Dear Wera Hobhouse, MP,

I believe the proposed EHRC is an overreach and comes at a great cost to Bath residents: it presents contradicting responsibilities to businesses, fails to consider harassment on the part of the public, and acknowledges in its Equality Impact Assessment the absence of case law to provide adequate guidance.

A stated aim of the code is to help service providers understand their responsibilities under the 2010 Equality Act. Part 3 of the Equalities Act is based on the principle that people with the listed protected characteristics (e.g. gender reassignment, sex, and disability) should not be discriminated against, harassed or victimised when using any service provided publicly or privately.

It is therefore irresponsible for a governing body or commission, particularly the EHRC, to publicly promote guidance which redefines the acceptable spaces for people with protected characteristics. ‘Acceptable spaces’ encourage the public to police these spaces, and harass anyone with non-standard characteristics. Under the Equality Act, a person is protected from harassment by their service providers based on ‘perceived sex’. If the code is introduced, changing the public discourse, a person faces potential harassment every time they go to the bathroom for their ‘perceived sex’, regardless of sex or gender reassignment characteristics. Why should e.g. women now have to grow their hair long just to use the bathroom without comment?

This isn’t a hypothetical. The effect of policy on public discourse can already be seen from previous cases of harassment based on disability. You’ll already be familiar with public transport, parking lots, and bathrooms decorated with ‘Not all disability is visible’ campaigns: these were only required in response to public self-policing of a person’s perceived disability status. The May 2026 “Disabled people's experiences of harassment and victimisation: an evidence review” showed how hate crimes in settings like public transport led to a lack of safe spaces in which to live and work. Campaigns like “it’s everyone’s journey” by the Department for Transport state that disabled people travel up to a third less than non-disabled people, impacting their access to employment, healthcare, education, and social activities.

The EHRC guidance facilitates an increase in hate crimes against trans people for using gendered bathrooms, and it’s clear how this can also facilitate harassment of non-trans people who are perceived as non-normative, based on the clothes they wear or the way they speak. The EHRC guidance even proposes using accessible toilets as mixed-sex toilets for non-disabled people: this reduces the availability of these public spaces further for disabled people, in complete contradiction to the findings of the review of disabled people’s experiences and the principles of the Equality Act.

How much will it cost businesses around Bath to create new gender-neutral bathrooms without impacting existing accessible toilets? How possible will that be given the number of listed Grade I and Grade II buildings? How long will it take for the council to manage the planning permission and approval? If businesses are unable to adapt their facilities, and in the time before they do, why should customers and employees be subject to harassment due to this guidance on bathroom policing?

You’ve committed to backing local businesses in Parliament, which this policy unfairly burdens. Your voting record here will have repercussions for LGBTQ+ rights across Britain. I implore you to support the EDM 240 motion Nadia Whittome presented to disapprove this Code of Practice. I understand that you are potentially on the committee to review this code, but others on this committee have already supported the EDM 240 motion. I hope you consider how history will perceive the parliamentary record when, decades later, we see the segregation and hate this code has caused.

Sincerely,