Ministers may close loophole allowing people to self-identify on passports and driving licence

[IwantToRetire]

Ministers are considering closing a “major loophole” that allows people to self-identify their gender on passports and driving licences.

At present there is no requirement for people to present a gender recognition certificate (GRC) if they want to change the sex recorded on official government documents.

Freedom of information requests show that between 2018 and 2022, HM Passport Office approved more than 3,000 requests for people to change their “sex marker”.

Campaigners say the loophole creates “self-ID by the back door” and leads to a danger that single-sex spaces for women and girls could be compromised, because passports and driving licences are commonly used for identification in normal life.

<a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/o/HmvrC/www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/12/28/kemi-badenoch-pips-suella-braverman-grassroots-tory-award/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Kemi Badenoch, the equalities minister, wants to close the loophole but needs the support of other departments.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/12/31/gender-sex-passport-legal-loophole-kemi-plans-change/

Looks like Kemi look at all aspects of this, including what has become "custom and practice" without ever being policy.

Complete article can be read here https://archive.ph/HmvrC

(Is this new, or is this the Telegraph just putting out a pro KB article for the new year?)

Someone has said this in the comments.

“Women's groups begged Lammy not to push it through but he brushed aside their concerns. He then described women as "dinosaurs hoarding their rights"

David Lammy was Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs in 2003. Did that make him the government lead on the GR Act 2004?

I really do wish this loophole were closed. It made the English census so complex last time round that people had to litigate to get the guidance notes changed to ensure they were correct as to what sex means - women won that one thankfully and the notes had to be changed.

Yes, it's a start.

However males with GRCs still need to be prevented from removing single sex accessibility for females who need it.

There is no limit to how many men can get GRCs. Having raped a woman or worse is no barrier at all to getting one. Many men who want to be in women's spaces have no interest or care whatsoever as to the impact they have or how many women they exclude so long as they get what they want. And why is it ok for men to use women in their lives anyway? How does a piece of paper make that any less awful in its inequality and sexism to women? It's no good saying 'well we've kept all the men who don't have a legal lie on paper out of women's spaces' because that does not stop the exclusion and harm to women who need single sex spaces.

Not mixed sex spaces pretending to be single sex to enable freedom of male self expression. Let's not just paper over the real issues which is that women need single sex spaces regardless of how men feel about it.

Is there not a petition about it too?

Nor will this address the other bloody great mammoth cantering about, which is that is does not matter whether a man has a GRC or not because you cannot ask for it. Nor is anyone standing on the door of women's facilities, checking credentials.

By walking into a women's single sex space or demanding a women's resource a man is implying that he has one, and trading on those assumed given rights which include that he has a legal right to be there and cannot be challenged. The issue is not loop holes, the issue IS GRCs.

I’m glad any loophole will be changed but agree this is a major issue still

We need someone to point out the Emperor's new clothes and insist on legal definitions for sex and gender.

TRAs insist that "everyone knows" these are not the same, while consistently campaigning as if they were.

GRC shouldn't change sex since that is impossible. Sex markers on passports, driving licences, birth certificates shouldn't be altered because of change of "gender" since these are not the same.

They could campaign for a discussion on whether it's necessary to have sex or gender markers on driving licences and passports at all - I have no particular view on that.

There was a similar article in this morning’s Times. I thought it was interesting that the last paragraph stated that the ability to change passports etc was only permitted in the first place to allow people to marry (because same sex marriage wasn’t legal at the time). All of the current nonsense was never intended, it’s an unfortunate side effect.

The original point of the GRA was this. To enable same sex marriage prior to it becoming legal anyway.

What many of us didn't realise was that it was the trojan horse that would lead to the situation we are now in.

I think it is clear now that it was never a case of unintended consequences. It was proosed for these very consequences.

He was a big part of the debates around the GRA.

He's nuts deep in this, and has been for years. He believe men can grow a cervix too, so hes really clued up.

