Labour Women’s Declaration welcomes the return of the Women’s Conference in 2026 and the Party’s commitment to lawful arrangements, while continuing to make the case for a full two-day conference in future.

“A one-day Women’s Conference attached to Labour’s Annual Conference is not ideal, but it is better than having no Women’s Conference at all..  With only one day available, the programme inside the conference hall will need to prioritise serious and participative debates and policy discussions. 

Our party’s constitutional commitment is to have an effective National Women’s Committee which oversees the holding of an Annual Women’s Conference, normally for two days and to be held each Spring, in order to fit in with the party’s annual policy making cycle. In recent years, this has been reduced to a single day in the autumn.

Headlines such as “Trans women banned from Women’s Conference” are no more correct than “Trans women banned from women’s sport.”.  A more appropriate headline would be “Men excluded from Women’s Conference debates and votes” or “Women’s Conference debates and votes will be for women only.”

We welcome the party’s decision earlier this year to follow the Equality Act in all its internal positive action processes for women, and its decision last week to do the same with the Women’s Conference. As Labour ministers have repeatedly stated, organisations should not wait for EHRC guidance but should take legal advice and implement the Supreme Court ruling without delay. All organisations and government departments should now follow suit.

Women’s Conference fringe or training sessions specifically for women, for example workshops for lesbians or survivors of male violence, and training sessions to address women’s underrepresentation, should also be women-only, in line with the Equality Act.

Opening up the rest of the 2026 Women’s Conference such as the reception and exhibition to everyone regardless of sex should be reviewed after the event by the Party and participants.

Alongside many party members and women’s officers from across the party, we will continue to campaign for a full two-day Annual Women’s Conference to be held from Spring 2027 onwards, to ensure women members have adequate time to debate priorities and to feed into the National Policy Forum annual policy making conference in July, and from there to Annual Conference in the Autumn. We recognise that cost is a concern, but there are well-established ways for conferences to be run on lower budgets, and we look forward to contributing constructively to discussions about this in women’s branches and other forums.

An effective Women’s Conference remains a central part of Labour’s commitment to women.”