Order, order. I am David Alton, Lord Alton of Liverpool. I am an independent Cross-Bench Peer, and I have the privilege of chairing the Joint Committee of the House of Commons and House of Lords on Human Rights. I am sitting alongside my colleague Sarah Owen, who is the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee in the House of Commons, who does a terrific job. Today, our two Committees are meeting together, and we are doing so because it is our duty, laid on us by Parliament, to examine the credentials of someone who will be appointed to become the chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. This is a pre-appointment hearing. It is also the third time that the hearing has been conducted jointly between our two Select Committees. The session is for the JCHR and the Women and Equalities Committee to assure themselves of the quality of the Government’s decision to choose Dr Stephenson as their preferred candidate for the EHRC chair, and that it is the right one. Key considerations include the openness, rigour and integrity of the recruitment process; the suitability of the candidate’s skills and experience; and assurance that the candidate has been chosen on merit. After the meeting, the two Committees would usually agree a report setting out their views. The Committee’s views are not binding on the Government, but the Secretary of State is expected to consider any relevant observations before proceeding with the appointment. It might be helpful for the Committee, and for members of the public who are here, to know how we are going to proceed. Our questions will be broken down into eight separate sections. First, we will look at the suitability of the candidate’s knowledge and experience. We will move on to broad equalities remit and the Equality Act. Then we will talk about the human rights remit, the role as equality law regulator and enforcer, and then the relationship with government and Parliament. Then there are things about vacancies on the board; biological sex-based rights and transgender rights; and then something on equality and human rights implications on artificial intelligence. Let me introduce our candidate today. Our witness, Dr Mary-Ann Stephenson, is the Government’s preferred candidate for the post of chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. In a moment, I will invite her to introduce herself before inviting members of both Committees to put their questions to her. Dr Stephenson has 30 years’ experience in equality and human rights, predominantly in women’s rights. She has led the Women’s Budget Group since 2017 and was a commissioner on the Women’s National Commission and director of the Fawcett Society. She has been a freelance equality and human rights consultant in the UK and overseas. She has a PhD in equality law, and she has lectured on related topics. I would like to begin the questions before inviting in some of my colleagues. In addition to your role at the Women’s Budget Group, Dr Stephenson, you hold three board-level positions. Can you tell us whether you intend to continue in any of those roles? If so, how can you assure us that you will avoid any perception of conflicts of interest with your position as EHRC chair? How do you intend to manage your time between the EHRC and other roles? The time commitment of the EHRC role is roughly two days a week. Do you see that as sufficient to be able to do the job effectively?

On my current roles, I would obviously stand down as director of the Women’s Budget Group: that is not compatible with this role in terms of time, and there would be clear conflicts of interest. On my Just Fair role, I think there are potential conflicts of interest there, and I would stand down if I were appointed. On the Coventry Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre, if it was not felt that there was a conflict of interest, I would like to continue in that role, because I think it is very important to have that contact with front-line services and that understanding of how they have to use and interpret the law. I am chair of the steering group for the Early Education and Childcare Coalition. Again, I do not see a conflict of interest with that role, and I would like to continue. The EECC is about to spin out from the Women’s Budget Group. We currently host it, and it is about to become an independent organisation. I think it is important that there is a period of time when the chair stays to guarantee continuity. Obviously, if the advice were different, I would pay attention to that.

That is a very helpful reply. Thank you. That was the curtain-raiser for the beginning of our proceedings.

It is really very nice to see you here and to have the opportunity to hear about your life’s work. Obviously, you are well known to many of us who have worked in the field of women’s rights, and you have been involved in important work on that over the years: particularly, I remember the Fawcett Society and some work you did for the British Council overseas. Could you describe to us which skills and experience you have developed over the years that you feel will help you to manage a complicated organisation such as the one that you are likely to be—or might well be—appointed to? Where do you think there might be gaps in your own experience, and how might those be filled? It is better to be frank about areas where you feel you absolutely have the complex set of skills that will be needed but also to recognise areas where you perhaps might have to fill the gaps.

On the issue that the EHRC works on, as Lord Alton said, I have worked in the equality and human rights sector for over 30 years, primarily in the UK but also internationally. That has been mainly in the women’s rights sector but, particularly at the Women’s Budget Group, we have taken a very intersectional approach. If you look at the work we have done on the impact of Covid, the cost of living crisis and the impact of austerity, it has all looked at the impact not just on women but on broader equalities, particularly around class, race and disability, because we have an economic focus and that is where the biggest economic issues come into play. We have also done specific deep dives on the situation of different groups of women in the UK such as older women, disabled women, migrant women and so on. In terms of the role more generally, I have experience of board level at national and international organisations, service-providing bodies and two public bodies, the Women’s National Commission and the Coventry Police and Crime Board. I have chaired organisations and been the CEO of an organisation, answerable to the board. I think that gives me a very good understanding of the relationship between the different roles and the relationship between board and senior staff and why it is important for that to be very positive. At board level and in voluntary and community organisations, I have been used to being involved in working with people who have different backgrounds, views, ways of working and understandings of the world to me. That has given me a good understanding of how you can build common ground when people are coming from different places and of the real value and importance of pluralism—the fact that you need a diverse range of views, as well as a diverse range of backgrounds, to make good decisions. There is always a danger when people agree too much with each other that you end up with groupthink, and that is not very healthy. I have had roles where I have had to be impartial. For example, with the Early Education and Childcare Coalition, although it is housed by the Women’s Budget Group and I chair it, I am very careful that I do not see my role on that steering group as pushing the Women’s Budget Group position. My role is to chair, and to take account of all the different stakeholders. There is quite a divergent range of views across all the different stakeholders in the early years and childcare sector, so my role there is to try to build consensus across differences and make sure people are properly represented. I have led organisations with a national profile, and I am used to working with different Governments. My approach has always been to try to be constructive and practical but to be willing to criticise where necessary. I am used to being the main spokesperson for an organisation, so I am used to dealing with the media. As I said, I have been on the board of a public body. I have not chaired a public body before, so that would be a new role for me, but I feel confident that it is something that I could do. Obviously, this is a very turbulent time for the Equality and Human Rights Commission. It is very much in the eye of a media storm. I think that anybody, no matter their experience, would probably welcome the support of other board members and senior staff in managing that process.

You have missed out on the thing that I raised early on. I was suggesting, as I have had the experience myself, recognising that some roles might involve things where there might be gaps in one’s own experience. Where are there gaps in your experience?

As I was saying, I have not chaired a public body; I have been a member of a public body. I have not chaired an organisation as large as the Equality and Human Rights Commission; I have been on the board of some fairly large organisations. There is a difference in ways of working between larger and smaller organisations: communications are much easier in smaller organisations, and you need more formal processes in larger organisations. That would be an area that I would look to develop, but I have worked in partnership with lots of large organisations. I have done work for local authorities and government departments, so I have an understanding of how larger bureaucracies work.

I remember that, when the EHRC was created, there was a discussion about the fact that there was a whole set of organisations and entities, such as an equalities commission which dealt with women’s issues, a race relations organisation for the whole business of race and one for the business of disability. What about those areas? Do you have experience of dealing with disability?

In terms of the different areas, my biggest strength is obviously within the women’s sector. As I said, I have an understanding across a number of other equality sectors, but it is not as strong as it is for the women’s sector. One of the really important things when you are thinking about the commission, particularly the appointment of new commissioners, which I know will get on to later, is ensuring that there is a board of commissioners that brings the different skills that are needed and the different levels of experience.

We must not pre-empt those questions. Thank you for raising this, because these are very important questions about the nature and make-up of the board. Baroness Kennedy has flagged a very helpful question. I turn now to Rebecca Paul, Member of Parliament for Reigate. After that, we will hear from Kirith Entwistle, Member of Parliament.

Thank you, Dr Stephenson, for your time today. I have a follow-on question to build on what Baroness Kennedy already asked about. I think you recognise that you have not had a role that is commensurate in size and budget before. What will you do to address the skills and expertise that you need to do that? Have you got a plan of action to make sure that you develop those skills as quickly as possible?

