The appointment last month of James Murray as Health Secretary caused alarm among women’s organizations. Murray, who was previously a vocal supporter of gender ideology, clearly realized he needed to engage in damage limitation, and in recent interviews has claimed that he no longer believes “trans women are women.” But now his commitment is being tested. Murray is reportedly refusing to honor a commitment made by his predecessor, Wes Streeting, to meet the Darlington nurses who won a landmark victory over their right to single-sex spaces in January. Bethany Hutchison, President of the Darlington Nursing Union, has confirmed that today’s scheduled meeting will not go ahead.

A pattern is emerging here. The Government says the right things about accepting the Supreme Court judgment on the primacy of biological sex, but ministers don’t seem keen on its implementation. The issue is particularly acute in the NHS, where many trusts still allow trans-identified males to use women’s changing rooms and toilets, in open breach of the law. Perhaps Murray isn’t taking these concerns seriously. The Darlington nurses experienced a “hostile, intimidating, humiliating and degrading environment”, but does anyone care?

The decision to snub the women may be related to events in Parliament, where the Labour benches are filled with supporters of trans activism. Almost 140 MPs from various parties have signed an early day motion tabled by a Labour MP, Nadia Whittome, demanding that guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission explaining the law on single-sex spaces “be disapproved”. This is gesture politics at its worst: the law is the law, regardless of whether MPs approve the guidance. But the fact that roughly half the signatories are Labour MPs demonstrates the grip that a thoroughly misogynist ideology still has on the party.

That has been especially true since the 2024 general election. Labour’s ranks are now full of activists rather than objective politicians who treat the notion that trans women are women as an undeniable fact. In 2022, Murray wriggled out of answering whether a biological man, Lia Thomas, should compete against women in swimming competitions in America. Murray is an ally of the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, who has never retreated from his insistence that trans-identified men are women.

It was clear during the 2024 campaign that a Labour victory would strengthen support for trans demands within the parliamentary party. The number of MPs who are members of LGBT+ Labour — a group that lobbies for gay, lesbian and specifically trans rights — more than doubled after the election. The Labour MP Kate Osborne hosted a reception in Parliament for a trans organization, Translucent, last week.

This is the context in which Labour ministers have to operate: the law on one hand, confirmed by the Supreme Court, and colleagues in Parliament who blithely ignore it. What it means for people who work for organizations with blatantly illegal policies on single-sex spaces is disastrous. The rights of women and girls are being upheld by the courts time and again, and it’s clear they have public support. What they don’t have, however, is unequivocal support from Government ministers.

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Joan Smith is a novelist and columnist. She was previously Chair of the Mayor of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls Board, and is on the advisory group for Sex Matters. Her book Unfortunately, She Was A Nymphomaniac: A New History of Rome’s Imperial Women was published in November 2024.

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