GRC changes dropped?

It is a devolved issue because it comes under Scots law, which is separate to English law, I presume, just as the Scottish Registrar General is separate to the English one. And historically, and still, there have been differences in Scots and English law regarding marriage, divorce and birth registration. It is nothing to do with devolution, these differences predate 1997.

So for example, you do not need parental consent to get married in Scotland in 16, but you do in England and Wales, hence the historical phenomenon of Gretna Green marriages.

This is properly a matter of Scottish legal policy, and it is not the first time there will have been or are anomalies between English and Scots law.

There the law would still be no self ID, and a birth certificate issued in Scotland (which it would have to be, I think) would not be sufficient to say, I am a woman and I get access to these services in England and Wales.

But if you were born in Scotland, your birth certificate counts as a UK birth certificate for e.g. getting a UK passport, so a Scottish birth certificate is valid in the rest of the UK. A person with a Scottish birth certificate can access services in the rest of the UK in the same way as someone with an English birth certificate.

Scotland can set what laws it likes for Scotland (within limits). But it can’t makes law that affects the operation of what happens in England and Wales. If Self ID is not recognised there, this is useless. All that Scotland will have done is make its birth certificate different from every other part of the country.

It will affect what happens in England and Wales because anyone whose birth was registered in Scotland will be able to change their sex marker, but people whose birth was registered elsewhere in the UK will not (unless the UK government decides to recognise Scottish GRCs).

There is a copy and paste below to fill in the Scottish government consultation which closes soon.

You don’t have to be Scottish to fill it in

www.snpwomenspledge.com/

Thanks very much for the Scottish link I had not at all been paying enough attention on this so I am posting in ignorance, apologies. I agree with what Nonny said. This new thing will be like the Scottish pound note, having currency in the rest of the UK because of widespread regulatory capture, ‘getting ahead of the law’ and general wokeness.

From the Times:

‘A Gender Recognition Reform Bill would reduce the age of eligibility from 18 to 16, cut the time required to live in their new gender from two years to six months and remove the need for medical treatment or a diagnosis of gender dysphoria.

It is open to people born in Scotland, including an estimated 720,000 now living elsewhere in the United Kingdom, and people from the rest of the UK living, working and studying in Scotland.’

I guess how many UK 16 year olds could get this new Scottish GRC depends on how they define residency in Scotland requirements in this new law. What if ‘residency’ can be just an address of a hotel in Scotland?
I haven’t looked at the consultation yet but hopefully this is properly set out in there.

Either way this has very obviously very serious potential to undermine women’s rights in Scotland (and UK-wide because if implemented, people will point to the disparity of it and agitate for the whole of the UK’s law to be changed to make it consistent with Scotland.)

Does anyone know why is this a devolved issue to the Scottish Parliament anyway, though? Health issues generally aren’t (like abortion) I thought they are reserved UK Parliament issues? So what area of law does the GRA come under that each UK parliament can go off and make its own laws on it?

Surely something as socially fundamental as changing GRC law either way should be changed only by the (Westminster) UK Parliament on a UK-wide basis with UK wide consultation. It will undoubtedly have UK wide impact if Scotland do their own thing on this.

No I’m afraid that this won’t happen because that would be an instance of where Scotland would be changing how the law operated on a fundamental level in England and Wales. There the law would still be no self ID, and a birth certificate issued in Scotland (which it would have to be, I think) would not be sufficient to say, I am a woman and I get access to these services in England and Wales.

They can’t do that alone, they don’t have the power to do so in terms of the devolution settlement.

Scotland can set what laws it likes for Scotland (within limits). But it can’t makes law that affects the operation of what happens in England and Wales. If Self ID is not recognised there, this is useless. All that Scotland will have done is make its birth certificate different from every other part of the country.

This is more about the limits of power of the Scottish Government.

Ah that's for clarifying that OldCrone.

LexMitior if the Scottish GRA reform goes ahead it means that people can change the sex on their birth certificate easily and it will only take six months.

