I call the shadow Minister.

I thank the Minister for advance sight of the statement. It is understood that the Secretary of State first received the draft code of practice in September last year, nine months ago—nine months in which the law has been clear, the Supreme Court had ruled, and women, girls, public bodies and businesses across the country have been waiting for the Government to act. What did the Government do when they received it? Instead of action, we saw delay after delay from a Government reluctant to face their own Back Benchers and protect vulnerable women and girls. First, the Secretary of State claimed that she needed impact assessments; then she said that consultation with devolved Governments was required, despite this being a reserved matter; after that it was purdah; and finally, having exhausted every excuse, she chose to lay the code of practice before the House on the very last day before the Whitsun parliamentary recess, seemingly actively minimising scrutiny. That is not acceptable. It is also telling that the Secretary of State has sadly not even come to the House herself to account for these decisions—it seems the lure of Makerfield is too great. The Secretary of State previously told the House that she requested only minor changes to the EHRC’s draft. If that is the case, I ask the Minister, in the Secretary of State’s absence, why it took eight months to request them. The statement talks about engagement—in the interests of transparency, who was that with? My right hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho) and I have written to the chair of the EHRC asking for clarity on what changes were made. Under the Equality Act 2006, the Secretary of State must provide written reasons for rejecting the original draft. As changes plainly have been made, will the Minister commit to publishing the detail on what has changed and why? The code of practice is right to emphasise the importance of protecting single-sex spaces and services for women, but the law has been settled since the Supreme Court judgment over a year ago. Sex means biological sex, and yet the Secretary of State has failed to enforce that ruling and women have faced ongoing harassment and discrimination for stating that basic fact. We have seen cases such as the Darlington nurses, who were hounded out of their roles or drawn into lengthy tribunal processes for asserting their legal right not to share changing rooms with men. The Government have done nothing to protect them. What does the Secretary of State and the Minister say to those many women whose privacy, safety and dignity have been compromised during these nine months of inaction? Why did the Secretary of State fail to get a grip on her own Government when Department after Department claimed that they could not update their policies while awaiting the code? The Minister said in her statement: “We are committed to doing this and are working across Departments, considering the implications of the code to policies and activities.” Is that why, more than a year after the Supreme Court ruling, the NHS still has not updated its policy on single-sex spaces for staff? Perhaps following the new Health Secretary’s recent remarks there may be greater clarity in the wider Labour Government about what a woman is, but this revisionist mindset about Labour’s supposed long-term support for single-sex spaces will frankly be fresh news to the hon. Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield). Will the Minister set out the steps that all Departments will now take to comply with the code, and will they all do so without further delay? In the meantime, some have sought actively to misrepresent this issue as an attack on trans people. It is not. It is simply about applying the law correctly while safeguarding women and girls. I think the Green party’s deputy leaders’ inflammatory rhetoric is reprehensible and unhelpful, especially at the start of Pride Month. Not to be outdone, we are witnessing peak Lib Dem-ery, with the party leader claiming to accept the Supreme Court’s judgment while opposing the guidance that flows from it. As has rightly been said, that position is unprincipled. Only the Liberal Democrats can claim to support the rule of law while rejecting the practical application of it. This code of practice is welcome. As the Minister said, it covers a broad range of areas including age, disability, pregnancy and maternity, race and so much more, but, disgracefully, it has landed nine months overdue—and helpfully after local elections in which we women voted. During that time, women have paid the price of inaction. Now that the code has finally been published, women and girls need proper action—not hiding away, not further delay and not more excuses. We need the immediate enforcement of the rights that women and girls are entitled to under the law of this land.

I call the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee.

I really wish that there was a better beginning to Pride Month than what we are discussing. Although the code is marginally different from its draft, it is still a trans-exclusionary one at its core, and unfortunately not inclusive. Moves like this from the EHRC and the Government have seen the UK slip from third in 2019 to 22nd in the European rankings for LGBT+ people to live and feel safe. Does the Minister share my concern that the new code of practice will only further the UK’s now hostile environment for trans people and not calm it? How will she act to stop the erosion of LGBT+ rights in this country?