Yes. As I said, I have been on boards of larger organisations, just not chairing them, and I have chaired smaller organisations. First, I would draw on and bring those skills and experiences together. I would also seek to take advice from people who have done similar roles and from predecessors. Everybody has their own experience of chairing an organisation, so different people will have different bits of advice to give. I remember that, when I became director of the Fawcett Society, Fiona Mactaggart, who was then MP for Slough, said to me that the most important thing is never to be afraid to ask for help and recognise when you need additional advice. I have always been very open to listening to advice and to learning from others. It is really important not to get to a point where you think you know how to do everything.

Never be afraid to ask for help or advice: that is pretty good advice in life. I turn now to Kirith Entwistle, Member of Parliament for Bolton North East. After that, we will hear from my colleague Baroness Lawrence.

You are probably aware that we are approaching the 15th anniversary of the Equality Act. How effective do you think it is today? What do you think will be the key challenges to its effectiveness over the next decade?

There are a number of things in the Equality Act that were there when it was introduced but were never passed. I think that has restricted its ability to have the impact it could have had. I know that the current Government are looking at that. I am thinking particularly of dual discrimination and the socioeconomic duty within the public sector equality duty. I also think that the specific duties for the public sector equality duty in England are quite weak, particularly compared with Scotland and Wales, and that makes it quite difficult to enforce the duty effectively, in a way that makes a difference. Some of the decisions around the removal of civil legal aid, particularly for employment-related discrimination, cause real problems. You can have a right in law but, if you are not able to get legal representation in the courts, that right is less effective than it could be. There was a sort of focus that we could move to a situation of no win, no fee for employment law cases, but that works only if you earn enough money for lawyers operating on a no-win, no-fee basis to do it. I have a friend who was discriminated at work; I recommended somebody to her, who I knew had helped another friend of mine, who basically turned her down as a client because she did not earn enough money and whatever compensation she won would not make it worthwhile. You have to look only at the really high levels of pregnancy and maternity discrimination to realise that women have a right not to be discriminated against when they are pregnant or on maternity leave, yet thousands are sacked every year and very few take a case to court because, when you have a new baby or you are heavily pregnant, that is not the time when you want to go through that process. We have to look both at what is in the law—things such as dual discrimination and the socioeconomic duty—and at people’s ability to enforce the rights that they do have. That is not about just the Equality Act but the wider remit: legal aid, delays in the tribunal service and so on.

Thank you for being here. In the last decade, we have seen the Windrush scandal, and some racial and ethnic minority groups continue to experience disproportionality and poorer outcomes, for example in employment, income and health. As chair of the EHRC, what will be your priorities in tackling racial discrimination?

We have done quite a lot on this area in the Women’s Budget Group, particularly looking at the employment and poverty situation of black and minority ethnic women and the impact on that of social security and other changes. It is also one of those areas where we need to get beyond dealing with individual acts of discrimination to actually recognising issues of structural inequality. Some of that is about getting upstream of the enforcement mechanisms: by the time things come to court, in a way, the problem has already happened. We should not have a system that relies on people having to take cases to court; we should have a system that deals with inequality earlier in the process. That can start with the education system and the high levels of exclusions faced by black boys, and with the healthcare system and the fact that black women are four times more likely to die in childbirth than white women. Looking at what is going wrong in those systems, rather than focusing on individual acts of discrimination, is really important.

Could I follow up on that? The Windrush scandal is completely different from what you were describing just now. The scandal has been going on for the past seven years, I think, and people are still suffering. Things have not happened around supporting them and looking at how this scandal has affected them and their family. This scandal is completely different from the stuff that you have said to us. How would you prioritise that area and looking at this scandal, which has been going on for over seven years?

Sorry; I had misunderstood your question. I thought you had gone from the Windrush scandal to speaking more broadly, which is what I was speaking to. This is an example of institutional failure—failure upon failure—in the treatment of individuals who were deported or denied their rights to be in the UK or denied employment, and the failure of compensation schemes to deal with this sufficiently quickly. It is important for an organisation like the EHRC to look at that failure in the round, recognise where systems have broken down and take action if necessary.

To follow on from that, would you challenge the Government on the length of time it has taken for them to address issues around the scandal?

I will have to wait until I am in post to make decisions like that, but I certainly would not be afraid to challenge the Government where necessary.

Dr Stephenson, can we draw out from your answer to that question that you would like to see the EHRC doing more thematic inquiries into specific issues?

Yes. The EHRC has a duty as both a regulator and a champion. Over recent years, under not just the current chair but the previous chair, there was significant pressure from the Government to focus really just on the regulatory and enforcement role. Where there are systemic failures, it is important for the EHRC to do proper systemic reviews to look at what has gone wrong, make recommendations and then take action. What those would be will have to wait for the outcome of the process. But regulation is important but it is only half the picture. The ultimate aim of the EHRC is to deliver equality and human rights for everybody in the UK, and that takes multiple actions at multiple levels.

We turn now to Mr Afzal Khan, who is the Member of Parliament for Manchester Rusholme. After that, if there are no supplementaries, we will turn to Alex Brewer.

Dr Stephenson, we have seen a sharp increase in Islamophobia and anti-Muslim incidents. How will you ensure that Islamophobia is addressed as part of your work tackling racial discrimination?

I agree, and it is something that it is incumbent on all of us to address. The role of the EHRC is to think about this at multiple different levels: to look at institutions where there might be practice that is effectively Islamophobic; to look at providing advice and support to individuals so that, through the website or other materials, people are aware of their rights; and to act as a champion to highlight where Islamophobia is taking place and present an alternative vision of a world where we can all live together and all treat each other with dignity and respect.

I ought to turn to my Co-Chair for today’s proceedings, who is the Chair of the Women and Equalities Commission. Sarah, the Floor is yours.

Thank you very much, Chair. Thank you for being here; I cannot imagine that this kind of job interview happens very often, so you have my sympathies, particularly in this heat. It is to follow the questions from my colleagues Baroness Lawrence and Afzal Khan. Last summer we saw horrific riots, racism and Islamophobia lead to violence on our streets in many parts of the country. You talked about the EHRC being able to be proactive on that. I would like some specific examples of how you would lead the EHRC to build trust in some of the communities where trust has broken down between institutions—particularly for black and Muslim communities. We will go on to talk about some of the other communities where trust in the EHRC as a defender of their rights has really broken down.

One thing that has been slightly lost, partly because the specific duty to promote good relations was taken off the EHRC—obviously, it is still covered by the public sector equality duty, so it does still have a duty to promote good relations—is that work in bringing communities together, identifying where there are tensions and looking at ways of resolving them. To go further back, the power that the EHRC has to give grants to organisations that were looking to do this work has also been taken away from it. That is just by way of background. One of the most important things in rebuilding trust is for the EHRC to have a programme of engagement with civil society organisations to rebuild those relationships. It feels to me, from within civil society, that the EHRC has not been as outwardly focused as it could have been in terms of regular communications, meetings and engagement with civil society across the UK. That is something that I really want to do something about that—something concrete that I want to change. More generally, the EHRC has a role in communicating that human rights and equality are a benefit to everyone. For those of us who care about equality and human rights, it is important to recognise that, too often, some people see equality in human rights as being for other people. They think that they are a tool that other people use in certain circumstances that allow them to get away with things. I think they are fundamental to building a just, fair and socially cohesive society. The EHRC has a role in communicating that, partly through using the media, partly through the reports and partly through working with other organisations and through working in partnership with them, ensuring that different organisations are able to be heard when there is work being done to restore trust. For example, I spoke to somebody last week who said that she was not aware of any Muslim women’s groups that had been funded as part of the local funding that had taken place to try to do work to rebuild community relations. She was saying that this is a real mistake, because these organisations are able to speak to people who might not otherwise be heard and build relationships with other women. That was a really important point; it is thinking about how you do that community cohesion and rebuilding work in a way that brings everyone on board.

