Meeting of the Parliament 22 December 2022
No; both routes will be open to people once the legislation is enacted.
Following her visit to the UK, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights commented in her report, which was published two weeks ago, that she had observed the
“emergence of an increasingly harsh political and public discourse against trans people in the UK”,
and she expressed concerns about
“narratives that represent trans people as a threat to others”.
I hope that that will change, but it is regrettable that some of the discussion and some of the media coverage relating to the bill has focused so little on the reforms and their positive impact for trans people in Scotland.
We know from extensive consultation and the evidence heard at stage 1 that the current system can have an adverse impact due the requirement for a medical diagnosis and the intrusive and lengthy process. Those barriers prevent many trans people from applying for a GRC. We know that, of an estimated half a million trans people in the UK, only around 6,000 have ever been able to obtain a GRC in the past 18 years that the current system has been in place.
The bill will make the process more respectful of the privacy and dignity of trans men and women. It makes no change to the effect of the GRC, which will remain as it has been for the past 18 years. Legal gender recognition mostly affects aspects of our private lives and would enable a trans person to obtain an updated birth certificate. That will benefit trans people at important moments throughout their lives—for example, allowing them to have consistent documentation when they start a new job, enabling them to marry in the gender in which they live and, importantly, enabling them have their death recorded in the gender in which they lived.
Although the bill will make it easier for trans people to access their existing rights and go about their lives with confidence that they are recognised under the law, it will continue to be a substantial and significant legal process, which is reflected in the requirement to make a statutory declaration. It is a criminal offence to knowingly make a false statutory declaration or to knowingly make a false application.
Those safeguards have been strengthened during the parliamentary passage of the bill in the creation of a statutory aggravator, where the circumstances of the offence are connected to fraudulently obtaining a GRC, and a proportionate and risk-based approach to applications from those charged or convicted of certain offences that is based on assessment and management of risk in individual cases.
I know that some continue to have concerns about the potential impact on women and girls, and I have listened carefully to those who have expressed concerns. I understand the root of those concerns—I know from my own experience and from many years of working to improve women’s rights that women and girls still face inequality and an increased risk of harm in Scotland today, and that, throughout the world, women are fighting to keep their hard-won reproductive rights from being eroded, often by powerful men.
That is why this Government does so much to tackle violence against women and girls from abusive, predatory and controlling men.