Helpful thread featuring Lammysaurus:

x.com/hairyleggdharpy/status/1049299981981470720?s=46&t=WHoOZ_3Kv5G6-FyQuvE0LQ

For those still on TwitterX, this thread has extracts from the original Hansard debates about the GRA https://twitter.com/HairyLeggdHarpy/status/1177699186361458688

It's all there! Everything we've been saying for years.

This.

Thanks for the links,I’m not on xtwitter so can only read one tweet not the whole thread.

Hansard link to second reading. https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/2004/feb/23/gender-recognition-bill

I’ve copied a few David Lammy quotes over. I know many regulars on here know all this already, but it’s so striking how the bill was presented as being for a tiny number of people with a medical condition. Absolutely no suggestion, at least at second reading, that there were tens of children in every high school in the land with this as a medical condition.

“The Bill provides transsexual people with the opportunity to gain the rights and responsibilities appropriate to the gender in which they are now living. At present, transsexual people live in a state of limbo. Their birth gender determines their legal status.”

“The Bill deals specifically with people with gender dysphoria who present themselves as having acquired a new gender because they are driven to that by the medical condition surrounding gender dysphoria.”

“The Bill has a long history. It has emerged from about 20 hours of scrutiny in another place and is the product of much prior thought and consultation with stakeholders —we were determined to get it right. The Government have been working on issues affecting transsexual people since 1999. The interdepartmental working group on transsexual people published its report in April 2000 and was reconvened in 2002 to resolve finally the many difficult technical issues involved in changing a person's legal status. That work led to our announcement on 13 December 2002 that legislation would he introduced, and to the publication of a draft Bill on 11 July 2003.”

“Without legal recognition of their acquired gender, transsexual people face a wide range of problems. Frankly, there may be few other matters that are quite so personal, yet because of the disjuncture between their birth gender and the gender in which they are now living, transsexual people may have to describe their gender history to complete strangers when they seek insurance or employment, or when they visit their child's school. The Gender Recognition Bill will ensure that this intensely private matter remains private.

More than that, transsexual people currently have no access to the legal rights and responsibilities of their acquired gender. Although a person may have lived as a man for many years, for example, because his legal status remains that of a woman he is entitled to marry only another man—he may not marry a woman. After a proper process of transition under medical supervision, and after the determination of the judicial panels that this Bill provides for, we think it right that transsexual people should have access to the rights and responsibilities of the acquired gender.”

“Gender dysphoria is, after all, a medical condition whereby a person feels driven to live in the opposite gender. To be reminded of the original gender, to be regularly confronted by it, and to have others knowing that one suffers from that medical condition and to know that they might be talking about it is not conducive to feeling secure and it makes it very difficult to live in the acquired gender in dignity. “

John Bercow “I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. In fact, I am trying to be helpful to him. I support this Bill. It is fair-minded, it should certainly get a Second Reading and I hope that it progresses successfully through the House, but may I politely point out that it would probably help at this stage if the Minister were able—in response to the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) and others who are quizzical on the point—to confirm that in advancing the rights of transsexuals, which the Bill correctly does, he will guarantee that the rights of other people who could be affected in the process will not suffer in any way? That is the only assurance that the Minister need give.”

It’s noticeable that several MPs talk about being approached by their constituents.

Lynne Jones: “This is a big day for me: we are about to approve legislation for which I have campaigned for more than 10 years. The Parliamentary Forum on Transsexualism was established 10 years ago almost to the day, in February 1994, with the support of members of both main political parties. I pay tribute to the former Conservative Member of Parliament for Chislehurst, Roger Sims, and the former Member for Montgomery, Alex Carlile, who is now in the other place and who has participated actively in the Bill's progress there. We set up the forum to campaign for civil rights for transsexual people who were being subjected to appalling discrimination and anxiety.

This issue first came to my attention in 1993. Like the hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell), I became involved largely through learning of the personal experience of constituents and, subsequently, other transsexual people with whom I came into contact over the years.”

“We organised our first fringe meetings at the party conferences in 1995. I pay tribute in particular to Christine Burns, who is vice-president of Press for Change, because she spoke at fringe meetings at the Conservative party conference, as she was an active member of the Conservative party at that time.”

