Gender Recognition Act

Debate between Layla Moran and Crispin Blunt

Monday 21st February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy), the city of my alma mater. I enjoyed her contribution about listening before taking part in these difficult debates. I pay huge tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) for his tone when opening the debate. It was an important lesson in how to conduct these difficult conversations.

I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price); over the last two years I have spent many hours with her discussing these issues, as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on global lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT+) rights. We tried to put together a common position in the group that could be agreed by all LGBT groups of all the major political parties, to understand all the reasonable concerns coming from people who are described as gender critical, and to meet those anxieties with all the reasonable reassurances that people ought to be able to expect. It is a great shame and pity that we did not manage to convince the Government to adopt that position within a wider statement of reform of the Gender Recognition Act. I urge the Minister to revisit that statement—it is still absolutely valid and is sitting on the website of the all-party parliamentary group. I urge him to look at it as a basis of how to move forward and find reassurance on the side issues around the Gender Recognition Act.

What we need is for the heat to be taken out of this debate and to let the light in. As many Members have pointed out, what a gender recognition certificate does is very limited. It simply allows a trans person to record their gender accurately on their birth certificate, and to be fitted into the appropriate actuarial models for pension provision and apply for a job or university degree without fear of being outed by default. They do not have any legal bearing on provisions around single-sex spaces, which are governed by the provisions of the Equality Act. These problems are in large part technical, but they have an outsized impact on an individual trans person’s rights to privacy and dignity. As a Conservative committed to protecting the rights and freedoms of the individual, I would like to see this process improved so that it can best serve the people it is meant to protect.

The current system is byzantine and bureaucratic, and contains provisions that, after 26 years—as others have said—seem to border on the cruel. In particular, I highlight the requirement to live in one’s new gender for two years, and the spousal veto. I am not sure that I can imagine a universally satisfactory benchmark of masculinity or femininity. Without any agreed definition, how can it be reasonable or fair to expect any person to live within such poorly circumscribed limits? I do not envy the members of the Gender Recognition Panel who have to hack their way through this Gordian knot of legal ambiguity and cultural stereotyping to implement their decisions.

As a gay man who was married to, and is now separated from, a woman with whom I have two children and am still friends, I know all too well that coming out as an LGBT+ person can have significant effects on a marriage. It is also clear that the current system serves only to make very personal decisions even more difficult, and giving one partner extraordinary control over another’s autonomy does not seem right today. I recognise that in certain circumstances, one partner’s transition may affect the integrity of a marriage, and I agree with the Women and Equalities Committee’s report that it would be sensible to offer more streamlined routes to annulment in this instance.

Ultimately, the failures of the system as it currently stands are evidenced by the minuscule take-up of the gender recognition certificate. Only 4,910 certificates had ever been issued at the time of the 2018 consultation—as little as 1% to 3% of the UK trans population. That is despite the fact that when surveyed, the vast majority of trans people declare an interest in obtaining a gender recognition certificate. It is patent that the process is not fit for purpose and does not adequately serve the population it is meant to protect, and none of the changes introduced in 2020 have changed that at all.

The recent appointment of Lord Herbert as the Government’s special envoy on LGBT rights, and my hon. Friend the Minister joining the equalities team and responding to this debate, are a happy harbinger of this Government’s renewed commitment to the dignity and rights of trans people. Reform of the GRA would not only bring the UK in line with other western countries such as Ireland, Denmark, France and Greece, but would bring the technical aspects of the law governed by the GRA in line with other aspects of UK law today.

[Layla Moran]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one of the most egregious parts of the current process is that there is no right to appeal, which completely goes against the principles of natural justice in almost every other part of our statute book? That is one aspect that is not planned to be changed.

[Crispin Blunt]

The hon. Lady has made her point extremely well and succinctly.

Changing the gender recorded on one’s passport or driving licence does not require a gender recognition certificate. Changing the gender on one’s bank account or medical and employment records does not require a gender recognition certificate, and changing one’s name does not require a gender recognition certificate. I can see no logical reason as to why the gender marker on the fundamental document that gives entitlement to one’s nationality and from which every other piece of one’s identity flows should be subject to more prohibitive regulation than any of those other documents and processes, but the fundamental importance of the birth certificate means that there needs to be a gender recognition certificate process. To continue to enshrine that inconsistency within British equality law only exposes trans people to the threat of discrimination.

Reform of the GRA would form a simple and natural component of the Government’s agenda to harmonise equality law and implement a practical and purposeful policy to make a tangible change to the lives of trans people. Some 137,000 putting their name to the petition we are debating today ought to give the Government pause for thought. That is as many people as took part in a massive consultation on the GRA in the first place. This issue matters; it is not an enormous change and we should make it.