Keir Starmer is facing a Labour rebellion as more than 100 MPs demand new guidance on protecting women-only spaces is rejected.
Some 118 MPs – including more than 50 Labour backbenchers – have signed a parliamentary motion calling for the disapproval of updated advice from Britain’s rights watchdog.
The motion was tabled by Labour’s Nadia Whittome, who has said MPs have ‘a responsibility to our trans constituents’ to resist a new draft code from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC).
Ms Whittome, the MP for Nottingham East, has warned the guidance will ‘usher in an era of enforced segregation’ for transgender people.
She added it ‘will exclude trans people from services and facilities that they have long used without issue, putting them at increased risk of harassment and violence, and effectively pushing them out of public life’.
Among the Labour MPs supporting Ms Whittome’s early day motion (EDM) are John McDonnell, Stella Creasy and Rebecca Long Bailey.
It is also being supported by 47 Liberal Democrat MPs, five SNP MPs and three Green MPs, as well as Your Party’s Jeremy Corbyn and independent MP Diane Abbott.
The EHRC’s updated guidance, which has been largely welcomed by women’s rights groups, confirms a service must be used on the basis of biological sex in order for it to be classed as single-sex under the Equality Act, as per the Supreme Court ruling in 2025.
Keir Starmer is facing a Labour rebellion as more than 100 MPs demand new guidance on protecting women-only spaces is rejected
The motion was tabled by Labour’s Nadia Whittome, who said MPs have ‘a responsibility to our trans constituents’ to resist a new draft code from the Equality and Human Rights Commission
This means single-sex toilets, changing rooms, hospital wards and refuges must be used based on a person’s birth sex, rather than the gender with which they identify.
The commission’s updated guidance was published in May – more than a year after the landmark Supreme Court ruling in April last year, which said the words ‘woman’ and ‘sex’ in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex.
The code of practice for services, public functions and associations, which runs to more than 300 pages, covers nine protected characteristics including age, sex, disability, race and gender reassignment, and has been updated in full for the first time since 2011.
It is aimed at guiding businesses and other organisations such as leisure centres and hospitals on how they can follow equality law, including in provision of single and separate-sex services such as toilets and changing rooms.
It suggests it can be deemed legitimate, in limited circumstances, to ask someone to confirm what their sex is but that this must be done ‘as sensitively as possible, and must respect their privacy’.
The code, which would apply across England, Scotland and Wales, was laid before Parliament on May 21 and had a 40-day period from then to be considered by both MPs in the Commons and peers in the Lords.
While a vote would not be required to enact the code and make it statutory, either House could pass a motion to reject it within that period.
An EDM can be lodged by MPs to highlight an objection to an issue but does not automatically lead to a debate or a vote on the matter.
Ms Whittome has called on the Government to withdraw the guidance and instead ‘legislate to clarify and protect trans people’s rights, privacy and inclusion’.
‘The code represents a profound rollback of rights, which will affect trans people directly and erode the principles of inclusion, dignity and equality upon which all our rights depend,’ she posted on X earlier this month.