That was my question: how do you plan to do it? I understand that you say that you want to go out and engage but, at the moment, some organisations in the communities that I have just spoken about will not engage with the EHRC in its current position, because trust has broken down to that extent. What are you proactively going to do? Do you have any examples of where you have done that previously?

Proactively, one of the opportunities of having a new chair is to try to reset relations. It gives an opportunity to try to contact people who may not have been in contact in the past and say, “Can I come and talk to you?” I am not naive enough to think everyone will go, “Oh yeah, that’s great”, but it offers an important opportunity. One of the key parts of the first few months of my role will be about having those conversations with organisations across the piece to find out why they feel a lack of trust and what they want to see. Obviously, you cannot promise everything to everybody because people want competing things, but you can promise dialogue and engagement.

I should like to give the floor to Alex Brewer, who is Member of Parliament for North East Hampshire. After that, we will be hearing from David Burton-Sampson.

This is very close to my heart. We published a report yesterday at the Women’s Budget Group about the specific experiences of disabled women. There have been failures in different parts of the public sector, for example. Look at the public sector equality duty; there has been a failure to have due regard to the impact on disabled people. Although I have not had a chance to read it completely, I saw some something published today around disabled people’s human rights and issues around disability benefits. I am conscious of issues of access to basic services. I see that about 75% of disabled people have said that they have had occasions when they have not been able to access an accessible toilet. That is about 12 million people. There are the enforcement powers, but in advance of that is the matter of actually speaking to regulators, to people who are regulating and planning the built environment to ask, “Are you enforcing these things? Are you thinking about these things in terms of how you are regulating the sector and what requirements are placed on the sector?”

Yes. This issue starts from the earliest ages. Look, for example, at access to early education and childcare for children with SEND; it is really hard for them to get access to high-quality early years education. We know the impact that early intervention has, so the failure to do that has a knock-on effect. Again, that is something that the Early Education and Childcare Coalition works on. It is again thinking about obligations under the public sector equality duty. If you are supposed to have due regard to promoting equality across all protected characteristics, you need to think about special educational needs and learning difficulties, and take them into account when developing and delivering policies. The PSED has been an underused tool in this area. Too much focus has again been on taking cases to judicial review and not enough on working with public bodies on how to get this right first time, how to avoid having these problems and how to think about equality from the beginning.

Before we leave this important question on disability, I know that my colleague, Rachel Taylor, who is Member of Parliament for North Warwickshire and Bedworth, has a question for you on this point. Then we will move on to the last question in this section from Mr Burton-Sampson.

Just focusing on what my colleague, Alex Brewer, said about dignity and respect for disabled people, we have seen huge increases in hate crime against them. I am aware that you were a member of the Coventry police and crime board for four years, so perhaps you would like to say a little about how you think the EHRC could help with a reduction in that sort of hate crime. It is a subject close to my heart as I put forward an amendment on hate crime laws just a week or so ago in Parliament.

That is really important. There are three areas where you need to deal with this. The first is enabling people to know what their rights are to report hate crime and to understand what hate crime is, that they have a right to live free from that and where to go if they are experiencing it. Then there is working with the police and other bodies to ensure that they are taking this seriously. Finally, there is an education piece about dealing with the discriminatory attitudes that can lead to hate crime. In all of these, the EHRC has a big mandate and relatively limited resources, so it is always about working in partnership with others—whether with the police, schools, local authorities or, in this case, academy trusts to get them to think about the education piece. A lot of the EHRC’s and our work would have to be through and with other organisations rather than doing it all ourselves.

Mr Burton-Sampson is going to complete this section. He is the Member of Parliament for Southend West and Leigh. Q10            David Burton-Sampson: How concerned are you about the backlash against equality, diversity and inclusion in the UK, in part driven by President Trump’s action against DEI in the US? We are already, for example, seeing companies rowing back on the DEI agenda or shrinking it down. Pride organisations are losing sponsors and having to close down their organisation for the year. How concerned are you?

It is really concerning. You can see it particularly with multinational companies that have a base in the US, so change their policy there and then change it in the UK. To me, that shows that the case for why this was genuinely of benefit to the business or the organisation was not properly made. If people step away from it, it highlights the degree to which some of this stuff may have been a bit performative for some organisations and that it was not properly embedded within them. That shows that we need to make the case for why equality and diversity is important within organisations and business. We have an ageing population in the UK, for example, and skills shortages in lots of sectors. We cannot afford to exclude the skills and talents of large parts of the population for discriminatory reasons, and we need to make that clear. I know people who work in this sector including some really brilliant people. There has, on occasion, been practice that has been counterproductive and that has not delivered the sorts of changes that people would like to see. That has led to increasing intolerance or discriminatory attitudes within organisations rather than reducing them. One of the things that it is really important to look at is what works—that is, which practices actually make a difference and improve things for people and which do not. Part of that is about making the case because it is much easier for people to step away from something that they see as relatively ineffective and that they do not really care about as compared to something where they think, “Yes, I can see value for my business or my organisation. I can see that this programme is making a difference and improving things”. David Burton-Sampson: Are you able to give an example or two of some practices that you think have not worked in the past within organisations?

Without naming names—obviously, I do not want to do that—I have seen organisations where there has been a lot of focus on days of action and putting posters up on walls but not very much on looking at what is happening to their employees, such as whether people are facing discrimination and what is causing that. Again, it is about that focus on the performative element rather than saying, “Let’s look at this organisation. Let’s look at what equality could mean for this organisation”. I do not want to name names, though; I do not think it would be fair.

Baroness Kennedy would like to ask a supplementary. We will then complete this section and move on.

Let us be very clear. Underneath this is the whole issue of the Trump Administration’s response to what they saw as wokeness and this whole business of wokeness having been introduced into our society as a concept. Certain sections of our society want to run with that in order to attack the very efforts that have been made to counter discrimination. How are you going to challenge this business of the EHRC being seen as just another woke entity?

This comes back to the point I made earlier about the idea that human rights are for other people and that they are used by other people in certain circumstances to get them off the hook. That is a mistake. We need to be able to communicate and to do more around the everyday rights that people in the UK have because of the Human Rights Act. We have examples that resonate with people. Take the case of the couple whom the local authority wanted to separate when one of them needed a specialist care home and the other did not. The importance of private and family life in that case is something that resonates with people. They may think that this is all wokeness but, when they understand what the specific issues are and how human rights benefit everybody, it is easier to convince them. As people working in equality and human rights, we have not always done a brilliant job in communicating how we all benefit from a society where we all respect each other’s human rights.

I spoke too soon because at least one of my other colleagues asked whether she can ask a supplementary question as well; I would not want to stop her. I turn to Juliet Campbell, the Member of Parliament for Broxtowe.

Thank you. Mine is quite a small question. For me, the case for EDI has already been made. How would you go about promoting and strengthening EDI rather than allowing it to be rolled back and diluted, as is the threat?

I agree that the case has been made but, unfortunately, it is one of those things where you have to keep making the case and you have to keep persuading people that this is something they need to do. You get new generations of managers. We are facing a major cultural shift as a result of Trump’s election in the US, which has given people who were never properly convinced the excuse to say, “Oh well, we can’t do this now. This is all”—as Baroness Kennedy said—“woke rubbish”. The way you convince people is by starting from where they are. I always think that, when you are trying to campaign, to convince people and to change the way people they, you have to start with a recognition of what they are most concerned about, rather than shouting at them and telling them that they are in the wrong place. Unfortunately, this means doing the difficult work of making the case over and over again for each successive generation in a way that shows how this will benefit them and their organisation.

That completes our questions on the broad equalities remit and the Equality Act. We will now move on to the third tranche of questions; they are about human rights. I invite my colleague, Alex Sobel, the Member of Parliament for Leeds Central, to kick off for us. After that, we will hear from Afzal Khan again.

