A general election is likely within the next 18 months, and people are panicking about how they are going to pay their bills and mortgages. Yet both major political parties seem fixated instead on the alleged clash between transgender rights and the rights of women. Labour spent the weekend behind closed doors at its national policy forum, and within a day the shadow equalities minister, Anneliese Dodds, wrote a piece laying out the party’s conclusions on the “reform” of transgender rights.
As Dodds pointed out, the Tories are cynically using this debate as a front in the culture war – a handy distraction from the legacies of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss and their mismanagement of the economy, and one they hope will play well to their key demographics. But Labour is using it for its own ends, too, as yet another area in which the leadership wishes to ride the horse in two directions at once.
There is also the need for the Labour party to distance itself from the SNP position in Scotland, where it hopes to gain seats. More of this later. Meanwhile, transgender folk are fed up with broken promises, and tired of being treated as a political football.
No formal policy document has yet been issued – the article written by Dodds and her comments on Twitter when sharing the story are all that we have at the moment. But once again, the proposals give every impression that no one who really understands trans issues, or the relevant law, has been involved.
As recently as 2021, Keir Starmer was promising he would introduce self-identification for trans people, removing the requirement for a medical diagnosis in order to obtain a gender recognition certificate. Yet that is now absent from Labour’s plans. Why, when Labour claims to want to “modernise” the process? Self-ID is working well in countries around the world: Argentina and Ireland, among others, have led the way.
Dodds speaks of the need for a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, seemingly unaware that the medical profession is rapidly moving towards using “gender incongruence” instead – it is increasingly difficult to find a specialist medical practitioner willing to provide a diagnosis of “gender dysphoria”.
Dodds describes the Scottish government’s attempt to introduce self-ID – which was blocked by Westminster – as “cavalier”. This is both disingenuous and inaccurate. The gender recognition reform bill in Scotland was supported by the Scottish Labour party and a majority of Scottish MSPs, after a six-year process involving two public consultation exercises.
Labour promises to change the demeaning, intrusive process that the current Gender Recognition Act (GRA) requires, but Dodds is wrong to say that “a panel of anonymous doctors” currently makes the decision. The panel consists of both doctors and lawyers. She describes this as “meaningless in practice”, and there she is right – but her solution is to retain the involvement of a doctor in requiring a diagnosis, saying that retaining medical involvement “upholds legitimacy of applications and confidence in the system”. Why, trans people will ask, can they still not be trusted when they say who they are? And why do non-binary people not get a mention?
Discussion of the need to “protect women and girls from predators” is reminiscent of the kind of things written about gay people in the dark days of section 28 in the 1980s. In failing to make clear (as I hope she means) that she is referring to predatory men, not trans people, Dodds feeds those scaremongering tropes. There is no mention of the fact that possessing a gender-recognition certificate is not a key to access single-sex spaces. When were you last asked for a birth certificate at a toilet or changing-room door?
The fence-sitting is clearest when in one breath Dodds talks about “biological women” and “providing legal clarity for the providers of single-sex services” (both battle cries of those who seek to exclude trans people), followed in the next breath by the claim that trans people will be “accepted, without exception” (a Stonewall slogan). Advances in equality don’t come by splitting the difference between those who seek to advance rights and those who want them reduced. That just leads to stagnation.
Labour’s position is garlanded with fine words – of leading, and of not taking lectures – and by the Labour party’s record of passing the Gender Recognition Act of 2004 and the Equality Act of 2010. But history is a little distorted here: the UK government was dragged into the GRA 2004 by European legal cases and the trans campaign group Press for Change. However, the Labour party really can take the credit for the courage it showed in enacting the 2010 Act, against determined opposition.
It’s true that responsible politics is not about doing what is easy, but doing what is right. Trans people and their allies now know they will be better off under Starmer, Dodds and Cooper than Sunak, Badenoch and Braverman. But what they expect to see from Labour is the courage and integrity that led to the Equality Act reflected in the party’s next manifesto.
The verdict on what we have seen so far is “must try harder” and, for goodness sake, have the integrity to properly involve trans people in the process. We and our relatives, friends and allies can then get behind you to make the next parliament another proud point in Labour’s history of advancing LGBTQ+ rights.
Robin Moira White is a discrimination barrister at Old Square Chambers, London, and joint author of A Practical Guide to Transgender Law
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