Work undertaken in relation to Supreme Court ruling on Equality Act definition of Sex
Dear Department of Health and Social Care,
With the recent Supreme Court ruling that the Equality Act 2010 definition of sex includes only biological sex at birth and does not extend its protections to transgender individuals, Minister of State Karin Smyth was recently asked (and was unable to answer) the question of which changing rooms transgender people were to be expected to use to change clothes.
I assume that DHSC and its Ministers are planning on taking steps to ensure that transgender people are not excluded from access to basic facilities.
I would like to understand what work is taking place at DHSC to implement this new law in such a way that transgender people are not prevented from using public changing rooms, toilets, etc.
Please provide :
- details (dates, minutes, attendees) of any meetings taking place from October 2024 through December 2025 in which this ruling and its potential impacts were discussed
- details (such as equality impact assessments or details of any task and finish groups or working groups etc) of any work now planned to make assurances that, if transgender individuals are to be excluded from their usual toilets / changing rooms / etc, there is a statutory requirement for public places to provide gender neutral / unisex / trans inclusive toilet and changing facilities.
Yours faithfully,
Finn Keaney
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Dear Finn,
Please find attached the Department of Health and Social Care's response
to your recent FOI request (our ref:FOI-160593).
Yours sincerely,
Freedom of Information Team
Department of Health and Social Care
Dear Department of Health and Social Care,
Thanks for your response and request for clarification. All I meant by including future dates in my request was, if there are any dates which have been scheduled already but haven't yet happened, please could the relevant information to those dates be included as part of your response.
So if an initial meeting had taken place on 1/1/2025 but in the aftermath of the supreme court hearing another was scheduled for 1/10/25, you might be able to provide the Minutes of the first meeting and only the scheduled date and proposed attendees / possible agenda of the second one.
If there are no such meetings scheduled then no problem, I just wanted to try and get an understanding of if there were some meetings forecast that were still to take place.
Yours faithfully,
Finn Keaney
This is an acknowledgement - please do not reply to this email.
Thank you for contacting the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).
Your correspondence is being handled by the appropriate team.
If you have made an FOI request, DHSC is required under section 10(1) of
the FOIA to provide you with a response within 20 working days. If DHSC is
unable to do this, we will contact you nearer the time.
This e-mail and any attachments is intended only for the attention of the
addressee(s). Its unauthorised use, disclosure, storage or copying is not
permitted. If you are not the intended recipient, please destroy all
copies and inform the sender by return e-mail. Any views expressed in this
message are not necessarily those of the Department of Health and Social
Care. Please note: Incoming and outgoing email messages are routinely
monitored for compliance with our policy on the use of electronic
communications.
Dear Finn,
Please find attached the Department of Health and Social Care's response
to your recent FOI request (our ref: FOI-1609741).
Yours sincerely,
Freedom of Information Team
Department of Health and Social Care
Dear Department of Health and Social Care,
Thanks for your reply.
I am speaking about the second of the two options you gave - "information about the wider NHS estate, including hospitals and trusts. "
I gave a date range which goes into the future in case things had already been scheduled to take place eg in July. Obviously anything booked into the calendar but not having yet taken place you'd only be able to provide eg. a subject/possibly an agenda/a date and not minutes of a meeting that hadn't taken place but I was trying to catch any planned future meetings as well if the dates of them were known
If this is not possible then please feel free to get rid of all future dates from the scope of my request
Yours faithfully,
Finn Keaney
This is an acknowledgement - please do not reply to this email.
Thank you for contacting the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).
Your correspondence is being handled by the appropriate team.
If you have made an FOI request, DHSC is required under section 10(1) of
the FOIA to provide you with a response within 20 working days. If DHSC is
unable to do this, we will contact you nearer the time.
This e-mail and any attachments is intended only for the attention of the
addressee(s). Its unauthorised use, disclosure, storage or copying is not
permitted. If you are not the intended recipient, please destroy all
copies and inform the sender by return e-mail. Any views expressed in this
message are not necessarily those of the Department of Health and Social
Care. Please note: Incoming and outgoing email messages are routinely
monitored for compliance with our policy on the use of electronic
communications.
Dear Finn,
Please find attached the Department of Health and Social Care's response
to your recent FOI request (our ref: FOI-1614485).
Yours sincerely,
Freedom of Information Team
Department of Health and Social Care
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