Former civil servant who helped draft Equality Act questions gender ruling

A former civil servant who played a key role in drafting the Equality Act has said the supreme court's ruling about the legal definition of a woman contradicted the act's original intentions.

- Severin Carrell Libby Brooks

Melanie Field, who oversaw its drafting and passage through Westminster in 2010, said the legislation meant to give trans people with gender recognition certificates (GRC) the same legal status as biological men or women.

She said that treating trans women with GRCs as women in relation to sex discrimination protections was "the clear premise" of the policy and legal instructions to the officials who drafted the bill.

The supreme court's ruling on Wednesday that the legal definition of "woman" only referred to biological women was "a very significant" reinterpretation of parliament's intentions when it passed the Equality Act in 2010 and the Gender Recognition Act in 2004, she said.

"There are likely to be unintended consequences of this very significant change of interpretation from the basis on which the legislation was drafted and considered by parliament," Field said in a post on the social media site LinkedIn. "We all need to understand what this change means for how the law provides for the appropriate treatment of natal and trans women and men in a whole range of contexts."