For years there has been a toxic, emotion-driven debate over gender and sex in this country. Today came clarity.

This was the legal crescendo in a saga that has rolled through the courts for more than half a decade.

It impacts half of the population in England, Scotland and Wales.

Five judges at the highest civil court in the land were unanimous: the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex.

It essentially means holders of gender recognition certificates are not women in the eyes of the law.

Follow live: Judges rule on definition of ‘woman’

Without getting bogged down in the legal technicalities, this whole case centred on two pieces of Westminster legitimation, meaning the Equality Act 2010 and the Gender Recognition Act 2004.

Those with a gender recognition certificate (GRC) have lived for the last 20 years on the basis that the document they possess changes their sex for “all purposes”.

Later anti-discrimination laws, the Equality Act, stated trans people could be excluded from women-only spaces in some circumstances.

Women’s rights campaigners took the case to court to seek clarity after the Scottish government tried to include trans women in quotas for gender balance on public sector boards.

This definitive decision today in London has immediate real-world consequences.

Judges were clear this wasn’t a victory for either side, as trans people will still be protected against discrimination.

But trans leaders say this calls into question their very identity – and to say they are hugely disappointed is an understatement.

One trans woman told me she was “gutted” and that this was an “attack” on her rights.

Campaign group For Women Scotland gathered in Edinburgh to watch a live stream of the proceedings and claimed victory. There were tears and cheers as they watched the judges deliver their judgment.

They say this gives absolute clarity about who can enter single-sex spaces like sports clubs, hospital wards and prisons across Britain.

Sir Keir Starmer’s government issued a statement saying this brings “confidence” and that they remain fully in favour of single-sex spaces.

John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, had a more muted reaction, simply saying his government “accepts” the ruling.

In 2022, the SNP government under Nicola Sturgeon passed laws making it easier for people to change their gender. It was ultimately blocked by the UK government and has been sitting on a shelf getting dusty ever since.

Since coming to power a year ago, Mr Swinney has tried to distance himself from the gender politics of the past few years given how much it bogged down his predecessors.

There was an excruciating exchange with journalists last year when he was asked whether a man can get pregnant. He delivered a blunt “no” in response despite his lawyers arguing almost the opposite in court.

There was the row over the double rapist being housed in a women’s prison and an employment tribunal is currently hearing the case of the nurse who complained about getting changed in front of a transgender doctor.

With a Holyrood election looming next year, it is completely conceivable that any suggestion of resurrecting Scotland’s controversial gender reforms is over in light of today’s court decision.

Mr Swinney won’t be taking questions today, I’m told, but it will be top of the list for his next appearance.

The sentence of triple murderer Nicholas Prosper, who killed his family and was planning a school shooting in Luton, has been referred to the Court of Appeal.

The referral has been made under the Unduly Lenient Sentence scheme, the Attorney General’s Office said on Wednesday.

Prosper, 19, pleaded guilty to the murders of his mother, Juliana Falcon, 48, and his siblings, Kyle Prosper, 16, and 13-year-old Giselle Prosper, at Luton Crown Court in February.

Their bodies were found at their flat in the town in September last year.

He was sentenced to 49 years in prison in March.

Passing sentence, High Court judge Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb told Luton Crown Court that her duty to the public was met with the 49-year minimum term, rather than using “the sentence of last resort” and jailing him for the rest of his life.

Prosper, 19, who craved notoriety, planned to carry out a mass shooting at St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School, where he and his siblings had been pupils, he admitted to police.

Read more:
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The Solicitor General has referred Prosper’s sentence to the Court of Appeal, where “it will be argued that Prosper ought to have been given a whole life order,” a spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office said.

Defendants aged 18 to 20 have been liable to receive whole-life orders in exceptional circumstances since rules were changed in 2022.

But none of the orders imposed since then have been on criminals in that age bracket.

The judge said that for defendants over the age of 21, whole-life orders can be considered in cases involving two or more murders with a significant degree of premeditation or planning, or where one child is killed with similar pre-planning.

Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb said: “The court may arrive at a whole-life order in the case of an 18 to 20-year-old only if it considers that the seriousness of the combination of offences is exceptionally high, even by the standard of offences which would normally result in a whole-life order.”

She pointed to a joint submission of counsel that the lengthy finite term she imposed was severe enough because his case was not “of the utmost gravity where the sentence of last resort must be imposed on an offender who was 18 at the time and is 19 today”.

The risk he posed to the public was met with a life sentence, she said.

Justice Cheema-Grubb told the court she would not impose a whole-life order because Prosper was stopped from carrying out the school shooting, having murdered his family earlier than he intended after his mother woke up.

He also pleaded guilty as soon as the charges were put to him after psychiatric reports had been completed, and he was 18 at the time of his crimes, which is at the lowest end of the age bracket for whole-life terms.

The Unduly Lenient Sentence scheme allows any member of the public to ask for certain Crown Court sentences to be reviewed, and if necessary, the case will be referred to the Court of Appeal.

Conservative shadow justice minister Dr Kieran Mullan, who referred the sentence to the Attorney General’s Office under the scheme on the day Prosper was jailed, said at the time that not handing down a whole-life sentence “makes a mockery of the justice system and is an insult to the victims”.

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At his trial, jurors heard Prosper, who was obsessed with violence and mass shootings, wanted to be known as “the world’s most famous school shooter of the 21st century”.

Police believe he killed his family when his mother confronted him after finding a shotgun he had bought using a fake certificate.

His scheme was eventually foiled by officers who spotted him in the street immediately after the murders and arrested him.

The loaded shotgun was found hidden in bushes nearby, along with more than 30 cartridges.

The Manchester Arena bomb plotter Hashem Abedi has been moved back to Belmarsh prison after an alleged attack at HMP Frankland on Saturday.

Three prison officers at the high-security jail in County Durham were attacked with cooking oil before being stabbed with an improvised weapon.

Abedi has been transferred to Belmarsh prison in southeast London where he’d previously been found guilty of attacking a prison officer in 2020, along with two other convicted terrorists.

Belmarsh is considered the most high-security prison in the UK.

Abedi has been moved to the only available highly-controlled ‘suite’ cell in the country – a standalone self-contained unit monitored by a minimum of five people at any one time, and a prison dog.

There are only four such cells across England and Wales.

Abedi was convicted of assisting the Manchester terror plot, in which his brother Salman Abedi killed himself and 22 other people by detonating a bomb in a rucksack at an Ariana Grande concert in May 2017.

Hashem Abedi was sentenced in 2020 to at least 55 years in prison after being found guilty of 22 counts of murder over the atrocity.

Meanwhile, the government has said it will commission a review into the incident at HMP Frankland, after suspending access to cooking facilities in separation units, which is where the alleged attack took place.

Sky News understands the Prison Officers Association, after visiting staff who were on duty at the category A jail this week, have written to Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer calling for urgent action in order to protect prison staff in the high-security estate.

The union wants to see prison officers working there given stab-proof vests, access to tasers in certain situations, and not just a suspension of self cooking facilities in separation units but a full ban.

Separation units house the country’s most dangerous and violent criminals.

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There have been a series of violent attacks across prisons in England and Wales, only days apart.

On Sunday, convicted killer John Mansfield was found dead at a category A prison, HMP Whitemoor, in Cambridgeshire. Police said they arrested a 44-year-old man on suspicion of murder.

Sky News also understands there was an incident on Tuesday lunchtime at HMP Lowdham Grange in Nottinghamshire.

A specialist ‘response group’ consisting of officers from outside the prison were deployed to bring the situation under control, along with a ‘hostage’ situation, while prisoners climbed on the roof and netting. The situation was brought under control within an hour.

Prisons minister Lord Timpson said it was “another sign of the problems we are facing in our prison with prisons that are overcrowded and violent”.