“No Plans” To Change Trans Youth Healthcare In Gender Recognition Act Reform

Liz Truss, the U.K. Equalities Minister, says there are “no plans” to change access to transgender peoples healthcare, under reform of the Gender Recognition Act (GRA).

In response to a letter from the transgender youth charity Mermaids, she says there are no plans to change the gender recognition act to apply to under 18s:

“As you will know, the Gender Recognition Act does not currently enable those under 18 to apply for a Gender Recognition Certificate and there are no plans for this to change,” she wrote.

She also again committed to “not rolling back the rights of transgender people in the U.K.”

Further adding: “Everyone, including transgender people, must receive the healthcare and support they need. I am also committed to ensuring children and young people are able to access appropriate and timely psychological and medical support.”

Responding to the letter in a statement, Mermaid’s Lui Asquith, Head of Legal and Policy, says:

“The past few months have been fraught with hazardous speculation around the impact of potential GRA reforms, and we have raised our service users’ concerns with parliamentarians, allies and the wider public in the hope that any changes brought forward are to the benefit of trans lives.

“We refrain from pre-empting the Government’s response to the GRA consultation, though we are hopeful that the Prime Minister will remain true to his past commitments to LGBTQ+ acceptance and equality.”

The news is significant, as it is the first update on reform of the Gender Recognition Act which U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised would come “over the summer.”

He made those comments while re-announcing a two year old policy pledge to ban gay conversion therapy. He was asked to respond to a leaked document that said plans to reform the GRA had been scrapped.

Plans to introduce self-identification would make the current process of changing your gender shorter, removing the current arduous medicalised transition route. This was among the measures, the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) consultation proposed.

It suggested removing the need for a panel of doctors to certify an individual’s transition. Instead, trans people would make a sworn declaration in front of a judge to attest their decision to change gender.

This process, known as self-identification, was adopted under plans drawn up under Theresa May’s previous Conservative administration.

The response today from Liz Truss also comes after a protest, about the apparent scrapping of GRA reform, was forced to cancel this weekend after police warned protestors they could face arrest.

When will the U.K. Government Announce Their Gender Recognition Act Reforms (GRA)?

News about GRA reform is now overdue, and follows years of delays and stalling from the Conservative Government and successive Equalities Ministers.

However, this latest letter suggests more could be expected to come in the following weeks and months.

But it’s long not been a priority for the current administration. On the first day Boris Johnson came to power, plans to make changing your gender easier in the U.K. were kicked into the long grass.

This summer, trans charity Gendered Intelligence said they’d been informed, an announcement was expected from Equalities minister Liz Truss in the House of Commons.

They were expecting wide ranging changes, some which could have brought new rules about single sex spaces. This led the charity to create a huge letter-writing campaign warning against some of the leaked plans. But this announcement did not materialise when the equalities minister Liz Truss appeared at the dispatch box.

“I believe that activism has made a difference. We were facing a potential rollback on transgender rights in June,” Rico Jacob Chace, Director at TransActual, who supported the recent cancelled GRA reform protest, told me.

“And now as the general public has overwhelmingly supported the change, the three years wait for the outcome of the GRA reform may be nearing an end. The intolerant society we live in today is indirectly and, in some cases, directly cutting our lives short. Therefore we are far from a celebration, so we keep striving forwards.”

For Mermaids, the charity which advocates for young trans people and their families, this commitment is good news – but could also have been a great deal better:

“While we are relieved to hear now that the GEO has no plans to introduce new barriers of access to trans young people, we had hoped for some positive change.

“We again call for under 18s to be given the opportunity to update their birth certificates in line with other forms of identification such as passports. The GEO letter would imply that the Minister has made up her mind on the matter, stating: ‘there are no plans for this to change’.