Expected to confirm

She won’t be arrested for speeding.

Trans women must be barred from female toilets, changing facilities and sports teams, new official guidance is to state.

Bridget Phillipson is expected to confirm on Thursday that official guidance will state what businesses and public bodies must do under the law to protect single-sex spaces.

The guidance follows last year’s Supreme Court judgment that trans women, who were born male, are not legally women for the purposes of the Equality Act.

Yes, it follows it from very very far back. Miles back. 13 months.

The equalities minister’s failure to publish it until now has meant that hospitals and leisure centres are still allowing trans women into female spaces.

The guidance was written by the Equality and Human Rights Commission and submitted to Ms Phillipson in September, but she requested several revisions before agreeing to publish it.

You mean she extorted several revisions before agreeing to publish it.

Helen Joyce, director of advocacy at Sex Matters, called on public bodies to stop dragging their feet and implement the guidance.

“There never was any reason for employers and service providers to wait for this guidance before implementing the law,” she told The Telegraph.

“The Supreme Court was completely clear that when providing single sex spaces and services, sex has to mean sex – male and female.”

And we know what that means. It’s not some arcane mystery.

The update to the EHRC’s code of practice – the official name for the guidance – was required after the Supreme Court ruled last April that the words “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex.

As it always had. Pretending it could refer to men who claimed to be women was just that: pretending. “Women” can’t mean “women” if it also means “some men” just as “up” can’t mean “up” if it also means “a little bit down”.

ry-Ann Stephenson, the EHRC chairman, said in December that the guidance would give advice on ensuring “there are services provided for people who can’t or don’t want to use the services for their biological sex”.

That sounds expensive. Can we all do that? I don’t want to take this crowded bus; dispatch a limousine for me – does that work?

Alexandra Parmar-Yee, the director of Trans+ Solidarity Alliance, said the guidance must ensure trans people are protected as she described law as “a mess”.

“The earlier draft of this guidance encouraged the policing of everyone’s gender based on appearance and was focused entirely on excluding trans people,” she said.

Excluding them from what? The definition of women? Of course men are excluded from the definition of women, and vice versa. From institutions belonging to women? Of course men can find their own institutions; god knows there are plenty of them. Not all exclusion is invidious or unfair or cruel.