This contribution to the second reading debate was interesting…

Andrew Selous: “When we talk about the issue it is tremendously important that we express both sympathy and compassion for those who suffer gender dysphoria and that we do all in our power to help people in that condition with some of the practical everyday problems that they face in their lives. At the same time, however, it is important that we are rigorously intellectually honest with what we are about to ask the House to do. My fear is that we are not being as rigorously intellectually honest as we should be.

I ask the House to pause and consider exactly what it is that we are planning to do when we are prepared to say that someone born a biological man will be regarded, with the full force of the law, as a woman, and vice versa. That has profound implications for our Parliament and we should reflect on that. My feeling is that we are not going about the Bill's sensible ambitions to deal with practical problems, which we all want addressed, in the right way and are not applying the right, the appropriate or the really honest solutions.”

“I hear what the hon. Lady says, but I challenge her and any other hon. Member to produce a list of experts in the field who genuinely believe that the matters are absolutely predetermined physiologically and genetically. I am not saying that there is no physiological element. However, a number of the doctors at the two main centres in this country which deal with the condition—the unit at the Charing Cross hospital and the Portman clinic—have gone into print, and have suffered considerable hostility as a result, saying that they do not share that view. Even research undertaken in the Netherlands is not accepted as conclusive.“

”I am simply making a general point that a range of factors cause gender dysphoria, and they are principally psychiatric conditions. Reference has been made to the fact that in every case people who want to change their gender have been preconditioned genetically and physiologically so to do. I am not questioning their right to do so or the fact that they face discrimination. I am merely making the point, which I think a large number of clinicians and others accept, that this is a psychiatric matter as much as it is a matter of genetics or is in any way preordained.

I have not yet heard in the debate a proper answer to the case of those transsexuals who move from one gender to the other and then back again. That supports my case that these matters are not inherently determined in people's genes. People who choose to go back to their original gender do exist, “

The thread hasn't been archived I'm afraid. My link was to this. It would be good to see these two debate the GRA again, 20 years on:

Tim Loughtonn* (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con) As we have not made much progress on the thorny issue of pension rights, may I ask the Minister about another practical implication of the Bill? Will prisoners be liable to apply for a gender change certificate if they started that exercise before they became prisoners? If so and they are granted a certificate, what will be the accommodation arrangements for that prisoner? Will he or she have to be moved, or is this something else that the Government need to think about but have not, as with pension rights?
§
Mr. Lammyy* Prisoners can apply and that person will be subject to prison arrangements for their new acquired gender. We are talking about a very small group of people and the hon. Gentleman knows that that situation would arise in limited circumstances.
§

Sadly I am not sure if this would be possible legislatively before the election.

Given the recent judgement confirming a persons legal sex is the same as on their birth certificate unless they hold a GRC, are DVLA and PO acting lawfully?

We need to repeal the gra. It was bad law.

Just posted this on the other thread…

You don’t even need a doctor’s note to change the sex marker on a passport, you can just use the ‘crossdresser’ option 😬

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/634ea3aad3bf7f61877597a0/Gender_recognition__V17_For_GOV.UK_publication_.pdf

That's a rum do. So anyone can get a cross-sex passport by doing a pinky swear that they have a consistent cross-sex identity. The UK passport is basically the gold standard ID in this country, if you are male on your passport, you're effectively male to most intents and putrposes. And vice-versa

Yes it seems so.

And it is staggering that this was ever allowed to happen.

Logically if this is all that is needed why didn't they allow it across all sectors.

Its never clear if this is really just complete shoddy bureaucracy or part of a wider agenda to gradually erode the reality of sex.

I lobbied Andrew Selous extensively during the GRA reform. He has been to my house.
I also wrote him many letters, and he replied to each of them. He has three daughters - he gets it.

Kemi for leader of the tory party!
Imagine her against wet wipe Keir when he sadly wins the next election. Fabulous.

Kemi for leader of the tory party!

Maybe but do you think she will want to be Leader of the Opposition?

No chance to tell civil servants to sort out the mess made over the past few years (few decades)?