I shall start by coming back to something you said in response to the first question—that you take an intersectional approach at the Women’s Budget Group. Are you intending to bring that approach with you to the EHRC? Do you think that the EHRC currently strikes the right balance between equality and human rights work? I want also to seek your opinion on Protocol 12 to the European Convention on Human Rights because it expands the scope of non-discrimination and the general prohibition of discrimination and, in many ways, encapsulates that intersection between human rights and equalities.

Yes, I very much hope to bring that intersectional approach. One of the problems is that, sometimes, we see equality in silos and look at each protected characteristic in turn. Actually, we are all much more complicated than that. When people face discrimination, rarely is it clearly because of just one protected characteristic; it is often because of multiple characteristics. This is important. On the balance between equality and human rights on the commission, there is an issue here. The commission’s enforcement powers on equality are much stronger and more extensive than they are on human rights, particularly because the pressure that the commission has faced to focus on enforcement has led to a greater focus on equality than on human rights. Obviously, I am speaking from the outside, but one of the things that I am very conscious of is that organisations can be doing all sorts of things behind the scenes, such as raising issues with organisations and getting them resolved, without them ever hitting the headlines. There may well be other work going on but, from the outside, it certainly feels as though there has been more of a focus there. Some of that is to do with the enforcement powers. I am not across the full details of Protocol 12 but the broader point about the relationship between equality and human rights—including the need to read equality legislation in human rights terms and to read human rights legislation with an equality lens—is well made. It is important to recognise that, although they are two separate bits of legislation with separate enforcement powers, human rights are often engaged when you are thinking about equality legislation, and vice versa.

There will certainly be a lot of work on Protocol 12; it is something that the JCHR is very interested in.

I am very interested in talking about it.

There you are; thank you for that. I turn now to Mr Khan. After him, we will hear from my colleague, Lord Dholakia.

What is your view of the commission’s recent approach to inquiries into human rights issues?

Can you say a bit more about what you mean by its “approach”? Bear in mind that I am seeing things from the outside only.

Basically, from the outside looking in, how do you see the way in which it has been handling things?

To be honest, I have not been that aware. I do not think that there has been that much; the work that the commission has been doing on human rights inquiries certainly has not had a high profile. That is something I would have to look into.

Let us assume that you are in the position. Would you like to see more human rights inquiries? If so, how would you choose which human rights issues to focus on?

As I said earlier, there is a real case for thematic inquiries. Those might often cut across both equality and human rights issues; they might not neatly fall into one of the other. If you are looking at, for example, the issues that were raised by the Windrush scandal. There are both equality and human rights issues there. Those sorts of inquiries would be very important. I am also very conscious that the EHRC has a limited budget and that I cannot say that it should do all the things that I think it should, because it will have to prioritise. Deciding which issues are the highest priority is often trying to prioritise which violations are the most egregious and awful. You can have very extreme violations that affect a small number of people but affect them very badly, issues that affect a much larger number of people but maybe in not such an extreme way and issues where, at this moment in time, you could have an impact, because the wider political or cultural context, or whatever else, gives you an opportunity to have an impact. Those are the principles I would bring to weighing up how you make decisions, because there will always be more issues that the EHRC should work on than it can work on.

A lot of us, in preparing for today’s hearing, were shocked to see the reduction in the number of staff working for the commission and the reduction in its budget. You raise an important point about what you are able to do with what you have, but it is not ideal. I turn to Lord Dholakia to complete this section, then we will go back to Alex Brewer.

Can I take you up on the issue of international human rights treaties? The EHRC’s role includes promoting and monitoring UK compliance with international human rights treaties. What is your view on how effective the commission has been in this work and what should be its priority in this area?

I am most familiar with CEDAW because, in various different roles, I have contributed to shadow reporting of CEDAW. There have been times when the EHRC has directly organised and co-ordinated that work across civil society, and times when it has been done by other organisations. I am not sure whether the EHRC funded that work or it was taken up by others because the EHRC was not able to do it. It is a really important part of the EHRC’s role, because it is always important that we recognise that we are part of a wider human rights ecosystem and a wider international ecosystem. This comes back to the earlier point about Trump and moving away from DEI: one of the things that concerns me is that we are moving away from a rules-based order, of which human rights is a fundamental part, to an order based much more on power, basically. The idea of any sort of international law or rules is secondary to that. For the EHRC to play a part in showing that these international treaties are important, should be treated with respect and should be properly engaged with is part of a wider piece in saying that these wider human rights are important to all of us. It is not just an additional thing; it is about the post-war settlement and trying to have a system that is based on rules rather than just on power.

It is not an easy environment. My colleague Dr Peter Swallow, Member of Parliament for Bracknell, has a supplementary for you before we move on.

Thank you, Dr Stephenson; you have opened up the window to my follow-up, which is to ask you specifically about not the EHRC but the ECHR. I get those two confused every day. You are aware that the Lord Chancellor recently spoke in front of the Committee of Ministers in Strasbourg about the ECHR. To quote her, “The European Convention on Human Rights is one of the great achievements of post-war politics. It has endured because it has evolved. Now, it must do so again”. Obviously the work around any reforms to the ECHR would be for politicians, but your prospective role as the chair of the EHRC involves monitoring our compliance with the ECHR. Do you have any observations on the work that the Lord Chancellor is proposing to undergo?

I think that the ECHR is a really important part of the post-war settlement. Its incorporation within the Human Rights Act was a huge step forward for this country. It is important that the EHRC protects and defends the Human Rights Act and the principles behind it. That means that, where there are proposals for reform, we must look very closely at what those are and why they are there. There is sometimes an unwillingness to defend human rights principles, because they are seen as unpopular. There is a sense that, if we can just make these changes, it will make that unpopularity go away. I think that human rights will always involve a challenge to the power of Government. That is partly what it is there to do. It is important that any changes to the ECHR—now I am getting my letters in a muddle—does not take away from that ability to hold the whole Government to account.

It is easier to destroy than to build. In this 75th anniversary year of the European Convention on Human Rights, as we celebrate the work of Eleanor Roosevelt and others in creating the universal declaration and its 30 articles, it is important that our generation take those things seriously. So this is music to my ears.

My eldest daughter is named after Eleanor Roosevelt, so I feel this particularly.

That takes us on from the human rights remit to the role of equality law regulator and enforcer. I turn to Alex Brewer again for the first question. After that, we will be hearing from Sarah Owen.

It is about being able to be clear-minded and even-handed, behaving with openness and transparency about why we need to act in the way that we are and having an approach that is very practical. The EHRC has a wide range of enforcement powers, some of which have been used more than others. It is important that it is willing to use its enforcement powers, but it is also important to use powers at an appropriate level. You are thinking about what is necessary for a particular set of circumstances. What will work? Are there ways of getting others to take the action that you need them to take, short of enforcement, or do you need to use those powers? In my work, I have always tried to have a balanced, practical and pragmatic approach to decision-making, which I would bring to this.

Again, it is difficult to tell before I start, because I am very conscious that you can sometimes get organisations to change their behaviour without public enforcement action, such as by threatening enforcement action or by talking to them. Do you know what I mean? Without being able to see all the cases where enforcement action was not necessary because the EHRC took some action short of that and change happened, it is hard to tell how effective it has been. I am conscious that it has taken less enforcement action in recent years than it has in the past. The EHRC has its powers for a reason. You do not want to use them unnecessarily but, equally, it is important to be willing to use them when you have to.

In addition to being the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, Sarah Owen is the Member of Parliament for Luton North. She will now take us back to something that was raised earlier on about resources.

Yes. Before I do that, I want to have another go at the question from my colleague, Alex, specifically around enforcement. One area of our lives that we all use is completely void of any kind of enforcement at all at the moment: social media and the internet, where we see much of the spread of racism, hatred and bullying and the abuse of people with protected characteristics. Would you be prepared to change the EHRC’s approach to be much more robust with those social media companies that fail to protect their users from racism, sexism, misogyny and all of the other issues that we see every day?

