 Good morning, and welcome to the 19th meeting of session six of the Equality, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee. We have no apologies for this morning's meeting. The first item today is to continue taking evidence on the Gender Recognitions Scotland Bill, and I welcome to the meeting our first panel, Professor Alice Sullivan, head of research, UCL, social research institute, who is joining us virtually, and Robin White, barrister at Old Square Chambers. I permit fair members to papers I will invite our witnesses to make short opening statements starting with Professor Sullivan, please. Fundamental demographic variable and a powerful predictor of almost every dimension of social life. Sex is a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010 and it is essential for equality's monitoring. EA2010 includes a public sector equality duty to monitor and publish data on the protected characteristic of sex. We need consistent and accurate data on sex, make comparisons over time and between countries and to evaluate the effect of policy interventions. Sex is not the same thing as gender identity and we need data on both these variables. I'm a quantitative social scientist with over 20 years of experience in the collection at analysis of population data. Between 2010 and 2020, I was director of the 1970 British cohort study, often described as one of the jewels in the crown of British social science. My views on the importance of sex as a basic variable, which needs to be collected in both administrative and survey data, are not controversial among quantitative social scientists. In 2019, 80 quantitative social scientists signed a letter that I coordinated to the UK Census authorities expressing concern regarding their plans to advise respondents that they may respond to the sex question in the census in terms of their self-identified gender identity. The signatories included demographers, epidemiologists, statisticians, sociologists and economists. They included 10 fellows of the British Academy and several past and present leaders of major data sets. In 2021, Scotland's chief statistician released draft guidance stating that public bodies should not routinely collect data on sex. 91 eminent quantitative social scientists signed a letter that I coordinated objecting to the guidance. Those objections were ignored. Final guidance states that data on biological sex should only be recorded in a small number of instances. In contrast to that, the UK statistics authority guidance recommends that sex, age and ethnic group should be routinely collected and reported in all administrative data and in-service process data and should clearly distinguish between the concepts of sex, gender and gender identity. One might assume that there's no reason why the legislation we're considering would affect data collection. This would be an understandable assumption, but it would be a mistake. When the 2004 Gender Recognition Act was introduced, it was designed to cater to a tiny number of transsexual people suffering severe psychological distress. The act was not intended to raise barriers to the collection of data on sex. And yet this has been one of the unintended consequences of the legislation. Public bodies have taken the message from the wording of section 9 that people can switch legal sex over their lifetime, not just for certain legal purposes, but completely. And section 22 of the act has contributed to over caution on the collection of data on sex. Legislators must give serious consideration to the likelihood that introducing gender self declaration in law will reinforce an existing reluctance to ask about sex. And even small numbers of cases where sexism is classified and introduced substantial error in data analysis, particularly in cases where sex differentials are large, such as crime statistics. And the number of trans-identified people has risen rapidly, particularly among youth, especially girls. According to a large US study, one in 2,000 female undergraduates identified as transgender in 2008, but this rose to 5 per cent in 2021. When the experiences of these young people are so important, we need accurate data on sex as well as gender identity to understand their outcomes, both for those who medically transition and the majority who do not. Yet, even within the health system, this data is being erased. For example, the wellbeing of children transitioning at the kids' service has not been followed up over time because their NHS number changes post-transition. Where organisations adopt legal sex as an apparently safer category to ask than sexics itself has happened in a census in England and Wales, larger numbers of people with GRCs under self-declaration will imply a larger impact on data collection and analysis. Finally, without data on sex as well as gender identity, we will not be able to evaluate the impact of the proposed reform. Serious policy evaluation will be rendered unfeasible. Thank you. Thank you, Professor Sullivan. Good morning. I'm a barrister practising from old square chambers in London. I'm also a trans woman, the first to transition in practice at the UK discrimination bar. I've split this statement into the professional and personal, and I've provided a longer form of the statement via the administration to keep within the two-minute guideline. Professional. I practice in employment and discrimination law, and I act across the whole UK, including the Scottish tribunals, and I act for pursuer and defender with approximately equal frequency. That includes trans cases. In the longer form statement, I've given some examples, a couple of cases, in each direction. The legal directory, chambers and partners, has described me as the go-to lawyer for trans cases. I write, speak and lecture regularly on trans matters. In May 2021, I published a practical guide to transgender law jointly with my chambers colleague Nicola Neubigan. I gave evidence to the Westminster Women in Equality Select Committee investigation into reform of the Gender Recognition Act in February 2021. Personal. It's both an honour and a responsibility to be one of the few trans professionals giving evidence to this committee. I would undoubtedly qualify for a Gender Recognition Certificate, but have not applied for one, principally because I regard the current process as demeaning. I am who I am, and I need no one else to validate that for me. I would not have the same difficulty with a process that respected my own declaration of who I am. Thank you very much, and we'll now move on to questions, starting with Maggie Chapman, please. Thanks very much, Joe. Good morning to the panel. Thank you both for being with us this morning. Thank you for the evidence that you've provided in your opening statements and in writing as well. I've got a couple of questions to explore, and I'll start with Alice, if that's okay. I know that others are going to come on and talk more about data, so I'm going to keep my questions initially around the need for change or the case for change. Alice, can you tell us in your view is there a requirement for this reform in the first place? You talked a lot about the implications for data, but do you see there being a need for change if we can get some of the data stuff right? I appreciate that. Other people will talk about the data stuff in a moment. Okay, thank you. I am going to stick to my expertise, which is about data. The proposed reform would reduce the age of eligibility to age 16 and removal gatekeeping for a GRC, so effectively that is based on self-identification. That means that you're opening up what was a very small group of people suffering particular psychological distress to a potentially much larger group of people and a more diverse group of people as well. As I've said, that does have implications for data collection. It decouples biological sex, natal sex and legal sex for a larger group of people. We don't know how many and we don't know how they'll be distributed in the population. That means that when organisations choose to collect legal sex rather than biological sex, the impact will be much larger, because there will be a much larger group of people