Various MPs during this session claimed the current GRA requirements violate the human rights of people who identify as trans and/or strongly implied or even stated that the UK is violating international human rights law by rejecting self-id.
I want to comment on this, as it is demonstrably false, but also often difficult to counter unless you understand the context, making it very easy to use this as an argument.
1. Human Rights Issue:
Most people believe to get a GRC, a person who identifies as trans has to medically transition all the way.
When the GRC was enacted in 2004, international human rights law reflected this view, and almost all of the 47 member states of the Council of Europe who did allow a legal sex change at all, insisted on applicants being a) sterile and b) fully post-op before granting the desired legal status.
Accordingly, the 2002 judgement of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) was only concerned with the rights of homosexual transsexuals who had fully transitioned (and who, for all intents and purposes, "passed" as a member of the opposite sex).
The UK's Labour Government at the time rightly anticipated that this stance would change and sought to future proof the GRA by making only a medical diagnosis a mandatory requirement.
As this would have resulted in popular opinion opposing the new law, this decision was not publicised. On the contrary, the public was hoodwinked by two mechanisms:
I) directly in the law: if you mentioned in your application that you had indeed transitioned medically, you had to prove it. Because initially only transsexuals who had medically transitioned applied, they would then talk about all the evidence they had to supply, so many truly believed it was a requirement to fully transition, including transsexuals and campaigners.
This was in my view a deliberate tactic by the government to both deter chancers from applying and avoid public dissent.
II) in its publicity: That it was deliberate is borne out in the briefings given to the press and groups opposing the law between 2002 and 2004. They never mentioned that surgery wasn't necessary and batted away any questions about abuse of the system by only ever talking about fully post-op (homosexual) transsexuals (using words like long, painful journey, serious commitment etc).
The issue of non-homosexual transsexuals ie late transitioners was studiously avoided. Indeed, the government even refused to meet with late transitioners who tried to convince the government to allow them to stay married and still change their sex. As the government introduced the GRA mostly only in order to avoid legalising equal marriage, they were not interested.
So they enacted a GRA requiring only a diagnosis in 2004, and in 2017 were proven right. In a ECHR judgement that year, the court ruled by a majority opinion that requiring complete surgery and/or sterilisation violated the human rights of people who identify as trans. This was a marked difference to earlier judgements which held that it was up to individual member states to decide under which conditions they granted a legal sex change. The majority of member states of the Council of Europe would now have to change their national gender recognition laws to comply with this ruling (22 of 47 required surgery and/or sterilisation, 7 did not allow legal sex changes at all).
(So much for the also frequently repeated claim that the UK is behind the majority of countries in how it allows people who identify as trans to change their legal sex. We are ahead of the vast majority of countries in the world - the majority still do not allow any kind of legal sex change, and the majority of those who do, continue to require a medical transition. A handful of countries have introduced self-id, but it frequently does not work the same way or has the same impact it would have in the UK, because of how these countries' self-id rules interact with other laws and safeguards.)
Verdict: Not an issue. The GRA already complies.
2. Human Rights Issue:
The requirement to provide proof of a diagnosis of gender dysphoria is claimed to be a human rights violation, usually Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rghts (the right to a private life, family life, personal autonomy).
This is described as an intrusive, humiliating and demeaning practice and of pathologising people who identify as trans.
It's a curious claim in light of every MP who brought this up also bemoaning the dire state of healthcare access to treatments for gender dysphoria in the UK.
All of these people on the waiting list could have received a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria by their GP, and certainly this does form the very first step of treatment in Gender Identity clinics, especially for those who have self-referred. So they are voluntarily undergoing this evil practice to access medical help for something that isn't a medical condition but will not do so to gain legal rights. (The requirement to get a medical diagnosis before a medical transition is of course described as illegitimate, transphobic gatekeeping by the medical profession and the demand for unfettered access to treatment without a diagnosis is part of various trans rights manifestos focusing on or including health care.)
Back to the human rights issue: needing a diagnosis of gender dysphoria to legally change sex.
In the same judgement in 2017, the ECHR found that while it did breach the applicants' Article 8 rights to have to medically transition before being allowed a legal sex change, they disagreed that the state violated their human rights in demanding proof of having a medical condition that necessitated a legal sex change.
Here is the full case and here is a quote from the press release:
In today’s Chamber judgment in the case of A.P., Garçon and Nicot v. France (application nos. 79885/12, 52471/13 and 52596/13) the European Court of Human Rights held:
by six votes to one, that there had been a violation of Article 8 (right to respect for private life) of the European Convention on Human Rights in respect of E. Garçon and S. Nicot, on account of the obligation to establish the irreversible nature of the change in their appearance;
by a majority, that there had been no violation of Article 8 of the Convention in respect of E. Garçon on account of the obligation to prove that he actually suffered from gender identity disorder and in respect of A.P. on account of the obligation to undergo a medical examination.
Verdict: Not found to be a human rights violation.
3. Human Rights Issue:
The application process (various aspects thereof, but especially the requirement for a diagnosis) for a GRC under the GRA violates the Yogyakarta Principles, which insist on self-id as best practice as well as Resolution 2048 of the Council of Europe, which does the same. (Amongst a number of other demands.)
Both of these are expertly discussed here by Kath Murray of the MBM Policy Analysis Collective in reference to the Scottish Government's justification for introducing self-id. The gist of it is that the Yogyakarta Principles is essentially an advocacy paper written by an international group of LGBT-rights campaigners. They feature mainly in and inform the pro-self-id side in this debate, but have not made any progress in being taken seriously by the UN, let alone international and national legal systems.
Resolution 2048 is a political statement and puts no obligation on member states to adopt it.
Neither document considers the wider impact on sex-based rights (I'd say they can't because they come from the sex is a construct side of the debate) or even acknowledges a conflict with the human rights of other groups, something which actual human rights law very carefully considers.
Verdict: Not human rights law.