Liz Truss bill would ban trans women from women’s spaces

Former prime minister Liz Truss is sponsoring a bill which seeks to ban trans women from women-only spaces, from competing in women’s sport, and prevents children from transitioning. 

Truss, the UK’s shortest-serving prime minister, is sponsoring a backbench bill entitled the Health and Equality Acts (Amendment) Bill – which will potentially be debated by MPs on Friday (15 March) – that will attempt to change the law. 

A description of on the UK parliament website describes it as “a bill to regulate access to hormone therapy for children under the age of 18; to make provision relating to social transition practices in schools and other settings; to make provision regarding the meaning of the protected characteristic of sex; and for connected purposes.”

Former Conservative leader Truss, who was prime minister for less than two months, said the bill will define sex in law as biological and, in her view, end the “absurd and dangerous situation where biological males self-defining as females can access girls’ and women’s toilets and so on – as well as sports competitions”. 

She continued: “It will provide protection for vulnerable children and teenagers who otherwise could be led down a path of making body-altering decisions that they may come to regret, while giving essential legal clarity to parents and teachers.

The bill has received support from prominent gender-critical voices including Maya Forstater, who wrote on X/Twitter: “This Bill will make the law clear that “sex” in the Equality Act means sex and children must be protected and allowed to grow up healthy in their own body.”

In recent months, Truss has become increasingly vocal over trans issues and has aligned herself with hard-right groups and figures, even appearing at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in the US state of Maryland last month. 

At the conference, Truss appeared on an international panel alongside Nigel Farage, the former leader of the Brexit party, former White House strategist and Breitbart executive Steve Bannon, and other speakers from around the world.  

There, she claimed “trans activists” had infiltrated the civil service as she reflected on her ill-fated time in Number 10.

“They might be trans activists, they might be environmental extremists but they are now having a voice within the civil service in a way I don’t think was true 30 or 40 years ago,” she said. 

“So, we just have a wholly new problem and, frankly, a hundred political appointees doesn’t even touch the sides in terms of dealing with them.”

Prior to this, Truss described supporters of LGBT people as “left-wing extremists” and called for schools to ban pupils from socially transitioning. 

She said transitioning is “not a neutral act” and “therefore it should not be officially sanctioned before a young adult has the full decision-making capability to understand the consequences at the age of 18”.