SNP spent nearly £400k arguing that trans women are women

Telegraph

15-05-2025

SNP ministers spent almost £400,000 of taxpayers' money on lawyers arguing that transgender women should have access to female-only toilets.
Official figures showed the SNP Government spent more than £216,000 in legal fees fighting the case in Scotland's highest civil court.
They won their case in the Court of Session that the definition of woman for the purposes of the Equality Act should include trans people with a gender recognition certificate (GRC).
But feminist group For Women Scotland (FWS) appealed to the Supreme Court, which overturned the previous ruling and found that the definition was based on biological sex.
The figures, obtained by the Scottish Tories under Freedom of Information (FoI), showed SNP ministers spent almost £160,000 on legal fees on their failed case in the UK's highest court.
This means they spent a total of just under £374,000 on their legal battle against FWS, which culminated in the ruling that trans women are not women. The FoI also disclosed that this figure could grow as final costs 'are still being determined '.
Despite the huge bill, SNP ministers have failed to act on the court ruling by ordering Scotland's public sector bodies to ditch their policies allowing biological males who self-identify as women to access female-only areas.
Tess White, Scottish shadow equalities minister, said: 'It will rightly stick in the throat of taxpayers that they are picking up a huge legal tab for the SNP's needless and humiliating court defeat.
'John Swinney's party threw good money after bad in a doomed attempt to defend their reckless gender policy which betrayed women.'
She added: 'Yet, even now, John Swinney won't apologise or issue a new directive to public sector bodies – which adopted self-ID wholesale – on their legal requirement to protect single-sex spaces. That negligence leaves the taxpayer wide open to huge compensation payouts.'
First Minister John Swinney has advised public bodies to wait for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission to publish guidance in the summer despite the watchdog warning that the court ruling takes effect immediately.
The legal battle started in 2022 when FWS successfully challenged Scottish Government legislation that intended to increase the proportion of women on public boards. This included trans women.
The Court of Session in Edinburgh ruled that changing the definition of a woman fell outside Holyrood's powers, prompting ministers to issued revised advice to public bodies. This said that the definition only included trans women if they had a GRC.
But FWS launched another court action arguing that it should be limited to biological women. This was rejected by the Court of Session's Outer House in Dec 2022.
FWS appealed to the decision to the court's Inner House but lost again in Nov 2023. The new figures disclosed the Scottish Government spent £216,182.50 fighting both cases in the Court Session.
A further £157,816.30 was spent on legal fees on the Supreme Court case, taking the total amount to £373,998.80.
'Final costs in relation to the case are still being determined and are not yet available. We will publish the total cost of the case when it is fully complete,' the Scottish Government said in the FoI response.