LWD welcomes the new minister for Women and Equalities

We warmly congratulate Baroness Smith of Malvern on her appointment to the role of Minister for Women and Equalities.

Since our formation in 2019, we have enjoyed cordial engagement with UK Labour’s leads for Women and Equalities, Marsha de Cordova and Anneliese Dodds, and their advisers, first in opposition and then in government. We look forward to engaging with Baroness Smith in the same spirit of supportive critical friendship.

In relation to our twin focus on women’s sex-based rights and the safeguarding of young people experiencing gender confusion, the Women and Equalities brief will be facing several high profile issues in the next few months.

The Supreme Court ruling on For Women Scotland vs Scottish Ministers on the clarification of sex in law (expected within weeks) will be a pivotal moment and is likely to need swift government action, whatever the outcome. In addition, the definition of sex in the Equality Act affects, among other issues, the protected characteristic of same-sex sexual orientation, and this point was addressed extensively during the court hearing in response to the intervention by lesbian groups.

The new minister should soon be supported by the imminent publication of the Sullivan Review and of the EHRC’s revised Statutory Code. Both should help the government in its stated aim of protecting single-sex services and spaces. Single-sex provision has been severely compromised throughout the UK as a result of years of near total acceptance of self-ID in practice. Sandie Peggie’s case hearing, which will be completed in July, will also have a widespread impact. And we have changes to data regulation to contend with, which must not reintroduce sex self-ID inadvertently, e.g. via the Data (Use and Access) Bill.

LWD is committed to the success of our Labour Government and we want to help it avoid the kind of policy mistakes on sex and gender that contributed to the electoral defeat of the Democrats in the US.

We are writing to Baroness Smith today with an overview of the upcoming policy challenges and we wish her well in post.

More information about the current policy challenges can be found here and a summary of our concerns is here .