Anyone who thought the downfall of the Tory government might bring an end to the interminable debate over transgender rights should scrutinise Labour’s plans. It could be that the past seven years of political manoeuvrings was merely the warm-up act.
Labour reportedly wants to ‘simplify’ the gender recognition process – but this isn’t necessarily a good thing. Specialist reports, a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, the agreement of spouses and the panel of lawyers that checks each application against the legal criteria could all be ditched, according to a report in the Times. One idea is that gender recognition certificates might simply be signed off by a GP. This is self-ID in all but name.
Anneliese Dodds, the shadow women and equalities secretary, said the Labour party wants, ‘to see the process for gender recognition modernised, while protecting single sex spaces for biological women. This means stripping out the futile and dehumanising parts of the process for obtaining a gender recognition certificates (GRC), while retaining important safeguards.’
This is delusion on the scale of claiming that we could allow family doctors to authorise applications for British citizenship, remove further scrutiny and then claim that the country’s borders remained secure. Make no mistake, a GRC is a powerful document: it changes someone’s legal sex, as Section 9 of the Gender Recognition Act makes clear:
‘Where a full gender recognition certificate is issued to a person, the person’s gender becomes for all purposes the acquired gender (so that, if the acquired gender is the male gender, the person’s sex becomes that of a man and, if it is the female gender, the person’s sex becomes that of a woman).’
Not only that, it then shrouds that change in secrecy. Section 22 adds:
‘It is an offence for a person who has acquired protected information [that a GRC has changed someone’s legal sex] in an official capacity to disclose the information to any other person.’
We should treat any shake-up of the gender change process will caution. So why is Labour seeking to meddle? Dodds can hardly object to the cost to the applicant. According to the gov.uk webpage on how to apply for a GRC, ‘it costs £5 to apply’. That’s cheaper than renewing a driving licence. Not only that, ‘You might be able to get help paying the fee if you get benefits or are on a low income’. These procedures are already clearly accessible.
If changes to the Gender Recognition Act are needed, then safeguards against misuse must be strengthened rather than weakened. Had Isla Bryson – the male rapist who caused outrage in Scotland, and arguably led the demise of Nicola Sturgeons Gender Recognition Reform Bill – already been issued with a GRC, it would have been much harder for the Prison Service to relocate Bryson to a men’s prison. After all, Bryson’s sex would have become that of a woman for all legal purposes. Not only that, anyone who disclosed official information to the contrary could themselves end up in the dock.
One of the benefits of opposition is surely to be able to learn from government mistakes without taking any responsibility for them – but not, it seems, the Labour party. Governments in both Westminster and Holyrood have lurched from crisis to crisis over self-ID, prisons policy, hospital wards, sports, school policy and the rest. Yet Labour seems to want to double down on these errors.
Remember it was a Conservative prime minister, Theresa May, who pledged to press ahead with plans to let people change their legal sex without proper medical checks. That was 2017. Only recently have the Tories changed tack when they realised that LGBTQIA+ activists do not speak for the wider public. The voters are not impressed when they cannot call a man a man, rapists self-identify into women’s prisons, sex-based rights are overlooked by hospital managers and men beat women in what is supposed to be female sport.
Whether Labour has the capacity to represent more than its activist base remains to be seen, but if Keir Starmer forms the next government we may rapidly find out.
Debbie Hayton is a teacher and journalist.
Her book, Transsexual Apostate – My Journey Back to Reality is published by Forum
* This article was first published by The Spectator on 20 May 2024: Labour’s gender change shake-up will end in tears.
Debbie Hayton 
3 replies on “Labour’s gender change shake-up will end in tears”
Labour seems to be living in La-La Land where rapists Iike Isla Bryson are taken at their word — “the thing that never happens…” — and doors are just opened willy-nilly to any pervert or serious offender against women for them to freely claim victimhood and vulnerability. I ask with tears in my eyes, for pity’s sake, has no one in politics got a backbone to stand up for women’s and female children’s rights or at least one operational brain cell to distinguish between male and female? Or, at the very least, has no one got a basic common-sense view of reality that says an unscrupulous man let loose in women’s sacred and safe spaces is not going to behave himself? Labour is trying to please everyone to get their vote. This is madness because you cannot please everyone, and you cannot promise them that their demands will be met. Women like Annelise Dodds are a danger to women. They have not the slightest chance of meeting a rapist in their elevated circles and that is why they freely spout forth about how it can be doe blah blah. I shudder to think what is coming for women and girls. Rishi Sunak may not be everyone’s cup of tea but at least he has the guts to stand up and say he knows the difference between a man and a woman.
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Thank you for your comment. I think that a rather big divide in politics is not between left and right but between legislators and their electors. Those in parliament tend to be socially liberal while those who put them there tend to be socially conservative.
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“This is delusion on the scale of claiming that we could allow family doctors to authorise applications for British citizenship, remove further scrutiny and then claim that the country’s borders remained secure.”
LOL. And that part of the GRC reminds me of Parliament passing a law that says Rwanda’s a safe country.
It’s puzzling how Labour (and the Lib Dems and Greens) seek to keep the activists happy. Surely they know those policies are massively unpopular, and you’d expect politicians to read the room for their own sake. And it’s hard to imagine they believe the gender guff they come out with. What is this power the trans activists have over them?
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