The Conservatives have pledged to change the Equality Act to define the protected characteristic of sex as “biological sex”.They claim the change will make it simpler for service providers for women and girls, such as those running sessions for domestic abuse victims, to prevent biological males from taking part.
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00:00So what we are doing is clarifying that the Equality Act, where it refers to sex,
00:04is referring specifically to biological sex and not legal sex as is often
00:11interpreted. So this is a clarification in the law. It is not, as many people
00:16assume, a change. It is re-emphasizing what should be the status quo. We have
00:21seen quite a lot of changes in terms of terminology in the law. Sex and gender
00:26were used interchangeably. Now we don't do that. So what we're doing is making
00:30sure that people understand what the law says. We've seen a lot of problems with
00:33people misinterpreting the law. Okay, so if this was such a big issue, why
00:39didn't you change it sooner? Oh well, there's so many things that we've had to
00:42do first. The biggest reason is because of what Scotland was doing with its
00:46Gender Recognition Bill, the SNP I should say, the Scottish Government. That
00:50actually took up quite a lot of bandwidth. There was a legal case for
00:53Women's Scotland and a Haldane judgment that showed that there were issues here
00:57that we needed to make sure we understood before we put out a policy.
01:00And it's something that I'd actually been working on, but unfortunately the
01:03election was called before we would have been able to lay the legislation in
01:06September. I think it is right that we still continue to do so and that people
01:10understood what our intention was and what we can do with that legislation.