Labour’s women and equalities minister supported transgender people being able to declare their own gender.
Anneliese Dodds, who has replaced Kemi Badenoch, backed proposals that would have allowed anybody to acquire a gender recognition certificate if they wanted one.
Gender self-identification was official Labour policy under both Jeremy Corbyn and Sir Keir Starmer.
The now-Prime Minister only scrapped the policy after the backlash to Nicola Sturgeon’s failed attempt to introduce it in Scotland in early 2023 via the Gender Recognition Act.
Upon being appointed shadow minister for women and equalities in September 2021, Ms Dodds made it clear that she supported self-ID, which would revoke the existing requirement for a formal medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria.
In a speech at the Labour Conference, she said that a Labour government would acknowledge “that trans rights are human rights” and “reform the Gender Recognition Act to enable a process for self-identification while continuing to support the 2010 Equalities Act”.
Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary who is technically Ms Dodds’ superior as women and equalities minister, has also been an outspoken advocate of transgender policy reform.
In May, she accused Mrs Badenoch of loving “nothing more than a culture war” in response to the then women and equalities minister’s claim that some girls were getting urinary tract infections from not wanting to use gender-neutral lavatories in schools.
She also declined to commit to keeping the Conservatives’ new sex education guidance, which says that it should not be taught earlier than the age of nine and urges schools not to teach contested gender ideology.
“I do think it’s important that children have a wide understanding about their place in the world and understand that families come in different shapes and sizes, and understand issues around relationships,” Ms Phillipson told The Telegraph.
Last month, the MP for Houghton and Sunderland South suggested that Labour will also ditch guidelines banning children from being taught that there are more than two genders.
Asked three times if she would keep the ban or ditch it, Ms Phillipson refused to answer directly but said: “There are trans people within society and their existence should be recognised.”
She was also criticised for refusing eight times to answer whether a biological male should be able to use a women’s lavatory during a radio interview with LBC.
While Ms Phillipson will formally hold the women and equalities portfolio because it has to be held by someone of Cabinet rank, Ms Dodds will be the de facto minister and attend Cabinet.
Some extracts from a much longer article https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/07/08/where-does-anneliese-dodds-stand-on-gender/
Can also be read at https://archive.ph/Z0stm
Worth remembering that following the GE, even if every over party voted against a Labour policy, Labour would still have a majority of 112 to get it through unchallenged.