I wrote to my MP in October and have just received this reply.
Thank you for contacting me regarding the Gender Recognition Act and my apologies for not responding sooner however, I'm sure you can appreciate how busy it is at the moment in Westminster.
The Scottish Government ran a consultation earlier this year on a review of the Gender Recognition Act 2004.
A lot of misinformation has been spread about what ‘self-identification’ could entail – we must ensure that any debate about how best to move forward with this is well informed. There were over 15,000 responses to the consultation, and the majority of respondents agreed with the introduction of a self-declaratory system for legal gender recognition, as well as agreeing that people aged 16 and 17 should be able to obtain legal recognition of their acquired gender using self-declaration. The Scottish Government have said this will feed into work to bring forward legislation on gender recognition in the next legislative programme.
A lot of misinformation has been spread about what ‘self-identification’ could entail – we must ensure that any debate about how best to move forward with this is well informed. ‘Self-identification’ would not just mean people could just identify as a gender whenever they want, or for malicious or mischievous reasons – it would be a crime to ‘self-identify’ for any reason other than genuinely feeling that you want to identify/live as that gender.
The Scottish Trans Alliance have explained “When we describe the self-declaration process, it still requires people to sign and have witness to statutory declaration [meaning breaking it would amount to perjury], so it’s not as simple as literally just announcing into the void what they identify as and getting a new birth certificate.”
It is deeply concerning and unhelpful that some of the debate around this has moved into the territory of transphobia.
The concerns of both trans rights and women’s rights groups must both be taken into account – but we want to avoid a heavily polarised debate and all views must be expressed in a way that doesn’t discriminate or prejudice against others. Rape Crisis Scotland, Scottish Women’s Aid, Zero Tolerance, Engender, Equate Scotland, Close the Gap and the Women 5050 Campaign have come out in public support of the proposed changes.
As a party the SNP prides itself on championing both women’s rights and the rights of the LGBTI community, trans and non-binary individuals. The key priority is to ensure peaceful, compassionate and empathetic dialogue which respect the rights of all individuals to live a life of dignity free from discrimination.
Scotland’s same-sex marriage legislation is seen as some of the most progressive equal marriage laws in the world because of provisions on gender identity and gender reassignment equality. We need to build on this to do more to progress on equality for trans people.
The SNP want to see the UK Government to allow non-binary people to record their gender as ‘X’ on passports and all other UK-wide records and identity documents. SNP MPs at Westminster are also calling on the UK government to amend the Equality Act 2010 to ensure that all trans and non-binary people are covered by discrimination protections. We will also press for intersex people and organisations to be fully consulted by the UK government on changes to the law and policy to introduce effective protections for intersex people’s human rights.
I hope this response has been useful and if I can be of any further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact me.
There was a cut and paste repeated first paragraph which I've deleted.
Not surprised by this response . Not voting SNP again.