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

I thank the Minister for advance sight of her statement. After the Supreme Court’s ruling last year, the Government’s job was to give people, businesses and organisations clear, workable guidance. The code is instead unworkable, exclusionary and expensive for businesses. As the Minister knows, the Government must ensure that they meet the legal obligations placed on them by the public sector equality duty. That requires the Minister to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other conduct, to advance equality of opportunity between people who share a protected characteristic and people who do not, and to foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and people who do not. Yet the Government’s own equality impact assessment identifies disproportionate harm to those with protected characteristics, and a failure to set out how that harm will be addressed. Can the Minister really say, hand on heart, that she believes the guidance does that? The impact assessment notes how the guidance will likely impact women who are not trans, yet do not meet cultural and social expectations around what a woman should look like. There have already been stories of women with mastectomies being challenged when accessing women-only spaces because they do not look like women. Has the Minister truly considered that? For trans, non-binary and intersex people, the code operates from a position of exclusion. It risks driving those small minorities away from public life, as leading mental health charities have since warned. The guidance conflicts with our core British values of tolerance, decency, respect for individual liberty and the rule of law. That is why I urge the Minister to withdraw it and to accept that this issue needs to be resolved by Parliament as law makers. To achieve that, I beg the Minister to adopt the Liberal Democrat proposal to appoint a joint committee of cross-party MPs and peers, to conduct post-legislative scrutiny of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 and the Equality Act 2010, taking evidence from all communities who have been impacted, in order to propose amendments or new legislation that it sees as necessary to ensure that existing rights are protected. If we work together we can fix this; sowing division will not.

The EHRC code of practice fails everyone. It effectively pushes trans people out of public life, it subjects all women to gender policing based on stereotypes, and it does not provide clarity to organisations that want to be trans-inclusive. For example, a charity that wants to put on a women’s coffee morning that is open to the public cannot, according to the guidance, be trans inclusive without being open to the whole public. The Government’s equality impact assessment warns of the disproportionate risk of violence and sexual assault towards trans women if they are forced to use men’s services, as well as the increased harassment of anyone who does not conform to gender stereotypes. Why are the Government pushing ahead with this? Why not instead withdraw the guidance, and legislate to clarify that the Equality Act 2010 was always intended to be trans inclusive? For goodness’ sake, it was passed after the last Labour Government passed the Gender Recognition Act in 2004.

This is definitely better late than never, and after listening to the Lib Dem spokesperson—I cannot believe I am going to say this—I am actually grateful that we have a Labour Government and not a Lib Dem Government, because what the Lib Dems have just said is absolutely shocking. They do not respect the rule of law at all. On that note, I am going to ask a technical question. Did the Secretary of State formally reject the draft code of practice, as submitted by the EHRC in September 2025? If so, please can the Minister provide us with a copy of the written reasons given, as per section 14 of the Equality Act 2006?

I wonder whether the Minister could clarify this specific point. If a single-sex organisation wanted to open its doors to trans people, would that be to all trans people, or could a women’s organisation, for example, open its doors or membership to trans women exclusively?

I am really appalled, frankly, with the response from the official Opposition. Just a few Prime Ministers ago, Theresa May said: “Indeed when it comes to rights and protections for trans people, there is still a long way to go.” Well, how far the Tory party has fallen from those words. As a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, I attended the evidence session when we interviewed the new chair of the EHRC, and for the Minister to say that that was an independent process when the Government rammed it through despite cross-party consensus that the new chair was not fit for the role is, quite frankly, surprising. I also want to pick up on the fact that the Minister said that we should “treat these issues sensitively”. Today is the start of Pride Month. To do this today, of all days, is not just a kick in the teeth but a slap in the face for LGBT people across this country. I want to know what the Minister would say to my constituents who have told me how they have been challenged in toilets because they live their lives as trans people already, before this guidance was put forward. Why does she think this will make it any better? What basis does she have for that suggestion?