Yes, if necessary. I can say more but, yes, I agree.

Okay. That would be a change of approach, but thank you. On this, as the Chair mentioned, there have been staffing and resource issues at the EHRC. That is not something new; they will not come as a surprise to you when you get in—if you get in—because they are something that the outgoing chair has raised with me directly. It is about long-term and long-standing vacancies, including in commissioner posts. You are going to have to fight for resources from this Government. How prepared are you to go to the Government and to Ministers and say, “We need more resources for the broad remit that we have”?

That is a really important thing for me to do, if I get appointed. The budget for the EHRC has gone from £70 million to £17 million and has been frozen for years. It has a very big remit but limited resources, and we are looking at additional areas of responsibility, such as the socioeconomic duty, dual discrimination, the ethnicity pay gap and the disability pay gap. Those cannot be done in a satisfactory way with the resources that are available, and that is something that I will be raising with Ministers.

Thank you very much indeed; that is very helpful. That completes our section on the role of equality law regulator and enforcer. We shall now move on to relationships with government and Parliament. It is now the turn of the Member of Parliament for Harrogate and Knaresborough, Tom Gordon.

How would you characterise the current relationship between the commission and the Government? How would you like to see that relationship evolve, if at all?

From the outside, it is very difficult to say what the relationship is like, so I do not think I can answer that. What I can tell you is what I think the relationship should be like. It is important that the EHRC has a good relationship with government, that it meets regularly with Ministers and that it is able to have open and constructive dialogue. It is important that it is not seen as needlessly oppositional but, equally, it is important that it is seen as willing to take a stand when necessary. It is also important to build personal relationships. You have institutional relationships, then you have personal connections. One thing that I have always tried to do in my different roles is to build those sorts of personal connections with people so that, even when there are disagreements, we are able to disagree in a constructive and mutually respectful manner.

Thank you for that but, to push a little further, a lot of the answers that you have given have talked about how you would need to be in the position to understand the machinations underneath. What is your current perception of that relationship? I assume that, as part of your preparation in advance of today, you have done a lot of reading around and involvement in all sorts of things. Where do you think that relationship is currently at, and how achievable do you think it will be to move it forward to where you would want it to be?

I am not saying that I would have to be in the role in order to try to avoid answering the question; I am saying it because I am genuinely conscious that what you see from the outside may not be an accurate reflection of what is going on. I am conscious of where, in my own life—I am sure that we will come on to this later—things are reported that are just completely inaccurate. I am therefore very wary of taking news reports, for example, and saying, “Oh well, that obviously must be what is going on”. It is important to find out what the relationship is and, if it is not a strong and positive one, to look to improve it.

Building on the point that Sarah Owen mentioned earlier, in terms of finance and resources, should the commission have a greater degree of financial independence and more control over the appointment of commissioners?

When you say, “a greater degree of financial independence”, do you mean a budget that is set for more than a year at a time, for example? That is something that could make a difference; having a three-year budget period or something similar allows an organisation to plan its work better, because things do not always fit neatly into financial years. In terms of having a say on the appointment of commissioners, I have quite a few things to say about that, but I am conscious that I am not supposed to raise these things at the wrong point.

That is permitted. If you think that now is the moment when you would like to say it, please do so.

It is really important that the commission as a whole brings together a wide range of expertise but also people from different backgrounds. There has been a tendency, with successive Governments and public bodies, to want to appoint—or certainly, to want to appear from the outside to have appointed—people with whom they agree, or at least do not disagree, politically. That is damaging for the independence of any body, particularly one whose job it is to scrutinise the Government. I hope, if I am appointed as chair, to play an active role in those recruitment processes. I would be looking to find people who bring that range of experiences and backgrounds and those differences of views. I would make a very strong case to Ministers that it is important to have that diversity on the commission.

It is very helpful for us to hear that because, of course, it is the Secretary of State who will fill those gaps in the end, but the two committees have views about these things. I do not want to speak out of turn, but I think that both committees are anxious about the gaps that there have been on the commission and the failure, therefore, to represent some of those protected characteristics properly. The sooner we can make common cause on that, if you are appointed, the better it will be. Thank you, Mr Gordon. That takes us to Juliet Campbell, who will ask the last question in this section.

Dr Stephenson, can you tell us a little more about how you think our committee should measure the success of the EHRC and your potential term as chair?

I would like my success to be measured in terms of having made a practical difference. I would like to be able to look back at the end of four years and say, “These are the things that have improved. These are the people’s rights that have been protected or have got better. This is the higher level of public understanding and support”. In judging my success, there will be staging points along the way. We have already identified that one of the first priorities must to get new commissioners in. There will be some internal work but, as I said earlier, it is really important that the EHRC is not too internally focused; it needs to be outward-facing in building those relationships. However, I am conscious that you cannot build effective external relationships if you do not have a strong internal core where people have a shared sense of values and people feel that they are all able to work together effectively. I would say: judge me at the end of the term on all those things, but know that, in a year’s time, I will not have done all of them. The first part of this is building, or rebuilding, relationships.

Thank you very much. That brings us to the end of the section on relationships with government and Parliament. We have just touched on vacancies on the board. I know that Ms Campbell would like to ask you something further on that; we will then hear from Catherine Fookes MP.

Thank you. A couple of people have spoken about the vacancies on the board. It is noticeable that there have been periods of high turnover among the commissioners; indeed, there are currently unfilled vacancies on the board. Do you think that steps are necessary to make the role of EHRC commissioner more appealing and attractive to a more diverse range of people?

That is a really interesting question. Is there a pattern in the lack of people applying for these roles? I suppose that, when I am looking at the vacancies, some of them are clearly there because the Government wanted to get a new chair in place before recruiting for commissioners. I do not know whether the vacancies are a result of people not wanting to do the job or whether there just has not been a recruitment round, if you see what I mean, and there have been other reasons why people have left. You can get into a negative spiral. If you have only a very small number of commissioners, the workload on the commissioners becomes more and more onerous, and people feel less inclined to stay and more inclined to leave. Recruiting new people would be an important part of that. Personally, I would imagine that having the opportunity to serve on the commission is something that a lot of people would want to do, given the opportunity. However, if there is evidence that there are problems with workload or expectations or anything, obviously, that is something you need to keep under review, right?

My follow-up question to that is: what steps do you intend to take to ensure an inclusive and collegiate approach on the board?

I always try to have an approach that is inclusive and based on trying both to build consensus and to find common ground. It is important to have a culture where people recognise that disagreement is not a problem and that it can be a strength. Sometimes, when people talk about diversity, what they mean is, “We want our board to look different but we want them all to think and behave the same”. That can be a problem. What you need is a board where you have people with different skills and experience and where everybody is able to recognise and respect the skills and experience that different people bring. One of the key parts of that—this is one of the things that I have done on boards on which I have served—is trying to have opportunities for people to do things together separately from formal board meetings. The problem with formal board meetings is that you never get to know each other that well. If you want people to work effectively as part of a team, you have to get them to know each other and understand each other. When you know and understand each other, you can recognise that somebody disagreeing with you is not because they dislike you; they just have a different point of view. Spending some time on that team-building is really important and is time well spent.

We have one other question on the board; Catherine Fookes, who is the Member of Parliament for Monmouthshire, is going to ask it.

I want to say before we start that our paths have crossed before in a professional capacity; it is lovely to see you here, Mary-Ann. I want to follow up on vacancies for commissioners and try to pin you down a bit more. What range of additional knowledge do you think is required by the commissioners? What opinions are missing and what would be most helpful in your role as chair? I am particularly interested in a Welsh commissioner being appointed ASAP, obviously. You have touched on all the recruitment issues, but what additional knowledge is needed to supplement your own and that of other board members?

