May pledges to make it easier for people to change gender
TRANSGENDER people should not have to go through an “invasive” medical process to prove their change in gender, the Prime Minister has said.
Theresa May also apologised for her voting record on gay rights, admitting: “There are some things that I voted for in the past that I shouldn’t have done.”
Ministers have announced a consultation to make it easier, cheaper and less intrusive to legally register a change in gender after a survey showed thousands of trans people feel the process is too difficult.
Anyone wishing officially to change their gender must provide two medical reports, get the consent of their spouse if they are married, live in their desired gender for two years and pay £140.
There is no right to appeal if the decision is made not to grant the gender recognition certificate, unless there is a legal issue with the process.
But without it trans people can be left with legal difficulties because their official gender on birth certificates and other documents does not match the gender they are living in.
Government figures show that just under 5,000 people have taken the opportunity to officially register their change in gender since the process was announced in 2004. There are thought to be between 200,000 and 500,000 trans people living in Britain.
Announcing the consultation, which was promised a year ago, the Prime Minister said: “Last year, I committed to carrying out a consultation on the Gender Recognition Act and I’m pleased to be able to launch that today. What was very clear from our survey is that transgender people across the UK find the process of legally changing their gender overly bureaucratic and invasive. I want to see a process that is more streamlined and de-medicalised – because being trans should never be treated as an illness.”
However, she stressed that any changes would not affect provisions in the Equality Act 2010 which permit single-sex services such as women’s refuges to exclude transgender people if this is proportionate and justified.
The Government’s survey found
‘Transgender people find the process of legally changing their gender overly bureaucratic and invasive’
thousands of people had been subjected to conversion therapies.
“I was shocked that conversion therapy was still going on. I think it’s abhorrent and I think it has no place in modern Britain,” Mrs May told ITV.
The 16-week public consultation on the Gender Recognition Act 2004 in England and Wales came after the launch of a new £4.5million LGBT action plan, including a ban on so-called “gay cure” conversion therapies.
The initiative follows a Government survey that received responses from more than 108,000 LGBT people.
Trans charity Gendered Intelligence welcomed the consultation. However, Dawn Butler, Labour’s equalities spokesman, said Mrs May had waited more than a year to fulfil her promise of a consultation on reform of the Act.