess a gender recognition certificate.”
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Asked whether she believed the judgment could “draw a line” under the culture war, Ms Chapman told Fortescue: “Today’s judgment only stokes that culture war further.”
And she said that while Lord Hodge was correct to say there were protections in law for trans people in the 2020 Equality Act, the judgment “doesn’t prevent things happening”.
“It may offer protections once bad things have happened, once harassment, once discrimination, once bigotry, once assaults have happened,” she said.
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She also warned some groups “aren’t going to be satisfied with today’s ruling”.
“We know that there are individuals and there are groups who actually want to roll back even further – they want to get rid of the Gender Recognition Act from 2004,” she said.
“I think today’s ruling just emboldens those views.”
