Bridget Phillipson has told the UK’s equalities watchdog to stop focusing on “public debate” about its trans guidance regarding public facilities.

The equalities minister urged the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to focus on its obligations as a human rights regulator above all else.

Last month, the EHRC called on the government to rush out legislation based on its guidance on gendered facility provision “as soon as possible”, in the wake of the UK Supreme Court’s judgement which deemed that the 2010 Equality Act’s definition of a woman referred only to biological women.

Although the final draft of the guidance has not been made public yet, the updates are expected to result in the banning of trans people from facilities, including toilets, consistent with their gender identity.

According to The Guardian, Phillipson has said the government plans to handle legislation based on the guidance “thoroughly and carefully“.

The education secretary, who recently failed in her bid to become the Labour Party’s deputy leader, said: “We’ll get this right but we also require the regulator to provide us with the information we need as a government to consider all that together: the code of practice, together with other material.

“A bit more focus on that and a little less focus on public debate would be helpful.”

Phillipson labelled demands for the government to “act with speed” to enact legislation, unhelpful.

Calls for EHRC to be downgraded

Several LGBTQ+ and human rights institutions have accused the EHRC of trying to “bully” the government into rushing out a toilet ban. Some went as far as to call on the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions to downgrade the commission for its actions, saying it was “not fit for purpose”.

TransActual, Amnesty International, Trans+ Solidarity Alliance, Equality Network, Scottish Trans, and The Trans Advocacy and Complaints Collective, said the EHRC should lose its “A-status” accreditation, accusing the commission of breaching The Paris Principles, a set of minimum standards to which national human rights institutions must adhere.

A similar call was made by the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, a multi-national human rights organisation.

“After years of politicised appointments, and an obsessive campaign to strip trans people of our basic rights, the EHRC is now trying to bounce an elected government into implementing a bathroom ban for trans people,” TransActual’s Tammy Hymas claimed.

If downgraded, the commission would lose a significant amount of credibility and would be prevented from speaking at UN human rights forums.

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