Kemi Badenoch has welcomed the Supreme Court ruling that sex in the Equality Act refers to biological sex, calling it a victory for women defending their rights. Badenoch said single-sex spaces should be protected, with alternative provisions made for transgender people where needed. Report by Covellm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00Sex has always meant biological sex, and what we have seen is a lot of people misinterpreting the law.
00:06They've had guidelines from all sorts of organisations that actually do not follow the law.
00:11So I really welcome this judgement. We need more. We need better clarification in legislation.
00:18The Equality Act could be improved.
00:20When I was Minister for Equalities, I was working on legislation to actually clarify that sex in the Act meant biological sex.
00:26And I think this is really a victory for all of those women who've had to go to court to fight for rights that they already had.
00:33I can understand why a lot of transgender people want access to single-sex spaces, but sex is biological.
00:41And there are accommodations that can be made, unisex, you know, changing rooms, for example, where there's only one person allowed to use them,
00:50or toilets, for example, where only one person can go inside. There are accommodations that can be made.
00:54But, as Sex Matters found, we have indecent exposure and voyeurism as being one of the most common forms of sexual assault.
01:03There are all sorts of men who use the accommodations that have been given to transgender people and exploit them.
01:10That's what we're really trying to protect.
01:13And it's those rights that women have that have been overridden.
01:17We've seen rapists in women's prisons, for example, that cannot be right.
01:22And this judgment is going a long way to help improve the situation.