Summary
The appearance of the Equality and Human Rights Commission at the Commons Women and Equalities Select Committee on 9th June 2026
The EHRC and the Commons Women and Equalities Select Committee on 9th June 2026
By Robin Moira White
Introduction
I attended the entire above session via video. The Chair of the EHRC, Mary-Ann Stephenson and its CEO, John Kirkpatrick, were examined by the Committee. It is clear that the effect of the FWS judgment, viewed through the lens of the draft code produced by the EHRC, is segregation and exclusion of trans people in the UK, not integration and inclusion.
The guidance in the code has been widely criticised as unhelpful and unworkable, and the whole sorry situation has led to the UK falling from first place in the ILGAILGA A driving force for political, legal and social change for LGBTI
https://www.ilga-europe.org LGBT and T rankings a decade ago to 22 nd and 49th places, respectively.
The EHRC were asked about trans people’s European Convention A.8 rights, and they expressed the view that the legislation, as interpreted correctly, balanced trans and women’s rights. That assessment is a travesty.
The Goodwin case from 2002, at paragraphs 90 and 91:
90. Nonetheless, the very essence of the Convention is respect for human dignity and human freedom. Under Article 8 of the Convention in particular, where the notion of personal autonomy is an important principle underlying the interpretation of its guarantees, protection is given to the personal sphere of each individual, including the right to establish details of their identity as individual human beings (see, inter alia, Pretty v. the United Kingdom, no. 2346/02, judgment of 29 April 2002, § 62, and Mikulić v. Croatia, no. 53176/99, judgment of 7 February 2002, § 53, both to be published in ECHR 2002-…).
In the twenty-first century, the right of transsexuals to personal development and to physical and moral security in the full sense enjoyed by others in society cannot be regarded as a matter of controversy requiring the lapse of time to cast clearer light on the issues involved. In short, the unsatisfactory situation in which post-operative transsexuals live in an intermediate zone as not quite one gender or the other is no longer sustainable. Domestic recognition of this evaluation may be found in the report of the Interdepartmental Working Group and the Court of Appeal's judgment of Bellinger v. Bellinger (see paragraphs 50, 52-53).
91. The Court does not underestimate the difficulties posed or the important repercussions which any major change in the system will inevitably have, not only in the field of birth registration, but also in the areas of access to records, family law, affiliation, inheritance, criminal justice, employment, social security and insurance. However, as is made clear by the report of the Interdepartmental Working Group, these problems are far from insuperable, to the extent that the Working Group felt able to propose as one of the options full legal recognition of the new gender, subject to certain criteria and procedures.
As Lord Justice Thorpe observed in the Bellinger case, any “spectral difficulties”, particularly in the field of family law, are both manageable and acceptable if confined to the case of fully achieved and post-operative transsexuals.
Nor is the Court convinced by arguments that allowing the applicant to fall under the rules applicable to women, which would also change the date of eligibility for her state pension, would cause any injustice to others in the national insurance and state pension systems, as alleged by the Government. No concrete or substantial hardship or detriment to the public interest has indeed been demonstrated as likely to flow from any change to the status of transsexuals, and, as regards other possible consequences, the Court considers that society may reasonably be expected to tolerate a certain inconvenience to enable individuals to live in dignity and worth in accordance with the sexual identity chosen by them at great personal cost. makes plain, firstly, that the ‘third space / intermediate existence now proposed for UK trans people is not consistent with their Article 8 rights, and that others will have to ‘move over a little’ to accommodate trans people. That will involve putting aside alleged discomfort at the idea of, or presence of, trans people.
This has nothing to do with a UK ‘margin of appreciation’ in implementing the European Convention. Rather, it is a matter of principle that effective implementation involves an effective method of recognising trans people’s identity as men or women. The UK Supreme Court has ruled that the present GRA / EqA arrangements are ineffective in doing that. Very well, parliament must put this right to ensure that the UK meets its international obligations.
At the WESC session, Ms Stephenson said a number of things which concerned both the panel and other observers, including myself. One such was her assertion that the Supreme Court had Goodwin and the ECHR in mind when making their judgment. That is a travesty. The SC mentioned both but then completely omitted to perform any Human Rights analysis as part of its judgment, as the UK Human Rights Act required it to do. The UK government’s own Equality Impact Assessment of the impact of the code amply demonstrates the adverse effect on trans people.
Ms Stephenson also referred at the WESC to the ‘very many women’ impacted by the previous understanding of the law. She gave no figure or origin for that comment, and it is disproved by the Translucent FOI work, which has shown vanishingly negligible complaints about service use by trans people in recent years. Any decent national human rights body would be lobbying the government for the simple corrections which would restore UK law to its pre-Supreme Court effective and compliant state. Instead, it is failing the wider UK population, trans people, businesses and service providers by trying to put a good face on this national disaster.
Robin Moira White 11/06/26