for whom those two things are decoupled. Given the rapid growth of sex, can I just come in there on that point? You talk about the shift to self-id will remove any gatekeeping. Do you think that the only legitimate gatekeeping is the current gender recognition panel that assesses the dysphoria diagnosis? I don't really want to comment on that because that's not my expertise. My expertise is about data collection and I assume that I've been invited here to give you my expertise rather than my opinions. I'm not going to comment on exactly what the gatekeeping should look like. All I want to say is that if you greatly open out the group of people for whom sex and legal sex are decoupled, that will have implications for data collection, particularly where organisations are already anxious about asking for people's biological sex, their natal sex, what we would normally just call their sex as opposed to their legal sex. The implications of the legal age thing are particularly important, particularly when it comes to data on youth. For example, you might think of education data, but any other data where you're thinking about youth outcomes—mental health, for example—is a massive area of policy concern for youth. We know that both the trans people and the girls have particular mental health problems. We want accurate data on gender identity and sex to follow those things up. It's important that we consider the longitudinal life-course perspective, which is a fundamental principle of social science research, which seeks to understand people's lives over time. If we erase natal sex from our data on trans people, we make it impossible to understand their life course and the obstacles that they may face. We also need to consider the possibility that gender identity might be particularly fluid for this group, which could lead to individuals changing their gender identity back and forth. That's absolutely fine—no problem with that—but sex remains fixed, so we really need data on that. I'm aware that there are a couple of my colleagues who want to drill down into some of the data questions, and you're covering some of that. I'll hand back to the convener by saying that there are different processes around data collection versus the process for obtaining a GRC. I'm not sure that we necessarily need to conflict them in this way, but I'll leave it there for now. Okay, thanks very much. Pam Duncan-Glancy, please. Thank you, convener, and good morning to our panel. Thank you for the question that you've answered so far, Professor Sullivan, and for the evidence that you've both given ahead of today. My first question is for Professor Sullivan, and it's around data. What have you learned from your research colleagues in other parts of the world where self-identification has been in place for some years, and what impact have they found on data collection? The answer to that is that it's impossible to evaluate the impact on data collection when you lose data on sex. We can only evaluate and model the impact on data collection from data sets where we've got both. For example, I referred in my opening statement to a data set that shows that there's been a big increase in trans identities, particularly among young and highly educated young women, more so than among highly educated young men. If that data set hadn't had information on the sex of the students as well as their gender identity, you simply wouldn't be able to say that. Even modelling the effect on data collection becomes impossible. That's such a vital point. Having accurate data on both sex and gender identity is essential to monitoring the impact of reform out there in the world, whether it's in sports, in prisons, in education, but it's also essential to monitoring the data quality, so if we lose the data, we can't even monitor the data quality. Is it possible, convener, to ask a question to both witnesses? My next question is for you both. You've already touched on it, Professor Sullivan, when you mentioned section 22 of the legislation. I'm keen to know from both of you what your views on how the proposed changes would affect single sex spaces, but some people have said that our laws are different and are not comparable with other parts of the world because of section 22 on protected information. What is your understanding of the impact of the changes proposed on this part of the legislation and how other countries have handled similar situations? Maybe we could start with Robin, because you've not spoken. I don't have great experience of the legal systems abroad. I can speak about the legal system in the United Kingdom. What I have noted is that countries that appear to have moved to self-id, sheets of flame don't seem to have broken out in all directions in terms of difficulties. Ireland is a jurisdiction that I'm able to have some view of, given that I have a friend or two who is an Irish lawyer, and it doesn't seem to have posed great difficulties since introduction in Ireland, as far as I can see. That expresses my view about how it's likely to be in England because trans people currently access single sex spaces that conform with their gender identity and absent the media's desire to pounce on any story they can find. Once again, there doesn't seem to be a great difficulty in that use and that use has been going on now for many, many years without difficulty. I don't see that and many of those trans people don't have a GRC at the moment, as I don't. Therefore, I don't see the change affecting the use of single sex spaces in any significant way. Are you able to comment on section 22 in particular? In what sense would you like a comment on section 22? Whether or not you think that the ability to withhold the fact that someone has a gender recognition certificate and it becomes protected information, do you think that that will be affected by the current legislation proposed? I would apply if I were a Scottish person and you would make the change that you are proposing, so I would then have the benefit of a certificate. However, the number of times that I bump into officialdom with the need for that is relatively small. Yes, there would be some additional people who achieve that protection, but the extent to which it really affects their interaction with the world around them is relatively small. There is some protection against inappropriate actions by officialdom and an ability not to bump into someone who takes a pruriant interest as to why one of your documents is different from another one of your documents. I am a fairly upfront person, so I tend to be able to deal with that circumstance fairly well, but many trans people have been through a traumatic life experience and that degree of protection from proposals like, I mean there is a proposal to make police forces record the sex of victims, for example, that is floating around at the moment. How can it be possibly relevant if you have been burgled that your legal sex is different from your gender identity? Having some protection by a section 22 would obviously be helpful in a circumstance like that. Professor Sullivan, do you have any comment on that particular aspect? Section 22 is a really interesting example of the unintended consequences of the original legislation in 2004, because the privacy requirement was obviously meant to apply to this very small group of transsexual people who might not be obviously or openly trans. When we combine that with self-id, it makes a lot less sense, but it was never ever intended, and if you read the hands-on of the 2004 legislation passing through Parliament, you never mentioned data collection, and it's very clear that this was about marriage, this legislation was about marriage and people being able to get married to who they wanted to get married to at a time when we hadn't yet passed the same sex marriage legislation. So many of the issues that we're considering now in terms of GRA reform just didn't come up in the discussions and data collection is one issue that never came up. For a long time, people were not collecting data on sex because they believed and had been advised that that would violate section 22. That has since been clarified and it's clear