How Scottish GRA reform could impact England and Wales

[Justme56]

Information from Fair Play for Women Twitter:

For a Scottish GRC to be recognised outside of Scotland the UK Government will have to agree.

Scottish GRA reform is lowering the age to 16. This means that for the first time ever, English and Welsh schools may have to deal with teenage boys presenting their newly acquired female birth certificates to staff and demanding access to the girl's changing rooms and sports. This means that if you have daughters their rights to privacy away from the opposite sex while at school in England and Wales will be diminished by a decision in the Scottish Parliament made by MSPs you didn't vote for.

Scottish Self-ID will be open to anyone living in Scotland including those who chose to attend one of the fifteen universities in Scotland. This could mean that any child could start a university in Scotland in the Autumn and by Easter come home with a new birth certificate.

Trans groups including Stonewall know Scottish reforms will reach across the UK and are pushing to make it happen. Talks between the Scottish Government and the UK Government have already started.

Liz Truss rejected self ID saying proper 'checks and balances' are needed. Nothing has changed so if you have any concerns about this situation tell her, Nadhim Zahawi and/or your local MP. You can also highlight your concerns to the Scottish government via a short survey (closing date 17th May).

This plus further information can be found on Twitter although I guess it is also available on their website.

Thank you. I had made a note that this consultation needs responding to.

It wouldn’t even need to be university, though obviously it’s a tiny minority that attend boarding school…

The consultation is here:
yourviews.parliament.scot/ehrcj/gender-recognition-reform-bill/

More information here from MurrayBlackburnMackenzie:
murrayblackburnmackenzie.org/2022/04/27/how-to-submit-evidence-on-the-gender-recognition-reform-scotland-bill/

Couldn't this just mean inter-school sports competitions? Wouldn't need to be a boarding school. But boarders need to be protected too, I wonder if overseas parents realise what this would mean for their children boarding in Scotland?

Scottish Self-ID will be open to anyone living in Scotland including those who chose to attend one of the fifteen universities in Scotland. This could mean that any child could start a university in Scotland in the Autumn and by Easter come home with a new birth certificate.

I don't think this part is right. If the child doesn't have a Scottish birth certificate, they couldn't get their birth certificate changed using a Scottish GRC could they? There would have to be further legislation passed in the rest of the UK in order to change birth certificates issued in England, Wales or NI.

I think it's the "ordinarily resident" element that does catch that, @OldCrone (think that's the wording)

I feel like apologising on behalf of Scotland, even though I'm doing my best to fight this.

Who knows OldCrone? Nobody with any authority has ever bothered to think this through to its logical outcomes.

In fact, "ordinarily resident" would mean anyone could self-ID, then go and work in:

• boarding school
• hospital
• care home
• gynaecology
• prison

In England or Wales, where the route to a GRC has not changed.

Yes, the 'ordinarily resident' part would mean they could get a Scottish GRC, but they wouldn't be able to get a new birth certificate unless they were born in Scotland. If they were born in another part of the UK (England and Wales or NI), or elsewhere in the world, the new birth certificate would have to be issued by the same country as the original. Scottish birth records are separate from those of the other parts of the UK.

The legislation doesn't define ordinary residence (what a surprise) nor does it say someone would need to prove their residence. I don't think it matters whether or not the person who gets a GRC changes their birth certificate - they will be still have changed their legal sex and could demand to be treated as if they were of the opposite sex, I think?

There's a simple For Women Scot link for submissions to this consultation as well with guidance on the answers and optional comments box:
forwomen.scot/gender-recognition-reform-bill-call-for-views/

Well speaking to a Scottish resident today, they have absolutely no clue what is going on. Very few people do.

For such a massive, fundamental change that is going to affect everyone, and have such a devastating impact on woman in children, it is the duty of the Scottish government to make sure that every single resident is aware of the changes that are being made and the impact it will have on every single citizen.

Sturgeon can try and pretend that Scotland is so very 'woke' but Sturgeon knows that it's not the case. Your average Scot has absolutely no clue what she is up to.

Fat chance of that. Sturgeon knows full well that self ID is about as popular as rabies, hence trying to sneak it through on the QT.

Link to the full explanation of how the Scottish legislation will affect the rest of the UK. The Scottish Government is already discussing this with the UK government. I hadn't seen this when I made my earlier posts.

fairplayforwomen.com/dont-let-sex-self-id-through-scottish-backdoor/

A recent Freedom of Information response confirms that the Cabinet Office (No10) holds “correspondence between the GEO [Liz Truss’s Government Equality Office] and the Scottish Government regarding the Scottish Government’s draft Gender Recognition Reform Bill, including correspondence relating to the potential cross-border effects of the legislation in the rest of the UK”. They have refused to release the correspondence but it’s clear that talks have started.

There's only a week left to respond to the consultation.