It would be good to have people who have experience of working in the public sector or the corporate sector, whether that is delivering services or in equality roles, so that they understand how the law can work in practice. It is important to have somebody from the trade union movement; historically, there have been commissioners coming from the trade union movement, but I do not think that there is anybody from there at the moment. It is important to have somebody from Wales. I am very conscious of the different roles that the EHRC plays in England, Scotland and Wales, as well as the different responsibilities and the need for an approach that recognises and respects the realities of devolution. It would be good to have people who have experience of communicating and influencing, as well as of attitudinal change.

Do you not think that we need some people with lived experience of some of the protected characteristics that you are talking about?

Yes. My starting point is that you want to make sure that you have a board that recognises and reflects the diversity of people in the UK. There used to be a disability committee, and then there was a disability commissioner; those things not there anymore, but they need to be. You cannot say, “We’re absolutely going to reflect every protected characteristic in the proportion that people are in the UK”, because it is too small a body, but it is about getting those different voices in there. Also, if socioeconomic status is going to become part of the public sector equality duty, we need to think about class as well.

In terms of the actual board, there is something that I want to raise around conflicts of interest. It says in the code of conduct: “The Accounting Officer must ensure that mechanisms are in place to avoid or manage conflicts of interest” on the board. How will you manage conflicts of interest that may arise due to the beliefs of people on the board, things that people have said previously and that kind of thing? How will you manage those conflicts of interest? That can be really difficult.

It can. It is important to distinguish between people’s beliefs—everyone will come to the board with different beliefs on all sorts of different issues, and that diversity of belief is a good thing—and people’s ability to carry out their role as a board member, in exercising the necessary independence of thought. When I have done work on conflicts of interest on boards before, there has been the formal governance process of agreeing sets of rules and policies but, also, a deeper process around getting people to think through what conflicts of interest mean and look like and how you might manage them.

Dr Swallow has one more supplementary to ask before we move on to the next group.

Thank you so much, Dr Stephenson. I want to ask you a specific question that I know that many of those watching will want to know the answer to, given your responses on wanting to see a broader range of commissioners. I ask this with the caveat that I am really aware that it is a reductive view to suggest that, just because somebody potentially has a particular experience or perspective, they are able to talk about only a specific aspect of our incredibly diverse society. The obvious question that will come up, given the challenges facing the EHRC at the moment and given your answers to some of the questions today, is: would you welcome a trans commissioner being appointed to the EHRC?

Yes, if they were suitably qualified. Obviously, you cannot not want to have people with different protected characteristics on the commission.

Thank you. We are going to move on to precisely that range of questions. This is the penultimate group, and it is on biological sex-based rights and transgender rights. The first question in this group comes from Mr Burton-Sampson, then we will go back to Dr Swallow. Q24            David Burton-Sampson: The updated EHRC code of practice, following the Supreme Court’s judgment on the meaning of “sex” in the Equality Act, will likely be enforced soon after you take over as chair, if you are successful. To what extent do you foresee explaining and enforcing the updated code being the initial focus of your tenure as chair?

The closing date for the consultation was yesterday, was it not? The number of submissions was significantly higher than expected, I think. I do not know what the timing will be, but it will be around that time. This is likely to remain something that the commission is going to have to engage with. It is an important issue, but I do not think it is the only issue. It is important that the EHRC is able to balance it with all the other equality and human rights issues that it has to face.

I think you touched on this in a previous answer, Dr Stephenson, but it is important that we set it out. Again, you will be aware that it is a question that many of those watching have concerns about. You will be aware that both of our committees have received hundreds of letters and emails from transgender people and organisations concerned about your appointment, specifically referring to a couple of open letters that you have signed, to appearances alongside women’s organisations, and to an apparent personal donation to a legal case brought by a particular activist. You are aware of the claims that I am referring to. I think it would be really helpful to hear you set out your response to the concerns that have been raised to our committees.

Just before you answer, Dr Stephenson—I am sorry to interrupt—but I am told that the legal case that Dr Swallow mentioned is sub judice, so we cannot go into it. But we can certainly answer the general question that Dr Swallow put.

The donation I made was at an earlier stage. All of the open letters were about my opposition to practices of no-platforming and attempts to close down debate. I urge anybody who is concerned about me signing them to read the wording of the letters, because they have been quite widely misrepresented in terms of what they actually say. I started my professional career at Article 19, which is an international human rights organisation focused on freedom of expression. It is a really important value to me. I do not believe that freedom of expression is an absolute value, but I think that there are very limited circumstances in which it should be restricted. Attempting to close down debate in any area is generally a mistake. To be honest, if we had been able to have better dialogue on some of these issues 10 years ago, we might be in a better position than we are in now. I signed those letters alongside large numbers of other people. The first one was the one when Mary Beard was attacked for signing it, as were Peter Tatchell and various other people. They are standard freedom of expression letters. The Women’s Place and FiLiA conferences were both broad-based feminist conferences with panels of a huge range of speakers on a huge range of issues. It would be surprising if there were no discussions on issues of sex and gender, because that is a key issue in the women’s sector. For FiLiA, I think I spoke about how to calculate the gender pay gap. At the Women’s Place conference, I think I spoke about the impact of Brexit on women. It is also important to say the Women’s Budget Group board has an explicit position to work with and take part in events organised by women’s organisations with a variety of views on sex and gender, because this is an issue that has split the women’s movement and, if we did not, we would not speak anywhere. I have also spoken at a large number of conferences organised by people with opposing views to both FiLiA and Women’s Place. I have probably spoken at hundreds of conferences. The donation was specifically because I was upset at seeing women being harassed or sacked from their jobs for peaceful expression of legally protected beliefs, and I gave a donation. This was at the stage, which has happened, where the employment tribunal agreed that unfair discrimination had taken place.

Thank you for your transparency and candour in answering that. I am sure that both committees are grateful to you for that. I want to bring in Rachel Taylor and, after that, we will hear from Rosie Duffield.

Until it was raised by colleagues of mine, I noted that you had not mentioned the LGBT community in any of your answers. Given the discussions and debates around the recent judgment of the Supreme Court and the correspondence that my colleague Dr Swallow mentioned, can you describe the specific steps and actions that you will take to gain the trust of the trans community, if you were to be successful in this role?

As I said earlier, I would approach organisations and ask them to meet me for conversations. I have met with trans organisations in the past. In my role at the Women’s Budget Group, I met with Stonewall and others. We have done work together through Equally Ours. I know quite a lot of these organisations. If I have not used them as examples, it is probably because the bulk of the work of the Women’s Budget Group is around economic issues, and that is my most recent experience, so I have been drawing on that most heavily—and it tends to be more around class, race and disability. Yes, I would meet with organisations and I would want to talk to them; that has to be the first step.

Obviously, how those intersectionality issues impact on lesbians and trans women is important. I want to move on. The Supreme Court noted that the EHRC’s interim guidance or statement went beyond what the law required.[1] How will you ensure that future guidance accurately reflects legal obligations rather than policy preferences? Is there a danger that the EHRC makes the same mistake again, or even in the other direction? How would you mitigate that risk?

It is always really important to ensure that you have robust legal advice about the meanings of judgments. I had not seen that specific comment from the Supreme Court about the interim guidance. I think that there is always a pressure in situations like this because, on the one hand, people are saying that we need to understand what the law is saying and we need something as quickly as possible; on the other hand, you need to take the time and have the consultation. In that sort of situation, you can end up doing something too quickly or being seen as taking too long. There is always going to be that risk, and you have to weigh the two in the balance. As I said, the consultation closed yesterday, and the guidance will presumably be coming out at some point later in the summer or early autumn.

I have one final question. You have spoken passionately about your desire to uphold freedom of speech. Is it appropriate for people on social media to suggest that women or trans women entering toilets should be photographed or videoed, or is that something you would publicly distance yourself from?

I have not seen that, so I do not know. More generally on social media, one of the challenges for somebody who believes in freedom of expression is that, in this area, we have seen death threats, rape threats, personal attacks and vilification. This does not help anybody. I have always felt that we need dialogue. I support the existence of the single-sex exemptions in the Equality Act; they fulfil a useful purpose and we need to have them. I also think that we need to make sure that we provide services that everybody can use, which is what I have tried to do at the Coventry Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre. Getting as much of this off social media as possible would be the best thing; it has been polarising and really destructive.