that, in fact, it does not contravene section 22 to collect data on sex, but we went through many years where we were losing data on sex partly because people had misinterpreted the law. As legislators, you've got to be really mindful of that. It's not just what your intended consequences are from this legislation. You've got to think really carefully about the unintended consequences. Thank you, Professor Sullivan. Did you say that section 22 would not contravene section 22 by collecting data on sex? That's right, and that was clarified very strongly in the England and Wales census case, so that is now on record. Do you see any proposals in the current draft bill as it stands that would amend section 22 in any way, or would that remain as you have just described? I can't comment on the detail of the legislation. Good morning, panel, and thank you very much for your opening statements and the information that you have provided. When I go in the back of what my colleague Pam has been talking about single sex spaces, what are your thoughts on the system being open to abusers of bad faith actors who wish to gain access? What are your thoughts on specific concerns for the women of faith? I'd like to ask that question to Robin first. Let's take that in two plans. Let's start with the bad faith actors. If I'm a bad faith actor and I want to access a woman's space, it's probably much easier to get a house coat, a bucket and a mop, than it is to go through the process of approaching officialdom and declaring yourself in some way to officialdom. I have listened to the bad faith actor arguments, and they seem to me only weakly to be relevant to what's going to be done, because I can't imagine that any significant number of bad faith actors would find the current GRC process or indeed an amended GRC process a useful way to put them in a position to occupy their bad faith. There are much easier routes for them to do that. The second part of your question was about effect on people of faith. There's a couple of things to say, but I think the first thing to say is that I assume that people of faith represent the general population, but that they have faith. That's the difference that they occupy. We know that the general population is overall supportive of trans people and supportive of trans people's integration into society. I'm not a statistician and I haven't spent time collecting the data, but I have friends and colleagues of many faiths who are supportive of trans people. One has to be careful to say that what one's dealing with is a proportion of people of faith who have a difficulty with trans identities or potentially with the effect of this bill. This bill doesn't change the protections that there are. It doesn't change the ability to exclude trans people in particular circumstances where there is a proportionate means of achieving legitimate aim. It doesn't change the balance between one protective characteristic and another. Where there is a clash between people of faith and trans people will take a parallel between people of faith and people of different sexualities, where there is an equivalent difference sometimes. Some people of faith are not supportive of people who live a lifestyle based on a different sexuality. The protections for those circumstances are in place and are not being changed by this bill. Professor Alice, do you know of anything happening anywhere else? If there is data collected on this, any bad faith actors, if things have happened anywhere else? In relation to the question for women of faith, how are the concerns on that? The difficulty is that if we don't collect the data, we don't know. Obviously, we have all read about instances in the NHS where a woman is assaulted and she is told that there was no male on the ward because they are not recorded as male. It becomes very difficult in data terms to answer the questions, and that is really important. I wanted to come back to something that Robin said about public opinion. Robin is absolutely right that public opinion is very supportive of trans rights in general, but, of course, when you ask more specific questions, like should an intact male be allowed into women-only changing rooms or should males be allowed into female sports, you get very different answers. It is important to pay attention to the detail of that. As far as women of faith go, I cannot speak for them. All I can say is that it is really important that we hear their voices. I think that this is a set of voices that have been excluded. In general, women's voices have been silenced. That is true in academia, and I have written about that, so I can talk about that. I do not want to stray away from my expertise and into opinions, but I have talked about the issue of silencing. That is something that I think should give the committee pause for thought, to be making legislation in a climate where people have been silenced in general for wanting to talk about sex and sex rights, and particular groups of women, women of faith and women of colour, are often particularly scared to speak out, and I have heard that from a number of people, because they are not only going to get the misogynistic abuse, they are also going to get racist abuse directed at them, and they are worried that it is going to be used against their communities if they do speak. I will just say to the committee, please try to hear those voices, blow down, try to create an environment where you are actively seeking out those voices and trying to feed into a climate where there is a space for people to speak. Sometimes politicians say quite incendiary things, and I think that they need to stop and think about the consequences for silencing this discussion. You are never going to get good legislation coming out of that kind of chilling climate. Just on that, I can hear just one last thing. Do you believe that it is very important that we collect data for this area so that we can see that nobody is excluded in any way through whether it is through the health system or through any bad faith actors or women of faith, making sure that nobody is excluded from services or places? Therefore, do you think that data is very important to be collected? Absolutely. More data is really important, and it is particularly important for monitoring equalities. Of course, that includes women of colour or women of faith. I hope that I am not repeating myself, but it is a question for Professor Sullivan to start off with. Last week or the week before, Dr Guyann said that data collection activities such as the requirements for the public sector equality, duty, gender pay, reporting, crime and police records and census data follow a self-ID approach. However, as you said in your opening statement, senior quantitative social scientists have argued for the importance of retaining that data on sex. Can you comment on Dr Guyann's specific comments and the conflicts that we see amongst academics? Yes. Dr Guyann is a research fellow in theatre film and television studies. I would say that he is not part of the quantitative social science community. He does not have peer-reviewed publications using large-scale population data, for example. He said that he had not met quantitative social scientists who disagree with him. Perhaps he is not mixing so much with quantitative social scientists because he is not one. He also referred in evidence to a letter regarding Scotland's census from 300 students and staff, largely based in North American universities, and he made out that these are quantitative social scientists, too. Those individuals appear to work in a range of disciplines, including creative writing and theology. That is not a letter from quantitative social scientists who use population data. It is a letter from activists who happen to be based in universities. That letter actually accused advocates for the retention of sex in UK census data of taking an abominable moral position, and they likened this to slavery, eugenics, forced sterilisation and the denial of women's suffrage. That kind of righteous veletry is not how experts speak. It is a silencing technique, and it has been accompanied by a more general bifling of discussion