Bumping because this is so important

For some reason the URL looks wrong but you can find this by searching "Erskine Bernard Jenkin Gender Self ID". I'll put the link (which doesn't look correct as mentioned) and some sections of it here in case of interest:

macemagazine.com/erskine/

"When the Labour government retained equal opportunities as a reserved power in the Scotland Act 1998, I was opposition constitutional affairs spokesman. I supported this on the grounds that the “imposition of draconian anti-discrimination laws has to be handled with great care, because it is all too easy to substitute one type of intolerance of minorities for another”. Holyrood, the Scottish parliament, now threatens to undermine this principle. The draft Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill would weaken women’s sex-based rights across the UK. "

"Accepting the status of Scottish GRCs would undermine reserved functions in Westminster. The Prison Act 1952 Section 47 gives the secretary of state the power to make rules for the regulation and management of prisons. Prison Rule 12 requires that male and female prisoners should normally be kept separate, for the safety and security of women prisoners. Even now, there are serious concerns that HM Prison and Probation Service must locate prisoners according to their legal sex, not according to their biological sex. Women who are born male, but who have obtained a GRC, must be treated in the same way as prisoners born female."

"The draft Scottish Bill would enable any Scottish-born citizen or person temporarily resident in Scotland to apply for a GRC, without the restrictions that apply in the rest of the UK. In other countries this has had profound consequences for women’s safety. In California, a man can self-identify as a woman and transfer to a women’s prison. Rapes of women by male bodied persons who have self-identified as women have occurred.
There is a strong case for urgent dialogue between Whitehall and the Scottish government, and Westminster and Holyrood, to address the uncertainties and risks of this Bill. It would be far better to resolve this by political dialogue, rather than through the courts."

MBM have a post on how to submit a response.

murrayblackburnmackenzie.org/2022/04/27/how-to-submit-evidence-on-the-gender-recognition-reform-scotland-bill/

You can do a short or a longer one.

I've done the forwomenscot link and was quite blistering in the last free text box.
Also bumping cos these needs all of us to respond.
If you don't want to use your own email make a new one
temp-mail.org/

Other version of throwaway emails are out there just Google.

This is really important. If you live in England/Wales/NI please, please, please respond to this consultation by the Scottish Parliamentary committee and also get in touch with your own MPs. What happens in Scotland will affect the rest of the UK even if the current UK government has paused reform of the GRA.

I had a look at both the long and short, and decided to do the short. For info, you get seven yes/no/don't know multiple choice tick box answers, as follows:

1. Do you agree with the overall purpose of the Bill?
2. Should applicants for a GRC require a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria or supporting documentation?
3. Should the period of living in an acquired gender be reduced from 2 years to 3 months (with an additional 3-month reflection period)?
4. Do you agree with the introduction of a 3-month reflection period before a GRC is granted?
5. Do you agree with the removal of the Gender Recognition Panel from the Process, with applications instead being made to the Registrar General?
6. Should the minimum age for applicants be reduced from 18 to 16?
7. Do you anticipate any negative impacts from the provisions in the Bill?

Question 8 is a free text box.

The longer version has free text boxes for each of the first seven questions, so if you want to answer any of these in depth, you should choose the longer version.

If you'd just like to race through the box ticking exercise and then rant to your hearts content quickly answer the questions with yes/no and then give one full response, the short version seems to work well.

If you chose to do the short version, tick all the boxes, and then write one short and pithy sentence in the last box, it will take around three minutes to complete.

There is no upper time limit for how long it will take should you wish to write an essay in the free text box.

Consultation completed, and email sent to Liz Truss. I have long since lost my patience with this crap.

Thanks for that link.

It's really not clear how the changes will affect the rest of the UK.

Devolved powers are legislative powers that the UK Parliament controlled in the past, but are now devolved to the legislatures in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. These include matters such as education and health. Reserved powers, as specified in the Scotland Act, for example, remain exclusively with the UK Parliament in Westminster.

Human rights are a devolved competence. The powers to pass a gender recognition act are therefore notionally devolved, but apply only if such an act does not impact on the reserved powers.

Because the effect of changing the GRC in Scotland would affect the whole of the UK if a person who had obtained one could change their birth certificate even if it had been issued in another part of the UK, I had assumed that the new self-ID Scottish GRC (if they pass this bill) would be treated like a foreign GRC: UK law does not require the UK to recognise anyone from another country who has reassigned their gender as that gender. If an individual born outside the UK has changed their legal sex status in another country, they must obtain a UK GRC for their acquired gender to be legally recognised in the UK.

But Bernard Jenkin in that article implies that the new Scottish GRC (gained through a process of self-ID) would be identical to a GRC issued in the rest of the UK using the present system. As he says:

GRCs issued by the devolved legislatures are valid in the whole of the UK.

He continues:
Accepting the status of Scottish GRCs would undermine reserved functions in Westminster.

If Scottish GRCs under self-ID are considered to be valid in the whole of the UK then passing this bill would mean that self-ID would be UK-wide, requiring only a short trip to Scotland for those who do not have a Scottish birth certificate.

Since such a result means there is an impact on the reserved powers of the UK parliament, does that mean that the Scottish parliament does not have the power to change the GRA in Scotland?

If they can change the GRA and affect the whole of the UK in this way, it would mean that we would have self-ID in the whole of the UK on the terms preferred by the Scottish parliament, with no input from the rest of the UK and without any debate in the UK parliament.

OldCrone

Yes I think this is it. It seems like an overreach, even if (and who knows) doing this is technically or legally permissible.

MPs need to ask themselves: if Scottish Parliament can do it with this, then what other area of law can they do it with? Where does it end?

I can't see how this is democratically acceptable to everyone else outside Scotland.