I have a confession to make. This summer, my head was a bit all over the place, I stopped thinking about my blog, and worse than that, I did not update it to reflect my MP Catherine Fookes' response to my letter on 4th June urging her to sign Early Day Motion 240, which proposed that the Draft Code of Practice for Services, public functions and associations be rejected for the harm it potentially would cause transgender people.
At the time I wrote that, I published it on my blog with the promise that any response I received from Catherine would be published as well. She replied to me on 16th June. From reading back through my diary, I was sick in bed that day and failed to notice Catherine's response, hence my failure to update it on the blog. When I eventually did notice, it became one of those things that you think you'll do 'all in good time', and I haven't got around to it until now. I think this is quite a flaw of mine... I really struggle to motivate myself to get on with writing if I don't do it at the time it first occurs to me.
Catherine's response to my letter (which I recommend reading beforehand if you haven't already) is as follows:
Thank you for your email. First of all, I want Monmouthshire’s trans community – and all LGBTQ+ people – to know that I stand in solidarity with them. Trans people deserve safety, dignity and respect. Everyone should be able to live their lives free from intimidation or abuse. I’ve heard first-hand how worried many of my constituents in Monmouthshire are about how changes could affect day-to-day life.
Last year the Supreme Court ruled that sex in the Equality Act 2010 refers to biological sex. Through engaging with Monmouthshire’s trans community about this and hearing their worries, I was able to raise their concerns directly with the Women and Equalities Minister at that time, and robustly question the EHRC Chair as at that time I was a member of the Women and Equalities Committee.
After consideration by Ministers, updated guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission was laid in Parliament on 21 May 2026 to reflect the ruling.
The guidance reflects the findings of the Supreme Court in terms of access to single-sex spaces, but it also emphasises that service providers should make sure that trans people have access to essential services, such as toilets. It says they should consider if and how trans people may be disadvantaged and suggests a holistic approach to service provision by providing a mix of services which may include both separate or single-sex services and mixed-sex services.
Parliament now has 40 days post-publication to consider the guidance. I will endeavour to make sure trans people’s voices are represented in this process.
Transgender people are protected by the Equality Act 2010, passed by the last Labour Government—not only against discrimination through the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, but also against direct discrimination, indirect discrimination and harassment in substance in their acquired gender. These protections are available to transgender people regardless of whether they possess a Gender Recognition Certificate or not.
Now more than ever, people in positions of authority, such as politicians, must speak out about the importance of our shared values of tolerance, respect and fair-mindedness, and I will continue to do so.
It is important that as a society we always try to move forwards, not backwards, in equality and inclusivity. I therefore welcome that the Government announced at the recent King’s Speech that the trans-inclusive ban on conversion therapy will be brought in this parliamentary session, as promised in our manifesto. The urgency of this was something I also raised with the Minister last year and am very pleased to see move forward.
As I am a PPS, I am not able to sign EDMs, but please be assured that as your MP I will continue to voice my support for dignity and safety of trans people in Monmouthshire and more widely, especially at this difficult time.
I hope that this is helpful in outlining my position and what will happen in the coming weeks. I will continue to listen, and to attend upcoming Parliamentary sessions and events on this important matter where I can.
My reaction to this email is interesting, because to be honest I wasn't all that impressed by it. I think the email just smacks of platitude, and doesn't reassure me at all that trans people are going to be protected. But to be fair to Catherine, I don't believe she's motivated by transphobia and what I have seen of her actions in Parliament and her constituency have been more impressive, so I'm going to start with that.
The first thing I should reference is the point about 'as a PPS I am not able to sign EDMs'. A PPS is a Parliamentary Private Secretary, and the first thing I should note is that whilst it's not the convention for them to sign Early Day Motions, they aren't banned from doing so and it does happen occasionally. That was my immediate reaction when I read this comment. But then I looked it up, and found out that in the long gap between her sending this email and my acknowledging it, she isn't actually a PPS anymore. Moreover, upon vacating this position she immediately signed Early Day Motion 240. So, credit where it's due: she did immediately do what I asked her to do.
I have also been impressed by the questions she has asked about this in Parliament, which are linked in the email. On the Women and Equalities debate, she questioned Baroness Kishwer Falkner for about ten minutes (it starts at around 14.53). I thought Falkner's responses were confusing, evasive and added more uncertainty to an increasingly polarised discussion. Truthfully as an LGBTQ+ person, I found it quite frightening that someone in a position as senior as Baroness Falkner's can be this confused on the subject of our rights. But I thought Catherine's questions were sensitive and appropriate, and particularly made the important interjection when Baroness Falkner made the very strange claim that 'trans people have not lost any rights.' Catherine responded that they have done, that transgender people who have been living their lives peacefully for years have suddenly found that the law is messing around with their own certainties about the facilities they can use and all sorts of things. I appreciate Catherine's attitude to LGBTQ+ issues, and generally do not believe there to be any bigotry whatsoever in her position. Thank you, Catherine.
It's important that I say that at the beginning, because there is also a fair bit about Catherine's email that I don't appreciate. Here it is:
1) 'Last year the Supreme Court ruled that sex in the Equality Act 2010 refers to biological sex.'