of sex and gender, which I have talked about. Accurate data on sex is fundamental to any analysis of the differences between women and men, boys and girls. That drive to undermine sex-based data collection has to be understood, I think, also as a form of silencing, designed to make certain facts unknowable and unspeakable. I would also like to come back to Kevin Guyann's point about saying that everything is already always self-id. I think that he was quite disingenuous there, because he tried to make out that, because we ask people their sex, so it is self-reported, that therefore that is the same thing as gender self-id. That is not the case. We ask people, for example, to self-report their age, but we do not tell them that they can make up whatever age they like. We ask them for accurate data, so I just want to make that distinction. There is a difference between self-report and self-id. I just wanted to ask you about your comments about section 9, producing unintended consequences with regards to not collecting both gender and biological data. What did you mean specifically by that? Specifically, you mean what in terms of which forms of data collection? I will say that again. What did you mean by the unintended consequences of not specifically collecting data by gender and sex within the bill, so within section 9, which you mentioned? The unintended consequences, I think, is that you cement this reluctance to collect data on sex, which we are seeing across a whole range of areas. Administrative data is really important. It is not just important for effective administration. I think that people sometimes do not understand this, that people use administrative data for research. Particularly if we do not have another census, which is quite likely that we may not, then admin data will be filling that gap. It is hugely important for research. We are already seeing problems in a range of areas. In terms of the pay gap, we are seeing the Government Equalities Office guiding employers to exclude non-binary people from gender pay gap data, so not making the distinction between sex and gender. It is not plausible, or at least we cannot test the hypothesis that non-binary people are not affected by their sex in terms of their pay unless we have data on both their gender identity and their sex. In terms of health, the NHS decides who to call for routine medical screenings based on the gender marker that they have recorded with your GP. You can change that at request. If you think about the effects for trans people, if they are not called in for screenings, because it is that gender marker that affects which screenings they are called in for, such as ovarian cancer, prostrate cancer, cervical smears and so on, the consequences for them personally are potentially fatal, but there are also consequences for health research. With crime, we know that the situation is really patchy, so there have been FOI requests, and we know that different police services are—some of them are—recording crimes by male suspects, as though they were committed by women if the perpetrator requests this, and that can lead to massive bias. It makes it impossible to interpret trends over time in the data. For example, if you have an apparent increase in females charged with rape, you do not know if that is because there have been genuinely more female accomplices charged or if that is due to an increase in males being recorded as females. As I noted in my opening statement, while being of children transitioning at the gyd's service has not been followed up over time because there are NHS number changes post transition. That is another example where we cannot actually evaluate these dramatic changes that are going on because we do not have the data. Can I ask a similar question to Robin White? Robin, I heard you talk about collecting sex data for burglary. You used that example. I wondered on the basis of what Professor Sullivan has said regarding the unintended consequences, whether there are other areas that you would like to comment on why you differ in terms of the collection of data in its definition of sex and gender, but could you comment on why it would not be right for Police Scotland to collect data on sex when it comes to more serious crimes such as domestic violence, murder, rape, abuse and such other crimes? Let us start with the example that I gave, which is the current suggested guidance from the Home Office in London, which is to collect sex data on any crime. If a trans person is living successfully in their affirmed gender and has done for many years and they are burgled, why should they have to reveal their natal sex to a police officer? Why in any way is it relevant to that crime what their natal sex was? The answer is no. The unintended consequence may be that an individual is less likely to report crime, is less likely to be protected as they should be if, in that circumstance, data is wholly unnecessarily collected, or there is always an incentive to collect more data. If there is a balance taking my example between the effect of chilling that person for reporting that crime and the state's need to know what the natal sex of someone who was burgled is, you will understand where I think the balance lies in that. Now that may be different and I acknowledge it may be different with different crimes and I haven't analysed which crimes it makes a difference in. I think one of the pieces of advice we get under the general data protection regulations these days is don't collect for example employee data unless you actually need it because then you have to protect it and store it and look after it and do all sorts of things. When I'm advising employers on data then I advise only collect the data if you really need it because then you don't have those other obligations and I think unless there's a real purpose in collecting something related to crime then it shouldn't be collected. Do you feel that we are ready for this reform when so many people are so concerned about the resource with the number of people who are self-identifying as stated in the CAS report and seeking help from gender identification clinics? Do you think we're really ready for this without the resource that's able to provide the support to people? I don't see the two things as linked in any way. Can you explain that because I'm finding it actually really difficult to understand that? It goes to the question that Ms Chapman asked at the start in terms of what is the case for reform. We had the Gender Recognition Act in 2004 which is very medicalised. We then had the Equality Act in 2010 that took away the medical intervention that there had been in the 1999 regulations and more recently the ICD have reclassified of taking away the pathology related to being trans. So the medical profession is saying that we are recognising trans as just part of life's rich tapestry in exactly the same way that homosexuality was regarded in a pathological way and then we've come to realise that it's just how a proportion of people are. Now that in my respectful view in a civilised society we should be recognising unless there's a very good reason not to people's ability to define themselves in a way that they are comfortable with. Unless there's a very good reason not to and with appropriate exceptions and derogations from that. Now the fact that they do that is there any evidence that that will lead to and I've been through a full gender reassignment process so no one needs to explain to me how difficult and how enormous a change that is in life and no one should go that through that process unless it's right for them. But the principal person deciding whether it's right for them is them. We live in a free society, people should make choices for themselves with every piece of proper advice and help that they should get and that either the state should give them or that they should obtain privately but they should be free to be who they are. I completely agree with that but obviously other people need to ask questions so I shall move on. Thank you both for coming today and being witnesses for us. I would just like to ask firstly Professor Sullivan. In regards, you spoke