The London Assembly has voted to formally challenge the Equality and Human Rights Commission's revised Code of Practice, calling it contradictory, discriminatory and unworkable. Members warned the guidance risks deepening an already hostile climate for trans people, who research shows are already experiencing high levels of harassment in public, and called on London MPs to intervene by signing Early Day Motion 240.

What the Assembly actually said

The motion was proposed by Benali Hamdache AM, and passed by six votes to five. That margin matters: this was not a comfortable rubber stamp. People disagreed. And yet it passed, with cross-party backing, because the concerns it names are hard to dismiss when you put them plainly.

The EHRC's own previous research found that 62 per cent of trans people had experienced transphobic harassment from strangers in public. Sixty-two per cent. That is not a marginal finding. It is a picture of daily life for the majority of trans people moving through the same streets, shops, and services as everyone else. The Assembly's position is that the revised Code of Practice risks entrenching that experience rather than addressing it.

Hamdache put it directly: the guidance is unworkable, it risks worsening an already difficult climate, and trans Londoners deserve better. What I find striking is the clarity of that language. No hedging, no false balance, no careful positioning. Just a straightforward assessment of what this guidance does and who it harms.

What the guidance would actually mean in practice

The motion's text is worth reading carefully, because it names something that often gets lost in the abstract legal debate. Trans people's everyday lives depend on safe and convenient access to toilets, changing rooms, and public services. That is not a political point. It is a practical reality. Without that access, trans people face a choice between their dignity and their participation in public life. That is not a choice anyone should have to make.

The Assembly also raised something I think deserves more attention: the risk that this guidance encourages a climate where service providers and members of the public feel not just permitted but obliged to police gender and sex based on surface assessments of how someone looks. That is a climate that harms not only trans people, but gender-diverse people of all kinds, and cisgender people who do not conform to narrow expectations of how a man or a woman should appear. The harm does not stay neatly within one category.

Sixteen years of established practice under the Equality Act are being overhauled by guidance that the Assembly, trans rights organisations, and a growing number of MPs consider unworkable. That is a significant claim, and the Assembly is making it on the record.

The MPs who have already signed

Fourteen London MPs had already signed Early Day Motion 240 before the Assembly vote, and the Assembly has now called on the Mayor and the Assembly Chair to write to all London MPs encouraging them to add their names. The list of signatories already includes Stella Creasy, Diane Abbott, John McDonnell, Emily Thornberry, Jeremy Corbyn, Dawn Butler, Ruth Cadbury, Vicky Foxcroft, and several others. That is a broad spread of voices, from across the left of the parliamentary party and beyond.

Early Day Motions do not compel action on their own. Anyone who has followed politics for long enough knows that. But they are a public record of where elected representatives stand, and they create political pressure that is harder to ignore when it comes from a city of eight million people, channelled through both its Assembly and a growing cohort of its MPs.

Why elected voices matter right now

The EHRC is supposed to be the body that protects people from discrimination. The deep irony of this moment is that the Assembly is having to challenge the EHRC's own guidance on the grounds that it is discriminatory. That is a serious institutional failure, and it deserves to be named as such.

What the Assembly has done is fill a vacuum. When a national body issues guidance that trans rights organisations, legal commentators, healthcare professionals, and now elected representatives consider harmful and unworkable, someone has to say so on the record. The Assembly has done exactly that. The motion also asks the Greater London Authority to report back on how it plans to interpret and enforce the guidance if it is adopted, which is the right question: guidance does not enforce itself, and the people responsible for implementation have to account for their choices.

A six-to-five Assembly vote does not change everything, but political pressure from below, from elected bodies, from MPs, from city governments that are accountable to real people and real communities, is exactly what this moment requires. Trans people in London, and across the country, are watching to see who stands with them. The six Assembly members who voted for this motion have answered that question clearly.

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Dr Helen Webberley is a gender specialist, medical educator, and advocate, and the founder of GenderGP. She writes about gender diversity, trans healthcare, and the lives of trans people and their families.