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The Conservatives have pledged to amend the Equality Act to define the protected characteristic of sex as “biological sex”.
The party said their proposal would make it easier for service providers to stop individuals who are biologically male from participating. The providers include those who run sessions for women and girls who have been victims of domestic abuse.
The pledge, unveiled on Sunday, is designed to create a dividing line with Labour over trans rights. The Tories have repeatedly attacked opposition leader Sir Keir Starmer over his remarks last year that 99.9 per cent of women “haven’t got a penis”.
However, it also risks sparking a backlash from Tory MPs who have complained of their unease at what they perceive as the party’s deepening politicisation of the subject, after trans and gender issues dominated the Conservatives’ annual conference last autumn.
The Conservatives said that the Equality Act, first introduced under New Labour in 2010, has not kept pace with evolving interpretations of sex and gender, allowing for ambiguity that exposes single-sex service providers to legal action.
Rishi Sunak described his proposal as “evidence-led” and said: “The safety of women and girls is too important to allow the current confusion around definitions of sex and gender to persist.
“The Conservatives believe that making this change in law will enhance protections in a way that respects the privacy and dignity of everyone in society.”
Protections based on biological sex are needed to ensure women’s rights and trans rights are “balanced fairly”, the party added.
Last year Kemi Badenoch, minister for women and equalities, wrote to the Equality and Human Rights Commission seeking further guidance on the issue.
She said on Sunday night: “Whether it is rapists being housed in women’s prisons, or instances of men playing in women’s sports where they have an unfair advantage, it is clear that public authorities and regulatory bodies are confused about what the law says on sex and gender and when to act — often for fear of being accused of transphobia, or not being inclusive.
“If we form a government after the election, we will clarify that sex in the law means biological sex and not new, redefined meanings of the word.”
The Conservatives also announced that sex would be treated as a reserved, rather than devolved, matter, meaning “an individual can only have one sex in the eyes of the law in the United Kingdom”.
Last December the Scottish government lost a legal challenge with London after a court ruled that Sunak’s administration acted within its powers to veto Holyrood legislation on gender self-identification.
The Tories’ pledged changes would not involve removing existing protections in the act against discrimination on the basis of gender reassignment, they said.
For people with a gender recognition certificate, their sex would still align with their acquired gender in law outside the Equality Act, for example marriage law, as is the case at present, the party added.
Labelling the debate on trans rights and women’s rights “unnecessarily contentious”, the Conservatives said they wanted to “move this on to a more informed and constructive basis”.
In February Labour accused Sunak of being “happy to use minorities as a punch bag”, after he made a reference to trans people in a jibe at Starmer, as the mother of a murdered trans teenager was visiting parliament.
The prime minister’s remarks sparked a backlash from the teenager’s parents and some of his own MPs.
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