earlier about health records. Are you saying that a GRC erases these and what way would a GRC stop trans people accessing medical treatment and routine checks pertinent to their bodies? The point wasn't about GRCs specifically but it was about the fact that people are able to change their NHS records on request. Now that has again perhaps unintended consequences. People feel that they want to express their identity in their NHS record and I think what we need to be explaining to people about data collection is that this relates a bit to what Robin was saying earlier. Robin was taking the attitude well people have got their identities and they need to be able to express and that's absolutely fine but what we're interested in data is not making a judgment on people it's just having accurate information and so if you don't have accurate information on your health record then that will have unintended consequences that you're not called in for screening that you should be called in for because your body is what it is and then there's also implications for research where you've got people misclassified as the opposite sex when actually that's reflecting their identity which is different from their sex so I think if we could just kind of explain to people these are two different things let's respect both of these things then it could be a lot less adversarial and we could we could recognise both of these protective characteristics rather than seeing gender identity as having to be in conflict with sex. I'm in precisely that circumstance so I'm a natal male who transitioned so I still have a prostate but I don't have a cervix so I am on the register of people who are not called for cervical smears as a number of women are depends on what their life history is. No one needs to tell me what those differences are I've had to work with those and equally I am on a register of people who are called for a prostate exam even though my identity might suggest that I shouldn't do. The consequence is that when I visit my GP surgery or the new records person pulls my records or whatever then there isn't I am not outed in that way by that person seeing the records giving me an identity that he's not mine now there is a balance and I absolutely accept Professor Sullivan is right to raise those difficulties but frankly trans people are very ready and able as I have been to deal with those differences where they impact on us and to speak in the privacy of my doctor's consulting room to make plain what needs to be made plain. When it comes to NHS and data and language around that do you think that's where inclusive language and communication would be helpful so we're not being binary in those things for example you know my oldest son was asked if he could be pregnant when he went to get his Covid vaccinations and these kinds of things it's just one question one answer but there seems to be quite a you know as you spoke about earlier the discourse can be quite you know heated around this whereas it's just one question and it includes everybody do you think that's helpful in regards to so I think clear communication and accurate communication are really important and that's something that both data collection and medical communication have in common it's really really important that everybody understands what you're saying and it's important that you don't ask questions that make people think that you're making fun of them or that you know that make them think what on earth is this person saying so we've seen a lot of language which I think has been criticised as being both unclear and dehumanising particularly around women and so for example there was a notorious issue of the Lancet where they talked about people with vaginas and I'm sure you agree that Karen that you know that's not that's not necessarily how we want to be referred to people with vaginas if you ask people things like do you have a prostate do you have a uterus it's not the clearest communication so I think whether we're collecting data whether we're communicating with people in other ways we just need to be clear and accurate and communicate with people that we're not making judgments about them you know when we collect data you know to come back to something Robin said it should absolutely always be confidential it's never about outing people and I think if people understood that the way that data is handled really really carefully then maybe that would give them some reassurance yeah I think yeah in terms of language I think it has to be in context there because I'm sure somebody wouldn't introduce you know somebody as a person with a vagina unless it was in a medical or you know pertinent context so I think as well ensuring that we we keep this in the you know in the context that that is and it's not going to be used in the yeah wider aspect I think that you know it's not helpful for for discourse. Robin could I could I ask you do is there any other you know key aspects of the bill at the moment that you see is you know quite fraught with any difficulties legal wise or or other. No I think I've expressed my view that it's it's a positive move forward to recognise citizens for who they are. I know there's been some comment about age and I just wanted to make a comment about age because you'll that that is an area where you're widening the ability and I was just looking last night at and making sure that these are Scottish ages and not UK generally ages but at 16 you can marry you can be elected to a community council at 17 you have to wait till 17 to give blood the armed forces was interesting the navy will take you at 17 the RAF at 17 and six months and the army you have to wait until 17 and nine months don't quite know why but there you go but you have to wait to 18 to be a member of the Scottish Parliament or a scrap merchant or to sell alcohol to the public I'm sure those things are entirely unconnected but what that illustrates and I think what is it you have to be 35 to be president of the United States don't you society makes choices I mean there is no line at which a child becomes an adult I mean you do you have your age of legal capacity actor in Scotland as opposed to the Gillett competence that we use in England and that sets a sort of presumption at about 16 for most things as I understand it so that's a choice that you make as a as a society as to where you make that opportunity available to you I knew as a young teenager who I was and what I was and I know what choice I would have made had I been a teenager in Scotland today and I'm 58 and I know that it would have been the right choice for me easy for me to look back on that and I'm not saying that that would be the right choice for everyone or everyone would have that same degree of certainty but I can I say what I think the right age is no is it a choice that you as a society should be making yes okay thank you okay thanks very much and Maggie thanks very much Joe I just want to come come back in on a couple of things that that you said but before I do that Robin if I can come to you and just ask you you've spoken there about discussions around age and you've spoken very very clearly this morning already about self self identification and self declaration can I can I ask you what your views are on whether there should be any in your view any sort of gate keeping whether that is medical the the the gender recognition panel that currently exists that assesses dysphoria information and other evidence whether you think we should completely disentangle this process from any kind of of gate keeping or how you see that that element of the bill working I don't see a purpose for the panel I and here I I rely on my personal experience part mostly I suppose I suppose in that I've known who I was since I was an early teenager I don't need anybody to tell me that now I've been through a full gender transition it's a really really serious process and there is medical gate keeping on that process and rightly so absolutely rightly so you need to be very certain that you have the strength to go through that process but does there need to be gate keeping on declaring your identity no I don't think that does