Equality Act 2010: Code of Practice

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Monday 1st June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Seema Malhotra]

I am aware that the shadow Secretary of State has written to the EHRC, and I am sure that the EHRC will be engaging directly in relation to those specific questions.

[Ms Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

What this place does best is scrutiny. That is why it is so problematic that this legislation is coming forward in a draft form as a negative statutory instrument. This guidance falls apart on hard contact with the real world. I will quote back to the Minister something that she just said in her statement, because businesses in my local community, which just want to be cafés or restaurants, will be troubled by it. She said that the guidance

“does not provide…the right for members of the public to challenge one another on their sex and access to those spaces”,

but she also said that

“where an individual is asked to confirm their sex, this should be done sensitively”.

Most businesses will be deeply confused as to whether somebody can be challenged, and frankly they do not want fights between their customers. Does the Minister accept that, to prevent being people’s gender being judged by their appearance—which we know will harm many more people than, I suspect, even those people who wish to see harm through this guidance would like—the safest option for most businesses will be getting rid of women’s toilets altogether? Will that not be an inevitable consequence of this guidance?

[Seema Malhotra]

It will be for organisations to make decisions about how they comply with the law, and different organisations will choose different ways of doing so. In the majority of cases, we are talking about changing signs on existing facilities or updating them so they may be fully enclosed. As I mentioned before, the code does not provide the right for members of the public to challenge one another on their sex or access to those spaces, but most people will have the common sense to step in where necessary or, if they are concerned, to alert a member of staff.