Gender recognition certificate cost cut to £5

[Justhadathought]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56972195

"The fee to apply for a gender recognition certificate has been cut to £5, the government has announced.Ministers pledged in September to slash the cost of legally changing gender from £140 after deciding against wider reforms.

Women and Equalities Minister Liz Truss said the reduction removed a "barrier" for transgender people. While cost has been cited as an obstacle to applying, some LGBT groups say more work is needed.
The announcement comes nearly a month after the BBC revealed that the figure would be reduced.

A consultation was set up in 2018 to explore potential reforms to the way transgender people can apply for a gender recognition certificate (GRC) in England and Wales. This allows someone's acquired gender to be recorded on their birth and marriage certificates"

[quote OhHolyJesus]I'm sure others have seen the comments in Twitter already, I'm just leaving this here, partly as a place marker to be back to read more later.

twitter.com/kathrynbristow/status/1389502158350004224?s=21[/quote]
If you scroll down you will see they then later tweeted that they don't see why a birth certificate should list someone's sex at all. I mean... how can anyone actually believe that in all good conscience?

[quote OhHolyJesus]I'm sure others have seen the comments in Twitter already, I'm just leaving this here, partly as a place marker to be back to read more later.

twitter.com/kathrynbristow/status/1389502158350004224?s=21[/quote]
fucks sake do they never stop dragging in people with DSD?

permanent state of play is
"these are our demands, give into every single one of them, oh and by the way stay awake because by tomorrow we'll be back with new ones!!!"

Will it lower my car insurance costs if I got a certificate saying M on it? Just asking.

And here we have it, "removing access to women's spaces" [unless post op]

Yes, I thought it a useful demonstration of several points made earlier and a reminder of what is the core of the 'demands'.

@Pandoraslastchance might try it when I pass my driving test (I’m a terrible driver but my partner wants me to do a test for emergencies if he’s not here)

[quote ProudExclu]@Pandoraslastchance might try it when I pass my driving test (I’m a terrible driver but my partner wants me to do a test for emergencies if he’s not here) [/quote]
I have my test this week, thanks for the tip

But I thought most trans people don't hold a GRC anyway....I think they will soon be redundant. There is no logical reason now for the legal fiction that people can become the opposite sex.

I paid >£400 to have my daughter assessed for Dyspraxia.
Just saying.

Reducing the cost of GRCs is fine, but the fee should cover the costs of administration - find it hard to believe that it could ever do that. I get that Liz Truss has made the calculation it's worth it to take away one of the sticks the govt is being beaten with (and the numbers are low anyway), but it is an example of special treatment.

So does this mean we can resurrect Man Friday and it will only cost us a fiver to get our GRCs so that the police can no longer be called to remove us, we can't be told we're "not really men" etc?

My mother never got her UK citizenship as the price continually spiralled out of control and they kept adding more hoops to jump through turning it into a massive money spinner

I won't get my 'official' ASD diagnosis unless I go private.

There are so many things in this world aren't fair, a GRC should at least cover the costs of administration.

I posted this before when they were thinking about bringing the cost below £10, but this sets a terrible benchmark for favouring some groups’ interests unequally over others.

It obfuscates government’s position on why some government administration is not chargeable at all to the user, why some administration should be subsidised by the taxpayer (like it is here) and why some government administration is charged at cost and other administration at a small or massive profit. Have the government said anything to justify this change apart from ‘being kind’?!

Gov.Uk website should publish framework of why they charge the users as they do and how much it costs to actually provide the services across all of government administration for things like this, though I know they never will.

This move also solves nothing of the more fundamental problems with GRA which will continue to be controversial from all sides. It seems like a bit of a waste of time if MPs thought this price cut would defuse disagreement over this and buy goodwill.

Apologies for recycling this post, I don’t have time to check this year’s figures but the point stands.

The fee for getting a GRC is now going down from £140, because some people complained about the cost (when a consultation asked them for views on cost). Why are taxpayers subsiding this? Is this how we consult and make government policy now? When the public purse hugely profiteers on top of its government admin costs, in other situations, apparently quite happily? And is consulting anyone on this, let alone bringing in ‘nominal’ fees.

For example people who have lived and worked and paid tax in this country for years have to pay indefinite leave to remain fees of £2,389 + £££ of extras per person. www.gov.uk/government/publications/visa-regulations-revised-table/2020

Coram Centre have said the Home Office makes a 90% profit out of these fees. www.childrenslegalcentre.com/home-office-fees-2019/

So which is it, government? Can government administration costs be cut down to £5 after a public consultation?
Or is it essential and justifiable for government admin to cover its own costs, and profit on top of its own costs by 90%?
I’m sure they’ll be announcing the immigration fee consultation any day now since they’re all about the ‘being kind’.