is it a serious thing yes should you should there be a formal declaration as the act as the bill provides yes should there be consequences for making a false declaration not really for me to judge but I it should be a serious thing and I think this bill would make it a serious thing do people need the three months waiting period I don't know and perhaps we can call in the services of Professor Sullivan should you happen to enact this act and do a study on who desists over three months I suspect there'll be very few and I wonder also if a person who has been living in an acquired gender for a long period of time for example needs a three month waiting period okay thank you for that Professor Sullivan Alice if I can come back to you you you were talking earlier about medical records and the need to to align medical checks screening that kind of thing with with the right the right bodies essentially and we we then heard from Robin that actually the the process of recording that information in the medical records can already happen and actually the process for getting a gender recognition certificate has nothing to do with those records so I'm just wondering why why you think that that that is that is relevant if we if the bill we are looking at is about the process for getting a GRC rather than how medical records are recorded so medical screening occurs according to the the gender marker in your records so and we know there are there have been cases of people not receiving appropriate screening because their gender marker is reflecting their gender identity and not their sex I want to be really clearer about because like I understand the concerns about confidentiality but this data should absolutely or always be confidential and if people have concerns about that then you know we need to be making sure that those concerns are addressed on the confidentiality in you know specifically rather than any particular piece of data because of course there's all sorts of stuff in your medical records that you wouldn't want all and sundry knowing things are actually far more sensitive than just your sex so and how how it relates to the legislation and just to say with sex it is a systematic variable it doesn't just affect you know it's not a cluster of bits and pieces where you know you just need to know about this organ or that organ it's a systematic variable that affects every aspect of your health and every cell in your body has a sex so not just your prostate not just your uterus every cell in your body has sex and that means you can respond differently to different treatments of course for some trans people they will have undergone treatments which are also really important for their doctors to know if I can just interrupt you there because that's not really the question I asked the question I asked was about the process for getting a GRC and because that's the bill we're considering we're not considering how medical records are stored or are held or are used or how different lists for different screening processes are managed and given that there are trans people who do not have a GRC who do and possibly do not get the medical treatment they require why does changing the process for getting a GRC have have the impact that you claim you claim it does yeah so and again I want to come back to the unintended consequences of creating an environment where people find it very very difficult to acknowledge sex if it's if it's very easy to replace your sex with your gender identity in law then how is a service provider or or a data controller going to turn around and say oh well this is acknowledged legally but we're not going to acknowledge it they I agree in principle they could but I think you'd need to think very carefully about how you're going to make really really clear not only that they can do that but you actively want them to okay okay no thanks that that's helpful my my last question to you Alice is you talked a moment ago about language being important and the use of language being important and needing to be clear and not dehumanising I was struck by one of the comments you made earlier in relation to I think it was a question in response to one of Rachel's questions on data collection and people answering questions answering the sex question on a process of self self identification or self declaration and you likened it to the age question and I think you said we don't expect people to make up whatever age they like are you saying that people make up whatever gender they like no I'm not saying they make up whatever gender they like I'm saying they have their gender identity which is very real they're not making that up but if we tell them to respond to a question on sex with their gender identity then we're asking them to give the wrong information and all I want to establish is that we should ask clearly about sex and ask clearly about gender identity and make sure that we understand both of those things because both of those things are important to people's lives everyone has a sex some people have a gender identity and the two may well intersect in people's lives so we need to understand both I didn't mean to imply that it's dishonest to answer a question in a way that you've actually been told to answer it because of course it isn't I think it's up to people collecting data to say look these are two separate things we can we can collect data on both of them and we can respect both of them my worry is that by introducing gender self identification often what we're doing is actually erasing the category of sex and that has particular implications for women and girls so anybody else wanted to okay well um Alice and Robin thanks to both of you so much and we've gone slightly over time but that's been really really helpful to the committee in doing our elaborations and we'll now suspend maybe for about five minutes thank you welcome welcome back and I now welcome to the meeting our second panel joining us remotely Victor Madrigal Borlau's United Nations independent expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity at the office of the United Nations High Commission for human rights and in person we're joined by Ian Duddy the chair Barbara Bolton head of legal and policy and Kathy Essant legal officer the Scottish all of the Scottish human rights commission particularly welcome Ian today and I think his second day in post as the chair of the Scottish human rights commission so you're all very very welcome and but particularly you and me look forward to working with you on a range of issues going going forward so I'd like to invite witnesses to make a short opening statement and starting with Victor please good morning I hope that you can hear me well I speak to you from the palace of nations in Geneva where last week I presented my report to the human rights council or the cycle of the council as was said I'm the independent expert of the United Nations dealing with violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity a mandate that was created in 2016 with the mission of bringing visibility to the way in which discrimination and violence manifest themselves against lesbian trans bisexual gay like gender diverse persons around the globe in this work of gathering evidence in relation to these manifestations of violence I have paid particular attention to gender identity when it's at the root of discrimination and violence and I have carried out inquiries in relation to the state of recognition of gender identity and expression in international human rights law the requirements that stem from international human rights law as to the processes for legal recognition of gender identity and finally issues concerning good practices in relation to data gathering and management amongst other things crucial to the mandate that I discharge in this work I carried out an inquiry into gender based frameworks last year which was at the base of the reports that I presented to the United Nations Council and to the general assembly of the United Nations respectively entitled the law of inclusion and narratives of exclusion these reports were an integral part of my research agenda under the United