We would all agree with you about toxicity and the danger of using insensitive language. I am grateful to you for the tone and manner in which you are answering these complex, difficult and challenging questions. My colleague, the Member of Parliament for Canterbury, Rosie Duffield, has the floor now.

Mary-Ann, first, I have been asked to declare an interest. As chair of the Women’s Parliamentary Labour Party, you would often be invited into briefings when there were big fiscal events or the Budget was coming up. Given that women are always disproportionately disadvantaged by austerity measures—things like the welfare Bill are obviously in that same vein—is that the kind of work, given your great experience in that area, that you hope to push through in your new role?

I would certainly bring that experience with me. It is important that, as I come from a background in the women’s sector, I will always be a feminist. But the role of the chair of the EHRC is to work across all protected characteristics and human rights for everybody, rather than to be seen as a particular champion. The EHRC worked on austerity a few years ago, using the model that the Women’s Budget Group first used on distribution analysis. It went back to those issues about structural inequality, where you can look at the impact by class, race and gender. That can be really important.

To go back to the Supreme Court judgment, given that women are almost 52% of the population, how would the EHRC keep and gain the trust of women’s rights groups like For Women Scotland, who brought that Supreme Court judgment and won. Of course that was about clarifying the law. Would the EHRC work to include those women in conversations as well?

Yes, it is important to talk to everybody. I genuinely believe in open dialogue and hearing from as many different people as possible. I recognise that there are hugely divergent views on this. As we look to ensure that people understand the law following the Supreme Court judgment, it is also important to look at what that means in practice to different groups of people and how you can deal with that fairly. At Coventry Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre, we provide a universal service to everybody over five. Within that, we have a female-only space, because that is something that women survivors have said is important and that they would not access the service if that was not available. We have two therapy groups, one of which is female only and one of which is inclusive of trans women. We have done that deliberately because we think it is important that everybody gets access to the services that they need. Sometimes that can be done together but sometimes people need specialist services. There are occasions when trans people will need specialist services if they have suffered rape or sexual assault because they want to speak to somebody who has an understanding of the specific situations they face. Look at the work that Southall Black Sisters did and the importance of having specialist services for black and Asian women experiencing domestic violence and abuse. All those different services are important. To understand how you deliver that in practice, you need to be able to speak to everybody.

I turn now to Lord Dholakia and Baroness Kennedy for the last questions, but we may also hear from Sarah Owen.

I wish to follow up a question asked by Dr Swallow and Rachael Taylor. We receive a large number of letters, and so must you, from the trans community. It has no confidence in the way in which the matter has been dealt with. What would you be doing to build that link with this community?

As I said, I would want to meet people from trans organisations, many of whom I already know through Equally Ours and other equality networks, some of which I have spoken to since the Supreme Court judgment. I want to build on those relationships and speak to a wider group of people. It is important to be clear: the law is the law, and it is important that people understand and are able to follow it, but the starting point has to be making sure that everyone has access to the services they need. I am thinking through how to make that work in practice for women, for trans people and, as I raised earlier, for disabled people. If you have 12 million disabled people without access to a toilet, that is a major issue. So we need to think as broadly as possible about how we can ensure that services are accessible to as many people as possible.

If you do not mind, I am going to call you Mary-Ann. I just want to say this to you. I count myself as a strong feminist as you do, in that my life’s work has been around trying to secure justice for women as well as others. The founding premise from which I have operated is common humanity. That sense of common humanity refers to the idea that all human beings are fundamentally the same. Their experiences of pain and suffering, of yearnings to love and be loved and of needs and wants are not very different. We see that as bringing people of different races together, and people with disabilities together with able-bodied people—all those things. One of the things that the Supreme Court was saying is that the law sometimes has to be tempered with human rights and common humanity. While the court was saying something about sex, only women who have uteruses are going to have uterine cancer and only women who have ovaries are likely to have ovarian cancer. So there are certain services that one would want to make sure are available on a sex-based nature. Going back to common humanity, what do you say to a woman who has been a trans woman and has lived as such for 20 or 30 years, who says, “What do I do when I am trying to get home from work now and I go to Waterloo station and am caught short because I am a woman of a certain age? What do I do when I cannot use the women’s toilet? Yet, there I am, dressed as an ageing woman”. What is your answer to that woman? What do you think about what Rachel raised—that there are people now wanting to police those places, wanting to photograph and harass people who are going there? The whole purpose of the common humanity that underpinned human rights law was to create a template against which law, which is never perfect, could be tested and that we should be promoting compassion in society, reducing division and fostering resilience. Is that going to inform the way in which you chair this body—that sense of common humanity?

That sense of common humanity absolutely underpins human rights thinking, as you say.

And it underpinned feminism in its early days.

Absolutely, and you are right: nobody wants to be in a situation where there is no toilet for somebody to use. I spoke recently to a young non-binary person who said they did not want to use the women’s toilet, because they did not want to cause other people alarm, and they did not want to use the men’s toilet, because they found it humiliating and sometimes unsafe. What they wanted was an enclosed cubicle with a sink and everything else in it. While we have a common humanity, different people might have different specific needs at different times, and we have to build that into our thinking. But our starting point absolutely has to be about compassion and concern for the needs of everybody. That sometimes means different services for different people; that is really important. The Southall Black Sisters case under the previous race equality duty demonstrated that actually there are times when certain groups of women want services from people who understand their experience.

When resources are so limited, what do you do about the absence of toilets of the kind that you are describing in Waterloo station, when somebody is presented with that dilemma? What do you do, and how do you deal with the ugliness of people photographing trans women going in?

I do not think that I can deal with that—personally. We have the outcomes of the Supreme Court judgment, and part of what needs to happen now is to think about how we make those things work in practice. We have to look more broadly at how we make sure that people have access to the services that they need—the 12 million disabled people who have experience of not being able to access the toilet that they need. All those things need to be addressed, and the role of the EHRC is to make sure that, when we are thinking about services, we think about equality law and fundamental human rights and about finding practical solutions that work for everybody.

And we are thinking about trying to build a society that is based on compassion and humanity.

I know that Sarah Owen would like to come on this point as well, and that Rebecca Paul would like to add a further supplementary. I am keen for the committee to move on then, because we want to hear also from Catherine Fookes.

You talked in an earlier answer about how the Supreme Court ruling helps us on how we understand the law, but I am intrigued as to how you understand the law and how that works alongside human rights. Baroness Falkner came to the Women and Equalities Committee not so long ago, and during that exchange of questions and answers—similar questions to those that you have faced in this session—she alluded to Article 8 of the Human Rights Act not applying for trans women and them not having a right to private life, particularly when it came to the issue of having to use toilets in a workplace, for example. Is that your reading of it? If it is not, how are we going to get that balance right?

Article 8 obviously applies in this circumstance. It applies to trans women and to women who want female-only services. We all have Article 8 rights to a private and family life. Built into human rights thinking is the idea that rights can sometimes be intentional—the right to different groups can sometimes be intentional—and that some rights are absolute but very many are qualified, and one of them is private and family life. That is partly in recognition of these sorts of situations, where you have multiple people who have Article 8 rights to privacy and you have to work out the best way in which to ensure that those rights are realised.

Is that for both trans women and trans men?

Yes.

Thank you for your very helpful answers on that front. Earlier—and this leads on from the questions that have just come up—you made the important point that, if only there had been more dialogue 10 years ago, we would not find ourselves in the difficult and almost toxic situation that we are in on these kinds of questions. Actually, it is really important to recognise the limitations of the EHRC. For example, would you agree with me—and what would you do to support this, if you do agree—that it is really important that the groups out there that support the trans community are lobbying for the services that are needed? If we look at all the things and services that women have needed, and that disabled people have needed, groups have worked really hard, for years and years, to secure the services needed. What more can we do to make sure that those groups that say they represent the interests of trans people are lobbying for those services? We all want to see those appropriate services, as you say.