@ChattyLion

Apologies for recycling this post, I don’t have time to check this year’s figures but the point stands.

The fee for getting a GRC is now going down from £140, because some people complained about the cost (when a consultation asked them for views on cost). Why are taxpayers subsiding this? Is this how we consult and make government policy now? When the public purse hugely profiteers on top of its government admin costs, in other situations, apparently quite happily? And is consulting anyone on this, let alone bringing in ‘nominal’ fees.

For example people who have lived and worked and paid tax in this country for years have to pay indefinite leave to remain fees of £2,389 + £££ of extras per person. www.gov.uk/government/publications/visa-regulations-revised-table/2020

Coram Centre have said the Home Office makes a 90% profit out of these fees. www.childrenslegalcentre.com/home-office-fees-2019/

So which is it, government? Can government administration costs be cut down to £5 after a public consultation?
Or is it essential and justifiable for government admin to cover its own costs, and profit on top of its own costs by 90%?
I’m sure they’ll be announcing the immigration fee consultation any day now since they’re all about the ‘being kind’.

This (and the post before you) articulates exactly what my issues with this are. If they're going to bring the costs of all administrative work right down then that's fine but I cannot see how it can be justified to have the GRC process subsidised over other administrative processes which are all just as important to the applicants. The price of the leave to remain application is absolutely shocking !

Tbh I'd happily throw mine in the bin as it's literally not worth the paper its written on now.

Would your husband (if you have one) be happy to be married to a man?

Will be interesting to see if the cost reduction leads to more people getting one.

I'm struggling to think of any reason why a trans person would bother regardless of the cost.

Thanks to the Stonewall influence of teaching organisations the law they desire, rather than the law as it is no person or organisation in their right mind would dare to ask for evidence of one.

@Anovaneway

Tbh I'd happily throw mine in the bin as it's literally not worth the paper its written on now.

Would your husband (if you have one) be happy to be married to a man?

Well as my boyfriend knows I'm biologically male, and the fact he knew my history before we started dating, the simple answer is yes.

As for us marrying, we were tentatively talking about it before COVID-19 hit, so that's a yes too.

Private medical reports cost about £500 each, plus cost and time of attending.

It’s a lot of money, granted.

From my family’s perspective, both my mum and my sister are significantly disabled, my sister from birth and my mum from age 62. They are both on enhanced PIP. My sister’s PIP is topped up with ESA, my mum’s is topped up with a state pension and an occupational pension. Their combined care package is 460 hours/month. My sister contributes £84/month and mum £280/month towards the cost of their care. This is a lifelong contribution.

I very much doubt this will have any impact on the number of people applying for GRCs. They are a homophobic initiative to get around gay marriage being illegal. Now that it is, there's no need for them.

Humans can't change sex.

Honestly, I think the way forward is clear water between sex & gender, & increased awareness of the EQ2010 as the legal position.

So yes, GRC certificates for a fiver, no problem. In fact, make them a free download. Print them off for free.

However, they should then have no bearing on matters pertaining to sex.

What bothers me is that they are called Gender Change Certificates. Gender is not a legal concept - how can it be? They should be renamed Sex Change Certificates because they are legally changing their sex and not their gender. (Whether you think that should be allowed etc, is different - I'm just saying we should call a spade a spade.)

I get where you're coming from but it's not accurate to say sex reassignment or sex change as no one can change their sex (also sex isn't "assigned" unless you believe in a creator God ).

@Daisylion
I don't disagree with what you are saying, but the point is, this is a legal construct. Gender simply has no meaning, or at least not one that you can pin down. They are changing their legal sex, but of course whether of not you believe someone can "really" change their sex is up to you. Ultimately it is sex that is changing - there's no rule or law that girls have to like pink and kittens, or boys trains and killing people (I joke, but only a little...). One can be of a female sex, but a stereotypical (yes, awful sexist stereotype), butch, cropped haired, rugby playing lesbian, but still unambiguously a legal women. If though you get the operations necessary and change your "gender" aren't you legally changing your sex? That is just what it is - legal recognition that you have a different sex.
(And I think the whole language of assignment is wrong anyway - unless you are intersex then you are a female or male at birth, and you later legally change this) - appreciate this isn't going to make me popular with current trends, but I do think this is what is going on here.
Sex is a legal construct, gender is simply not. A so-called Gender Recognition Certificate should be renamed a Legal Sex Change Certificate, because legally it allows you to "become" for all legal practical purposes of the other sex.