Nations Council resolutions that great might mandate and included an extents literature review and a call for inputs in response to which 529 submissions were received including 42 from member states and 484 from non-state stakeholders including 202 from organizations and 282 from individuals this process gathered specific information from all regions in the world specific information from 88 United Nations member states and I believe it covered a significant proportion of populations cultures legal traditions and religions of the world as a result of this work I was able to arrive to three main conclusions the first one is that legal recognition of gender identity is a key to ensuring the deconstruction of institutional and social drivers of discrimination and violence that affects so many persons around the world the second one that certain requirements are recommended and dictated by international human rights law in relation to the processes of legal recognition including the fact that it should be accessible that it should be fast and that it should be widely available along with other requirements that I'd be happy to elaborate upon and finally that gender identity is protected by a robust corpus ywdy's under international human rights law as a trait protected from discrimination in violence and to that I go back to my first conclusion that legal recognition is actually one of the fundamental elements that ensures the deconstruction of drivers of violence I thank this honorable commission for having invited me to render testimony and of course very honored and happy to continue the conversation thank you very much thank you and can I hear from Ian Duddy please thank you for inviting the Scottish human rights commission to provide evidence to the committee on this bill my name is Ian Duddy I'm the new chair of the commission and I took up my post yesterday I'd like to begin by providing a summary of the commission's position regarding this bill the commission welcomes the changes to the process for securing legal recognition of gender identity set out in the gender recognition reform Scotland bill in particular three elements one the removal of the requirement for a diagnosis of gender dysphoria two abolishing the gender recognition panel and three shortening the process these three steps will move legal gender recognition in Scotland significantly closer to the standard set out in international law in this area the commission is Scotland's national human rights institution or NHRI accredited under the united nations human rights system and as such the commission acts as a bridge between international human rights law and the national system and we promote full compliance with international and regional human rights standards and this commission has a statutory duty to promote best practice in human rights therefore the commission's position on the bill is based not only on the european convention on human rights but also on wider international human rights law guidance and best practice it's the commission's analysis that international standards and best practice require that the gender recognition act 2004 be reformed to remove unnecessary barriers to the enjoyment of human rights for transgender people at the european convention level gender identity engages the right to respect for private and family life that's eight article eight of the convention for trans people the most basic convention requirement is that states must provide a process through which a person can change their legal gender from that starting point the european court of human rights continues to recognise a broad spectrum of systems within the acceptable range so-called margin of appreciation including systems of self-identification and systems that require medical diagnosis it is important to remember that the function of the commission is to set a sorry the function of the convention is to set a floor not a ceiling what is clear from the european court of human rights and the council of europe as a whole is that the system must be quick transparent and accessible looking beyond the european convention we can see from a range of sources that self-determination has emerged as the necessary human rights standard we have set out those sources and are written evidence but they can be found at the council of europe parliamentary assembly the united nations independent expert in this area victor is with us today and the yogiocata principles the independent expert and yogiocata principles both also highlight that the process must not require a medical diagnosis and ought to ensure that miners have access to the process i'm sure both aspects will be discussed in more detail today we have followed the evidence heard so far by the committee on this bill we are very aware that some concerns have been articulated in relation to fulfillment of other human rights the commission's role covers the whole spectrum of rights for all people and we take these very seriously having listened to the evidence and analyzed any concerns raised through a human rights lens we remain strongly of the view that the changes set out in this bill will bring scotland closer to satisfying international legal standards and will not jeopardize the rights of others my colleagues Barbara Bolton and Kathy Assante lawyers within our legal and policy team are here with me today and will be happy to answer any questions that the committee may have given that this is my second day in the role i'd like to hand over to them for the substantive questions thank you okay thanks thanks very much so we move then on to on to questions starting with Maggie Chapman please thanks very much Joe and good morning to the panel thank you all for for joining us this morning thank you for the evidence you've provided us today and also that the written evidence that i know the shlc has submitted in writing prior to today i've got a couple of questions for for both shlc and and victor for you as well if i can come to to you first victor you spoke in your opening remarks about the requirements for gender identification process to be accessible fast and widely available and you said that there were other requirements as well that that you would be prepared to to elaborate on could could i ask you to elaborate on on those requirements that you see as necessary and important if if we are to get this process right thank you thank you very much and uh i'm very glad that you asked that question i was trying to be very obedient in the margin of the three minutes that i was allocated but you've given me a wonderful point of entry and i thank you for that yes the body of work that has been that exists at the moment in international human rights law allows for the identification of six basic standards in relation to legal recognition the first one is that it should be based on self determination by the applicant the second one is that it should be a simple administrative process the third one that it should be confidential the fourth one that it should be based solely on the free and informed consent of the applicant without requirements such as a medical and or psychological or other certifications that could be unreasonable or pathologising it should also as number five acknowledge and recognize non-binary identities such as gender identities that are neither men or women and offer a multiplicity of gender marker options and finally it should be accessible and to the extent possible it should be cost free each one of these criteria is examined by several bodies global many special procedures of the united nations pretty bodies as well as european and inter-american regional human rights courts at analysing the different bodies of law that they that they say their their their pronouncement on and it it derives from other processes such as the declassification of gender dysphoria as a pathology effectuated in 2018 by the world health organization and processes of evidence gathering that have led to the conclusion that medical and psychological and certifications oftentimes are indeed pathologising unreasonable and in many countries around the world heal the source of significant instances of cruel