I suppose I have to give Catherine a bit of credit for this, because it is technically the truth. The Court did rule that, and that must be acknowledged. The reason I have to include it in the 'don't appreciate' category is that 'biological sex' is a nonsense phrase when used in this context. Biology is insanely complicated and doesn't work in black and white categories like this. The sex someone was assigned at birth was determined by a cursory look at their genitals. It doesn't take into account hormones, chromosomes, genetics, secondary sex characteristics and more besides. Just to reiterate, I am a cis man in the sense that I was assigned male at birth and have never doubted that about myself, and I naturally assume that like most cisgender men I produce XY chromosomes, but I don't know that for certain. In my 33 years on this planet, I have so far never encountered a situation in which I've had to have my chromosomes tested, and I think this is also true of the overwhelming majority of people. The Court judgment did not include any means of determining what constitutes 'biological sex', and any attempt to do so would be fraught with problems, not least of which is that there isn't any reliable way to prove one's biology to another person. There is not any characteristic that every single cis person has that not a single trans person has. It's impossible to enforce, and wasn't informed by the opinion of any actual biologist. Anyone who uses this phrase, you are quite within your rights to roll your eyes in contempt.
To be fair to Catherine, she doesn't use this phrase at any other point in her email, so it can absolutely be interpreted as just quoting what the court judgement said, and I believe that's how it was meant. But I think it is still necessary to make this point.
2) 'The guidance reflects the findings of the Supreme Court in terms of access to single-sex spaces, but it also emphasises that service providers should make sure that trans people have access to essential services, such as toilets. It says they should consider if and how trans people may be disadvantaged and suggests a holistic approach to service provision by providing a mix of services which may include both separate or single-sex services and mixed-sex services.'
There are a number of things wrong with this. Firstly, the judgment of the court was absolutely nothing to do with access to things like toilets and changing rooms. It was interpreting the wording of a very specific aspect of the Equality Act to refer to the sex one was assigned at birth (or, as they call it, 'biological sex'). What it meant in context was that, for example, if a transgender man was paid less money than a cisgender man for the same work, he could still make a complaint on the grounds of sexism. Nothing about this court case had anything to do with gendered public services. The Equality Act doesn't have anything to do with gendered public services, which anyone over the age of 16 will remember have actually been around since before 2010 when the Equality Act was passed. All of that came from anti-trans activists and the media constantly talking about that.
Secondly, the findings of the court were an interpretation. In the UK, courts do not make laws. Parliament makes laws, and the courts enforce them. Sometimes, as in this case, Parliament may have made a law that is worded in a confusing way, and then it falls to the court to decide what Parliament meant. If the court makes a judgment on this, Parliament is within its rights to amend the law as it stands to iron out that confusion. This happens all the time when Parliament doesn't like the verdict a court has reached. It does not happen that a court interprets a law in a certain way and then Parliament finds itself bound by that in perpetuity. Parliament can change the law, that's what Parliament is for. The increasing weakening of protections for trans people have nothing to do with this judgement, and everything to do with the Government and Parliament succumbing to increasing levels of transphobia within the establishment class.
Thirdly, whether the guidance makes clear that trans people have access to essential services is irrelevant, because they don't. For the life of me I don't understand why Catherine has said that, because she knows that they don't - she herself has raised these concerns in Parliament. Expecting trans people to use a third space is impractical (because not everywhere has a third space), dangerous (because it forces them to out themselves), unnecessary (because trans people pose no threat to cis people) and discriminatory, bearing some resemblance to apartheid South Africa. Within the last week, a story has come out about a woman named Joelle from Wolverhampton, who is alleged to have died from aggressive cancer at the age of 27 essentially because she was transgender, the staff at the NHS hospital were unsure what ward to put her in, and she ended up waiting around for a single room, which didn't become available until after her cancer was no longer treatable. This guidance kills people. It always had the potential to kill people, and it will kill more people unless we deal with it soon and drop this hateful moral panic around transgender people.
3) 'Transgender people are protected by the Equality Act 2010'
Indeed, they are. Gender dysphoria is amongst the characteristics that the Equality Act contains protections for. But clearly, these protections are not currently being followed. The interpretation of what the words 'woman' and 'man' mean in the Equality Act seems to have been understood by a very great number of people to eliminate all protections for transgender people. They are still in the act. It's a political choice not to acknowledge them.
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I've met my MP Catherine Fookes a number of times, and I can truthfully say I like her. She's a kind woman, has been a lot more supportive of my partner Owen's disability rights campaigns than most of her Labour colleagues have, and as a constituent I would feel safe going to her with a problem. I don't necessarily agree with her on everything, but I can see that she is always motivated by wanting to do the right thing for the most vulnerable.
Unfortunately, I'm not particularly reassured that she has the strength or the charisma to defend the most vulnerable effectively enough. Her comments in Parliament about transgender people's rights are refreshing to hear, and demonstrate that she understands the seriousness of the problem. Her email to me, on the other hand, is filled with platitudes that don't actually cut to the nub of the problem, which is that for the last ten years or so trans women in particular have found themselves the target of an increasing amount of abuse from the establishment class. Talking about tolerance and fair-mindedness, like a benevolent teacher, isn't going to change that. It will only change if significant numbers of people have the courage and stamina to stand together and say, 'We will not accept this being done in our name.'
If you'd like to write to your own MP, you can at https://www.writetothem.com/
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