Liz Truss's anti-trans Private Members Bill is unnecessary and harmful – Vic Valentine

Trans people can already be legally excluded from single-sex services where it is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim

The past few weeks have seen two very different Private Member’s Bills selected in ballots at Westminster. These Bills are an opportunity for MPs and Lords to get important issues on the parliamentary timetable, and to either persuade the government to legislate on something they otherwise haven’t been prioritising, or persuade enough of their parliamentary colleagues across all political parties to get behind a particular cause.

The first Bill, introduced by Baroness Burt of Solihull, would ban conversion practices – a range of actions that try to stop lesbian, gay, bi and trans people, and other members of the LGBT+ community, from being, or expressing, who we are. These actions take place because the person doing them believes that there is something wrong with LGBT+ people, and that we can be ‘fixed’. Conversion practices are harmful, ineffective, and wrong.

The UK Government has repeatedly failed to deliver on its commitment to end conversion practices, and so this Bill, selected first in the House of Lords ballot, could be a really important way of making it happen in England and Wales. The Scottish Government has committed to consulting soon on a law in this area – something that myself, equality organisations and survivors of conversion practices think is vitally important.

Former Prime Minister Liz Truss wants to ban trans women from single-sex spaces (Picture: Rob Pinney/Getty Images)

The other Bill, to be introduced by Liz Truss MP, has different aims. It will propose two main things. Firstly, it would ban all trans women from all single-sex spaces for women. This is a totally unnecessary and cruel proposal.

No one wants to be worrying about if they can safely nip to the loo or try on some clothes while they’re out shopping. Or if you’re ill, or have experienced domestic abuse from a partner, you want the same opportunity as anyone to be able to recover in a space where you’re treated with care and compassion.

It is already the law that trans people can be treated differently or excluded from these services where it is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. So Liz Truss’s bill clearly wants to ban us from these spaces and services when this is neither proportionate nor legitimate – something all fair-minded people would surely oppose.

Secondly, this Bill would restrict the choices that young people, with the support of their families and doctors, can make about their healthcare. Many Republican-led US states have already tried to introduce similar bans, which are often being blocked in their courts. The UK Supreme Court has already upheld a decision of the Court of Appeal that trans young people should be able to access the care they need, in a case trying to prevent everyone under 16 from doing so.

Politicians should not think they know better than young people, their families and carers, the doctors who act in their best interests, and the courts that are in place to look after their rights when it comes to their healthcare.

Trans people and our friends and families across the UK can at least be reassured that, as the 18th Bill in the Commons ballot, it probably won’t make it to a debate. In the unlikely event that it does, I hope MPs across Westminster would vote down these unnecessary and harmful proposals.

Vic Valentine is manager of Scottish Trans