GIRES decision to reconsider banking services

Since the recent Supreme Court decision on For Women Scotland vs. The Scottish Ministers and the publication of interim guidance by the EHCR, a number of organisations have changed their policies towards transgender people. Very frequently such policy changes have targeted transgender women specifically.

To date this has included the British Transport Police who have decided that transgender women will now be strip-searched by officers who are cis men and vice versa (it is unclear how officers will confirm if someone is transgender, even if they protest otherwise). The FA have also banned transgender women from participating in its leagues (despite having previously operated a case-based policy requiring prospective players to undergo an assessment and there being some 30-odd among a pool of millions).

Recently another organisation changed their policies to reflect a similar change in values: Barclays Bank. Barclays’ Group CEO, C.S. Venkatakrishnan informed reporters on a recent media call that:

“Following the Supreme Court ruling… we believe that we have to comply with that by not allowing trans women to use female bathrooms.”

Adding:

“We strive in every way to make the appropriate facilities available in a comfortable way for people to use and to provide equality of opportunities and development,”

We would like to remind everyone that neither the UKSC’s judgement nor the EHRC’s guidance are law, neither do they form a binding obligation to exclude transgender people. The former is a clarification of technical language, the latter is simply advice.

For obvious reasons this is highly disappointing. None more so than Barclays having historically being a supporter of the LGBT+ community: as a founding member of OutBritain, a regular member of Stonewall’s Top 100 Employers and taking pride in their own successes in trans employees succeeding and making accommodations for gender diverse customers (this page is no longer active on the Barclays website).

It is therefore with regret that GIRES must announce we are terminating our account with Barclays.

As a prominent UK trans charity we cannot in good faith continue to offer our custom to Barclays while they operate what we consider to be an outwardly discriminatory policy that rescinds one of the most basic dignities that can be afforded.

GIRES will instead be moving to The Co-operative Bank. In part this decision was influenced public commitments made by The Co-operative Group’s CEO, Shirine Khoury-Haq in the wake of the Supreme Court judgement, particularly contrast to those of Barclays and we commend her support.

We call upon Barclays to re-consider this policy and consider the impact it will have.