I do not think that it is for me to tell sectors and organisations what they should be lobbying for. Also, when we are talking about services, it should not just be up to members of a particular community to lobby. We should all care about this and think that this is important. We should all be pushing for it. I agree with you that the failure to have reasoned and respectful dialogue that recognises the rights of everybody around these issues has led us to a place that is really bad for everybody, where both women and trans people have felt frightened and upset, and have felt that the institutions that they think should uphold their rights have not upheld their rights. It is possible for different groups with conflicting ideas to feel that that is what has happened to them, and I think that there has been a failure of public bodies, partly because the debate has become so toxic. People have just stepped away, and people who should have held the space and said, “We need to have a discussion and resolve these issues” did not do that. So you quite often end up with discussion taking place on social media, which is just not the place for dealing with issues of this sort of complexity and nuance. As Baroness Kennedy said, we have a shared common humanity, and we might have different needs and different ways of getting there but we have to remember that. The only way to get back to that is if people are prepared to say that this is genuinely something that we need to have conversations about, so let us try to have those conversations. I am not naive enough to say that we can get everyone around the table at once, because divisions are quite deep. Part of the role of the EHRC is to try to build sufficient trust to maybe create a space to have some of those conversations.

So it is about rebuilding trust and having respect for one another. I know that that is the point that Catherine Fookes wants to ask you about—when you have those conflicts between one group and another, what you do about it.

Thank you, Chair, but first of all I would like to bring you back and give you one more opportunity to address Baroness Kennedy’s excellent points. I feel a bit disappointed that, given your statement about Article 8 and the right to a private life, you cannot seem to condemn the thought that people might take photos of possibly trans men and trans women using toilets.

Sorry: it was not that I did not want to condemn it; I just had not seen. I am very wary of condemning things when I have not seen the thing, but I do not think that people should be photographing people in toilets.

Thank you; that was all I wanted to hear. To go on to the trust point and strengthening the public’s trust in the EHRC if you are indeed appointed, I know that there is a lot to do to rebuild that trust. I have heard from some of the organisations that came to the Q&A sessions on the draft statutory code of practice that they felt incredibly uncomfortable. The space was very dominated by those who supported the Supreme Court ruling and people felt really uncomfortable. If you are appointed, what steps will you support the commission in taking to ensure that all people’s rights and freedoms are upheld in building that trust—for everybody, including the trans community?

I think that there can be an issue where you are discussing something very contentious. If people feel that they are a minority voice in that space, it can be very difficult to speak up. That might well have happened in the EHRC consultation. I know that women have complained that it has happened to them in other situations when they have tried to talk about the need for single-sex spaces. Sometimes that is a case of chairing and sometimes that is a case of thinking about how you organise these discussions. Do you bring everybody together all at once or do you try to give people opportunities to feed in separately in specific groups? If you have a series of consultation events, it may be that sometimes, if there are groups of people who might otherwise find it difficult to speak, you have a group specifically for them. If in this case it is trans people, you might need to do that.

There is a specific point here; this is where the question of Article 8 and trans people’s privacy came up in the Women and Equalities Select Committee briefing. My question is about the draft guidance and the proposed changes to Chapter 2, which set out the circumstances in which it would, according to the draft code of practice, be appropriate to ask a trans person to identify themselves as trans and, in effect, to out themselves as a trans person. I understand the Supreme Court judgment’s position on single-sex spaces; you have set out your support for that. Single-sex spaces are in the Equality Act, of course, but I could not see in either the Equality Act or the Supreme Court guidance any requirement for that to be underpinned by a process of trans people having to out themselves. I know that trans people have been very concerned about this particular bit of the guidance. I am not asking you to pre-empt the consultation that has rightly been going on, of course, but I want to encourage you to set out your thoughts on this briefly. I am not asking you to respond specifically to the guidance; I am asking you to respond to trans people’s fears and concerns about it. Do you understand where those fears and concerns are coming from?

Yes, I do understand where those fears and concerns are coming from. It is obvious that a lot of trans people have been alarmed and distressed since the Supreme Court’s ruling. It is also clear that a lot of women have been alarmed and distressed at being denied access to single-sex spaces when they have needed them—if they are survivors of domestic or sexual violence, for example. It is incumbent on all of us who are in this space, whether we are regulators, legislators or commentators, to recognise that a lot of people are very frightened and upset, that this is a difficult area and that we need to approach it with compassion and understanding. As I said, we need to have respect for the human rights of everybody and work through practical solutions to these problems. As you say, I cannot pre-empt what is going to be in the final guidance from the EHRC—obviously, the consultation has only just closed—but the principle of respecting everybody’s human rights is a really important one, while recognising that there is a lot of distress on all sides in this situation and a lot of people feel frightened for different reasons.

If you come in and we get the final code of practice before you take up your position as chair, but you find that there are significant issues when it is being implemented or you feel that the process was not handled in a fair way—such as in listening to both sides, as you set out—would you feel empowered to take a second look?

The thing about the code of practice is that, once it has been passed on from the EHRC, it becomes statutory only if the Government adopt it and lay it before Parliament. It then becomes something that no longer belongs to the EHRC—it belongs to government. However, it is always important to keep these areas under review. If you recognise that things are causing practical problems and you need to find solutions to them, I do not think you can say, “That’s all done and dusted, we’re not looking at this again”. Clearly, the previous code of practice caused problems for women who wanted single-sex spaces but were not able to access them sometimes. There needs to be an openness to what is going on, including case law changes and so on.

Thank you, Dr Stephenson. You will be relieved to know that that completes the seventh section of our questions to you, and that there is only one question in the eighth section, which I shall put it to you. You will know that the Joint Committee on Human Rights carries out both legislative inquiries—we recently conducted one on the Mental Health Bill and one on the borders Bill—and thematic inquiries. At the moment, we are doing an inquiry into supply chain transparency and modern day slavery, as well as one on transnational repression. It is no secret that the committee has been thinking seriously about artificial intelligence and human rights. My suspicion is that, later on in the year, we will spend quite a lot of our time on that question. To what extent do emerging technologies, in particular artificial intelligence, pose a threat to equality and human rights? Do you see the role of the EHRC evolving in that area?

I do. Artificial intelligence is emerging and changing so fast, and our ways of thinking about it and regulating it are way behind what is happening. I am very conscious of the evidence that has already come about. There have been problems with, for example, recruitment algorithms that have tended to prioritise applications from white men because they learn which people have previously done well in an organisation and react, “We should recruit more people like them”. There have been problems with algorithms reinforcing racist patterns of belief and with algorithms being used in identifying the people who would be more likely to commit benefit fraud. Again, that has led to the targeting of people from minority-ethnic groups and in poorer areas. This is a really important issue, and it is good that you are looking at it. I feel as though, when it comes to human rights thinking, we have not got to where we need to be in terms of recognising the complexity of what is going on. It is a bit like the way in which we failed to think through the impact of the internet and social media properly: we end up in a situation where a lot of us do not like where we are. We need to be able to think quickly and robustly about what is happening.

And it is about being ahead of the game.

Yes, it is about being ahead of the game.

You were asked earlier on about thinking thematically. From time to time, we must have that bigger picture in mind.

Absolutely. AI is in the EHRC’s strategic plan for the next few years. That is important.

Dr Stephenson, thank you very much for joining our two committees this afternoon and for answering the questions both patiently and with wisdom from your background and experience. I think that we have all been very impressed by your answers. It will now be up to the committee to consider what you have said and to consider our own recommendations, but I thank you. I also thank those members of the public who have been observing us here and who have watched online. I am happy to bring the proceedings to a close. [1] Correction. Rachel Taylor mistakenly refers to the Supreme Court. The reference should have been to comments made by former Supreme Court justice, Lord Sumption.