Transgender Equality

Ben Howlett Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Ben Howlett (Bath) (Con)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley), who is a great champion on trans issues and LGBTI issues in general, and the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), who has championed this issue by making it the subject of the Committee’s very first report.

I say a massive thank you to the Backbench Business Committee. For the transgender community in the UK, this is the first time such a debate has been held on the Floor of the House of Commons, and it marks a very special day for the 650,000 transgender or non-gendered people in the UK. Just as we celebrated 50 years of Schools Out in the Speaker’s apartments yesterday, I hope that in 50 years’ time people will look back at this day and say that it marked a remarkable change in how people in the transgender community were considered in the UK. I am very pleased that this debate has been brought to the Floor of the House of Commons.

Although there is a lack of good data on the number of trans people in the UK, as my right hon. Friend stated, estimates currently suggest that 650,000 people in the UK are likely to be gender incongruent to some degree. This is an issue that has an impact on a significant number of our constituents. A number of constituents who came to see me as a result of our Select Committee’s inquiry suggested that this was the first time they could come out and say they were a member of the trans community. People often hide that and do not necessarily want to stand up and talk about it, but the inquiry has given them a huge opportunity to say that they are represented in this place and in the rest of the country.

As colleagues will know, I am a prominent supporter of LGBT rights. I have to say that the LGB part of the community has not always gone out and celebrated the T or the T+ parts of the community. This is also a huge opportunity for us to say that they are part of our friendship group. We must make a big apology for the fact that we have overlooked them as part of our community for a very long period. In her time as the new chief executive of Stonewall—she is not that new to the post—Ruth Hunt has been a huge advocate of the trans community. Following her apology to the trans community, the work she has done as chief executive has gone some way to repair the distrust and segregation within the LGBT community.

I have been a member of the Women and Equalities Committee since its creation in 2015. The report on transgender equality was its first report. The Committee received about 250 written evidence submissions, many from individual trans people who wanted to tell us about their own experiences, and there were five oral evidence sessions. I am not speaking on behalf of the Committee, but it is worth noting how it came to its conclusions. The Committee took evidence from a range of organisations conducting representative and advocacy work within the trans community, as well as from service providers of various kinds, academic experts and six Ministers in a variety of Departments. I want to take this opportunity to thank all those who gave evidence throughout the inquiry, particularly those from the trans community, which enabled the Committee to produce meaningful findings and recommendations.

The report states:

“A litmus test for any society that upholds those values”—

fairness and equality—

“is how far it protects even the most marginalised groups.”

I welcome the Government’s commitment to equality. I recognise that, as a country, we have led the way on lesbian, gay and bisexual equality. Despite the welcome progress, however, we are still failing that test for the trans community. We know that trans people face continuing transphobia, increased mental health issues, discrimination in the provision of public and private services, and bullying in our schools. The report made several recommendations for the Government to consider. I thank the Minister for the Government response, but I want to highlight a number of areas that need further consideration.

The report made it clear that the Gender Recognition Act 2004 and the Equality Act 2010 need to be amended. At the time, the GRA was a world-leading piece of legislation, but it is now outdated and in need of revision, as the hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East and my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke have said, and we are falling behind many other countries. The process for applying for a gender recognition certificate is bureaucratic, expensive and even humiliating, and the burden of providing documentation can cause people significant distress. The process should be administrative, not a medicalised, quasi-judicial one. It should be underpinned by the principle of gender self-declaration, which would allow for a dignified approach that maintains the personal autonomy of applicants. After all, as Ashley Reed, who created a petition on this subject, has said of a person’s gender identity:

“You are the only person who can come to that realisation, not a panel.”

I welcome the Government’s commitment to review the GRA, but I urge them to commit to adopting the principle of gender self-declaration as well as to commit to changing the process.

As the Bill my right hon. Friend presented earlier today makes clear, the current wording of the Equality Act 2010 is fundamentally outdated and, ultimately, confusing. Terms such as “gender reassignment” and “transsexual” have resulted in significant confusion over whether trans people who have not undergone a medical intervention are entitled to the same protection. The report recommended that the protected characteristic should be changed to “gender identity”, bringing the wording in line with the Yogyakarta principles and resolution 2048 of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. The Government’s response to that recommendation was that they believe the current wording of the 2010 Act is adequate because people are protected through the provision on discrimination due to perception. However, that response is inadequate and I hope the Minister will clarify that statement. The 2010 Act bases the protection it provides for transgender people on the process of undergoing gender reassignment. Many trans people, such as non-binary, intersex people or young people whose gender identity is less well developed than that of an adult, may not have legal protection. I urge the Government to reconsider their rejection of the Committee’s recommendation. What steps have been taken to keep the matter under review, which the Government promised to do?

Away from the legislative changes, I now turn to some specific areas that need improvement, the first of which is the treatment of trans prisoners. Until recently there were no official statistics on the number of transgender prisoners in the UK. In November 2016, however, the Ministry of Justice published the results of a data collection exercise conducted in March and April of this year. It was reported that 70 transgender prisoners were held in 33 prisons in England and Wales at that time. The Committee argued that there was “clear risk or harm” when trans prisoners are not located in a prison

“appropriate to their acquired… gender”.

The report also said that holding trans prisoners in solitary confinement was not fair or appropriate, and I am sure that the whole House agrees.

Last year, there was the example of Tara Hudson, a transgender prisoner from Bath, who was born male but had lived her entire adult life as a woman. Tara was sent to an all-male prison. I thank the Under-Secretary of State for Women and Equalities, the hon. Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage), for supporting me in helping Tara to get into a prison appropriate to her gender, but lessons still need to be learned. Tara, who has lived as a woman her whole adult life, has undergone six years of gender reconstruction surgery and I, like many in the Chamber, would define her as a woman. Her detention in a male environment was not only physically damaging but dangerous from a security perspective.

In summary, we are a forward-thinking and progressive country and have led the way in ensuring that marginalised groups receive protection under the law. We have made huge strides over the decades in improving the rights of lesbian, gay and bisexual people. However, we must do more for the trans community. The Women and Equalities Committee report is groundbreaking and I hope its publication will be celebrated in 50 years’ time as a day of huge change for the trans community in the UK and around the world.