Mims Davies MP calls Labour out in the Chamber on not protecting Single Sex Spaces and betraying Labour Manifesto Commitments
After much pushing, the Labour Government has finally published their response to the Call for Evidence that Kemi Badenoch set up as Equalities Minister last year, asking the public to share examples of bad guidance on access to single sex services and spaces.
The new Minister, Bridget Phillipson, sat on the data for months – only publishing it after Claire Coutinho urged her to multiple times. But after she asked further questions, the Government has now admitted that rather than the 400 responses they told us about, there were actually over 3,000 submissions from the public.
The Government initially shared just 42 of those responses – that’s 1% – with the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), the body which gives advice to our institutions on equality law.
Ruling out 99% of the public’s responses?
The public deserve to have every single one of their submissions considered properly.
This all amounts to a massive betrayal of Labour’s manifesto commitment to protect single-sex spaces. Instead of covering up the public’s submissions, we need full transparency with all 3,000+ responses published and I asked these are actually shared with the EHRC.
Mims Davies MP said:
The call for evidence started last year by the Leader of the Opposition, when she was Minister for Women and Equalities, asked the public to share examples of bad guidance on single-sex spaces and services.
This Labour Government initially shared just 42 responses—just 1% of the responses—with the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which is the body that gives advice to institutions on equality in the law.
Why did the Government rule out 99% of the public responses? That is a massive betrayal of Labour’s manifesto commitment to protect single-sex spaces.
The public rightly deserve to have every single one of over 3,000 submissions considered properly by the EHRC.
Will she actually hand them all over to the EHRC though?
