Kemi Badenoch: Public bodies face ‘serious potential’ they are breaking law on single-sex spaces

Public bodies in Scotland face the "serious potential" that they are breaking the law on single-sex spaces, Kemi Badenoch has said.

The Conservative leader claimed the Scottish Government had not provided sufficient guidance to the public sector and regularly "misinterprets" the difference between sex and gender.

She made the comments while on a visit to BAE Systems in Glasgow alongside Scottish Tory leader Russell Findlay and shadow Scottish secretary Andrew Bowie.

Speaking to the press, Badenoch said: “[Public bodies] have a serious potential of breaking the law, and no, the Scottish government hasn't done anything, in my view, anywhere close to giving the appropriate guidance. They regularly misinterpret sex and gender, using them interchangeably. The concept of gender identity as they use is not established in law, they confuse it with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, and they got themselves in a big mess a couple of years ago."

Badenoch was UK women and equalities minister at the time the Scottish Government pushed through its Gender Recognition Reform Bill. She voiced concerns about the potential negative consequences of allowing those who self-identify as transgender to obtain a gender recognition certificate.

The bill was later blocked by then Scottish secretary Alister Jack, who said it contradicted an area of reserved law – namely the Equalities Act.

The Scottish Government later failed to get that block overturned in court. The bill remains on the Scottish Parliament books, having been passed by a majority of MSPs in December 2022, but it never became a law.

On the SNP's position, Badenoch said: “They've dropped their plans for self-ID but the ideology that drove it is still there, and I don't see how things will change unless you don't have the SNP running things. It's a detachment from reality that is harmful to people.”

She denied that the issues around single-sex spaces had become "toxic", instead saying it was an "honest debate".

She said: "We can't be afraid to tell the truth. Biological reality is not something that we can run away from, whatever our ideology is. And if you believe in biological reality, then that means you need to make single-sex spaces based on the biology. A trans man is still a female.

“I think that we need to make sure that we are looking on a case-by-case basis for where there are extenuating circumstances or exceptions. But the first thing is looking after those people who are most vulnerable, and that's women and children.”

The Conservative leader was also asked about the threat of Reform, given Nigel Farage's party is outperforming her own in the polls.

She said her party was in a “difficult position” having only just left government. “The reason why we were removed from government was because the public were not happy, and my job is to explain that the party is now under new leadership. We are acknowledging mistakes that we made," she said.

But she accused Reform of “counting their chickens” by reading too much into the polls this far out from an election.

And on the recent row between Farage and Rupert Lowe - who last week had the Reform whip removed - she said this was a “sideshow” to more serious international events.