Gender Recognition Act

Kim Johnson Excerpts

Monday 21st February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)]

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Christopher. I thank the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) for setting such a positive scene. I also thank the 438 Liverpool, Riverside constituents who took the time to sign the petition.

As a member of the Women and Equalities Committee, I have heard significant evidence about the failures of the Gender Recognition Act to support trans and non-binary people in their legal transitions. Instead, those individuals are faced with highly intrusive medicalised and stigmatising procedures. I am proud to have played a role in the report, with the amendments I proposed to reaffirm the principles of inclusion and diversity in our spaces and services, demanding clear guidance and best practice examples around how to prevent and challenge discrimination against trans and gender non-conforming people. These changes and the guidance are long overdue. In response, the Government must take decisive action now to change their destructive approach around trans rights. They are whipping up a culture war between the safety, security and support of females and that of trans and gender non-conforming people, when one can never really be achieved without the other.

In the 13 years since the GRA was first introduced, very few people have applied for a gender recognition certificate and fewer than 5,000 have completed the process successfully, although estimates of the UK trans and non-binary population vary between 200,000 and 500,000 people. There are clearly significant barriers for people navigating the gender recognition process. Several other countries, including Denmark, Ireland and Norway, have brought in a statutory gender recognition process, based on self-declaration, that has been recognised as best practice by a number of our own trade unions and prominent trans rights campaigners here in the UK. Labour will implement that process once in Government.

Such a process would be far quicker, more transparent and more accessible than our current processes. Over 80% of the 100,000 submissions to the Government’s GRA consultation called the requirement for a medical report as part of the current gender recognition process “intrusive”, “costly” and “humiliating”. In 2019, the World Health Organisation announced that it no longer considers gender dysphoria to be a mental health issue. There is a groundswell of support for reform along these lines, even among the most polarised groups, as we heard time and again during the Women and Equalities Committee inquiry.

As an absolute bare minimum, the Government must take immediate steps to remove from the gender recognition process the requirement to live in the acquired gender for a set period of time, the medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria and the spousal consent provision. There is overwhelming support for the removal of those matters from the process of obtaining a gender recognition certificate, and that would go a huge way towards removing some of the most stigmatising, humiliating and disempowering barriers to people legally changing their gender.

It is absolutely damning that the Government have done nothing but dither and delay and have so far refused to engage with those simple and practical steps, four years after their own consultation. As the Women and Equalities Committee’s report detailed, their reluctance to engage and their behaviour in whipping up a culture war has caused an immense amount of damage. It is highly concerning that recent reports have shown the EHRC politically interfering in Scottish reform of legislation relating to trans rights, and the commission has reportedly met privately with anti-trans groups. Employees have quit the organisation, citing its anti-LGBT culture.

Although I am proud that the Committee made such strong recommendations in our inquiry, they are worth the paper they are written on only if we have bold and meaningful commitments from the Government and the EHRC to take them forward. Given the behaviour of the Government and the EHRC so far, it is clear that we have a long way to go. It is also clear that the tide of popular opinion is against them. Trans rights are human rights, and we must continue to fight for the rights of trans and gender non-conforming people to ensure that they live and thrive in dignity.