As far as I'm aware, birth certificates issued in Scotland are recognised as valid elsewhere in the UK, so I don't see why a trans person would not be accepted into single sex spaces in England and Wales if their birth certificate says Female even if every aspect of them is still obviously Male.

So basically, this is useless if you don’t ordinarily live in Scotland. To get the benefit of self ID it must be recognised in law where you live.

In terms of getting a new birth certificate, I think it will be useless if you weren't born in Scotland, since birth registrations in Scotland are separate from England and Wales. For those who weren't born in Scotland there would need to be an agreement with the UK government that a Scottish GRC could be used to change birth certificates in England and Wales (I'm not sure where NI fits into this, but I think it is also separate from England and Wales in this respect).

Yes; that’s the obvious point. But it can’t be that Scotland can legislate for England and Wales. It can’t and doesn’t have the power to do so.

You will then have trans people being able to self ID there but not in England.

So basically, this is useless if you don’t ordinarily live in Scotland. To get the benefit of self ID it must be recognised in law where you live.

Scotland can’t bind England and Wales. So yes, you will have a weird situation where it’s possible to self ID in Glasgow but in Nottingham, you will still be male.

Found it:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/scottish-legal-move-could-create-a-transgender-gretna-green-rrsxd8sd8

Good news but doesn't matter: the Scottish proposals will allow anyone to change their legal sex in Scotland.

The draft bill says you have to be 'ordinarily resident' in Scotland but that isn't defined and it's only defined elsewhere as a stated intention.

Come up to see the Edinburgh Fringe and change your sex.

I think there was a Sunday Times piece about this aspect a few weeks ago?

The first point on human rights is what human right would you claim against?

Are there actual claims right now where a trans person uses the ECHR to assert that they get the benefit of a protected characteristic?

Sarah thank you for the link to Mermaids’ written evidence to select committee. It is so disturbing that such extreme anti-safeguarding, politically authoritarian ideas can be promoted to Parliament by a self-described representative organisation that so many mainstream companies and the public donate to. I had to pause a few times reading it because i couldn’t believe it.

Also agreeing with PaleBlueMoonlight’s excellent point above that we need to see how the naive and obsolete GRA is being used to support human rights claims that people must as a human right be allowed to change legal sex and be treated as the opposite sex at all times.

GRA can’t ever be repealed unless this is clarified that human rights do not include the right to name yourself any protected characteristic of your choice and expect to receive the same protections or benefits available to people who actually share that protected characteristic. If any lawyers have thoughts on that I would be really interested to hear more.

I’ve only read the Daily Mail article not the Times so please could someone reassure me if I have misunderstood something relevant. But I don’t think any of us can celebrate or relax until the deeply problematic, outdated and unnecessary GRA is actually repealed. There’s absolutely nothing about that happening in here is there?

This message seems to be only about children. I seem to remember we’ve had statements like this in the press before. The ‘news’ is only that we’ll see this consultation response before the summer. Let’s see.

Whatever happens, we need to keep on raising up our voices to our MPs now as loudly as we can (before this government response is written and signed off by ministers) and we need to point to and hope for a positive resolution of the various ongoing legal cases for the gender critical position, to help to row back on institutional capture.

A key point of the men’s sexual rights lobby campaign led by the TRAs around the 2018 GRA consultation, beyond their demand for dangerous GRC self-ID, was also to extend the GRC so that all under 18 year olds could also be able to change their sex legally via GRC. (I didn’t see any lower age limit suggested in their campaigning- please correct me if anyone knows different).
So that would have meant parents legally consenting to ‘change’ the legal paperwork description of their child’s sex. It is a shocking, anti-safeguarding proposal to make, but cover it in silencing rainbow sparkles and what could possibly go wrong for children?

This Daily Mail article seems to be just the government again testing the water for not allowing children ( actually their parents ) to change their child’s legal sex.

