United
Kingdom
UK Conservatives say they will define sex as
biological to end 'confusion'
By Reuters
June 3,
20242:18 PM GMT+2Updated 20 hours ago
LONDON,
June 3 (Reuters) - Britain's Conservatives will clearly define sex as
biological in the Equality Act if they win an election on July 4 to end an
"ambiguity" that is putting women and girls' safety at risk, Prime
Minister Rishi Sunak said.
Before the
vote, the Conservatives are pressing issues aimed at securing its core vote
such as policies protecting pensioners, tackling illegal immigration and
introducing mandatory national service for 18-year-olds.
"The
safety of women and girls is too important to allow the current confusion
around definitions of sex and gender to persist," the party said in a
statement.
"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."
The
Conservatives, who are around 20 percentage points behind the opposition Labour
Party in the polls, said the confusion had left single-sex service providers
vulnerable to challenge and legal action.
Labour's
defence policy chief John Healey said on Monday the law did not need to be
changed and what was needed was clearer guidance for service providers.
The 2010
Equality Act already allows service providers to operate single-sex and
separate sex services such as toilets, domestic abuse refuges and changing
rooms where they have a good reason to do so and it is proportionate.
Where
justified, they may also be able to exclude transgender people with Gender
Recognition Certificates (GRC), the government has previously said. A GRC
changes a transgender person's sex for most legal purposes.
The
Conservatives said the change to the law would not remove existing protections
against discrimination on the basis of gender reassignment.
The sex of
those with a GRC would still align with their acquired gender in law outside
the Equality Act, for example marriage law, as is the status quo, they said.
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