The government must know the voices of more detransitioned young people will be coming to the fore. So the government want to be able to say they haven’t been supporting the dangerous ‘affirmative‘ model (even though this still is being allowed to continue unchecked.. )

I’ve said it loads of times before but this NHS and private medical ‘treatment’ of children’s emotional distress and dysphoria needs Parliament to actually act to protect children. They need to have a parliamentary select committee inquiry into this whole area, with the evidence looked at from all sides. Then where children are currently not even being experimented on by NHS and private clinicians ( I say these are ‘Not even experiments’ because research studies which harm their participants can be stopped- whereas this just gallops on unchecked..) this ‘treatment’ of anyone under 25 and of vulnerable adults should be regulated by an Act of parliament requiring a government funded independent external body. Parliament needs to bring in laws to do that. These treatments should only ever be available case by case and on individual licence according to strict legal criteria and with the treatment agreed to by named doctors registered centrally and by the same law, the outcomes for anyone under 25 or a vulnerable adult who is given puberty blockers, cross sex hormones and surgical interventions, in the NHS or privately, should be as a group followed up via monitoring of their anonymised healthcare records.

There should also be a government commitment to fund follow up research for children and young people who have been through this, which is voluntary for them to participate in.

But of course all that will cost money to set up. The government haven’t even said they will invest more in CAMHS services to make sure distressed children currently can have somewhere to explore their problems away from the ‘affirmative’ medicalised approach. They could just bring in that tomorrow and make a massive difference.

There’s no new protections for children being offered here by government and already we can all see that children are being completely failed by the current system. I can only hope that the individual legal cases being brought by brave people at the moment will force them to act.

Also- in other ways like around the deliberately mis-described ‘spousal veto’ in the GRA.. this government clearly wants to appear to be socially ‘progressive’ or some shit where it costs them nothing. The government are are definitely not collectively taking a principled stance around upholding or extending women’s rights.

So we have to make sure they are listening to women and what we need, not just being distracted by the government ostentatiously letting us know they will not be indulging some of the most creepy and dangerous demands made by the TRA lobby.

We should all be writing encouraging letters to our MPs to get them to do more and ask for far more, because the government as a whole needs to do way more to change the terrible status quo.

While this sounds like good news this article doesn't fill me with confidence.

Exactly. Stealthy fuckers.

*it

NHS Staff could be used to train other public sectors such as our schools and legal sectors.

Which would lend the 'training' credibility out doesn't deserve to have

That "Written Evidence" from Mermaids is really chilling. Among many other gems , it seems they want to roll out mass pro-transing children education by the NHS itself:

"Public Education around TNB CYP (GIDS)

Recommendation 4:

NHS should educate all staff in relation to TNB CYP lives and healthcare and this should be trans-inclusive and based on gender affirmative care model.
All members of staff should feel capable of advocating for TNB patients should it be necessary.
Training should administered to all staff members to ensure no NHS worker practises in a transphobic or unaware way.
NHS Staff could be used to train other public sectors such as our schools and legal sectors."

Great article about Sweden. A review there due soon. If the tide turns in Scandinavia, that could maybe affect things in Scotland.

theres a new article in the Guardian about Sweden
www.theguardian.com/society/2020/feb/22/ssweden-teenage-transgender-row-dysphoria-diagnoses-soar

Exactly. The Times is not silly and the juxtaposition with Janice Turner's article is not coincidence. Nor, I suspect, is the fact that Andrew Gilligan, formerly of the Times, is now a No10 adviser.

No this article is important. It looks as if children are the “fig leaf” for not doing this - but you don’t bother to say you won’t be doing a huge change on one basis is you aren’t going to ditch the rest of it. This is good news.

Believe me “government source” has backing. Otherwise this would not have appeared at all for the grief it could cause the Government.

data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/women-and-equalities-committee/health-and-social-care-and-lgbt-communities/written/91159.html

I also found this on Twitter. Advocating for the hounding or removal of health care professionals who dont affirm