inhuman and degrading treatment and torture that includes sterilization, genital mutilation and castration. Thanks very much victor that that's that's really helpful. Can I just explore a little bit more in more detail around that the connection or otherwise that you see with a medical or psychological assessment and obviously the removal of gender dysphoria as a pathology that you've highlighted there's been discussion around whether there should be any gatekeeping or medical or psychological assessment at all as part of this process and some witnesses that we we have heard from have suggested that we retain some of that to ensure that the mechanism isn't open to abuse. Can you comment on that? Of course and I can comment on it from two points of view. The first one is the system who as you say what is how open is the gate and how much there is gatekeeping in relation to it and I would also like to address the question of abuse because of course I know that this is one of the significant elements in discussions around this issue. In my report on legal recognition of gender identity, which I presented to the General Assembly of the Organization in 2018, I took note of the release by the World Health Organization of the International Classification of Diseases, ICD-11 and this was considered by the World Health Assembly in May 2019. I correct myself I'm sorry it was in 2019 and this is the instrument of which I took note in my report and trans categories in that report were removed from the mental and behavioural disorders and a new category related to trans identities was created in chapter called conditions related to sexual health. Now the category of transsexualism was removed and replaced with a new category called gender incongruence of adolescence and adulthood and now this was I would say one of the milestones in a process of depathologisation and led to the category not being defined in binary terms and does not actually relate to gender stereotypes. Applying after puberty begins and characterised by a marked and persistent incongruence between an individual's experience gender and the assigned sex leading to desires to transition in order to live and be accepted as persons of the experienced gender and it then led to other considerations under ICD-11. This recategorisation was intended to be used to facilitate access to gender affirming treatment and in other words it meant that there is no reason to assign a diagnosis to trans people who do not seek gender affirming medical treatment or some sort of bodily change. The mandate in this sense received constant information and all submissions to the effect that these changes were of course considered a major step in the respect of gender identity and gender diversity and based on all evidence gathered by the mandate this process of depathologisation is also crucial in the promotion of deconstruction of social stigma around trans identities and non-binary identities. Therefore, welcome that element of depathologisation and from that process of acknowledgement of the work of the World Health Organization you will actually then know that clearly assigning the need for gatekeeping is one thing that this particular way of thinking would not require in order to ensure legal recognition of gender identity. Now I believe that there are some countries in which it's still possible for a person to provide particular evidence of having undergone some sort of support but this is not on the part of the requirements that are set by the state but more part of processes that have been led in the past. The other element that I would like to address very quickly is the question of risk which was addressed throughout my work in this issue and my suggested methodology for management in relation to these issues relates to the way in which human rights-based approaches internationally recommend the management of risk of abuse of any right, not only rights concerning to legal recognition of gender identity and that's of course the implementation of risk management methodologies that include preventive measures, accountability measures, due investigation of abuse and the reason why I believe that this is a relevant element in answering your kind question is that of course any right is always inherently accompanied by the possibility of abuse and of course acknowledging the evidence in relation to abuse to ensure truly preventive measures for example is part of a human rights-based approach, what is not part of a human rights-based approach is to withdraw the human rights. I hope that I've answered your question. Thank you very much Victor, yes that does answer my question. If I can pose a similar question to the SHRC we've heard a lot about the removal of the requirement or otherwise to remove the gender dysphoria diagnosis and the assessment panel, the gender reassignment panel. Can I ask you and I don't know Barbara, Kathy or Ian which of you wants to take this one but that element of risk management that Victor was talking about there if we accept what I understand is your position that yes we do move to self declaration, we remove the panel, we remove the need for gender dysphoria diagnosis. In the Scottish context how can we best manage the risks of that, that Victor has identified around potential abuse and misunderstanding as well perhaps of what rights are actually being conferred here. I think I'll start and Kathy can come in if I forget anything or miss anything important. Firstly we would support everything that the independent expert has had to say and we're very glad to be joining him on this panel today. What would say more specifically in relation to the bill that's before the Scottish Parliament is the starting point is to very carefully assess what this bill is proposing because we can't get to the risk and the assessment of risk unless we firstly are very clear as to what it does do and what it doesn't do. As we all know, the bill proposes changes for obtaining legal recognition of gender identity, which is a deeply personal matter of the individual. In terms of its effect, obtaining a GRC affects highly personal aspects of life, birth, death, marriage and obtaining benefits. What it does not do is affect the way an individual goes around their daily lives so that it doesn't affect accessing spaces, toilets, changing rooms, showers, gym classes, whether in school, at work or out shopping. It also does not affect access to single sex services or separate sex services. It doesn't affect the protection that a person has against discrimination on account of their gender identity or gender reassignment. They have that same protection, whether they have a GRC or not, at work, in school or in society at large. That has to be our starting point. Once we have accepted that gender identity recognition legally is both a right in terms of somebody's right to private life and also a deeply personal matter and that the impact is on very personal aspects of their life. In order to then put barriers up in relation to a person securing their legal recognition of their personal identity, we have to be able to justify those barriers. They have to be necessary. We have to show that there is a pressing need for that particular barrier. What is that barrier seeking to achieve? Does that particular barrier address the issue that has been identified? Is it a proportionate measure? Is it the least restrictive measure in terms of the rights of trans people in order to address that harm? To apply that human rights test, what is absolutely critical is that we very clearly and concretely set out the specific harms that we are saying are going to occur. What we need to look for in human rights terms is objectively evidenced real and concrete harm that will arise from the specific provisions in this bill. When we are talking about concerns, we have to be that concrete. If we are not that concrete, we cannot go on to the next part of the test to find out what is a proportionate response, which is perhaps why we are in this discourse often going from very generalised concerns to the suggestion that the bill should not proceed. If you identify a very specific harm and accept that it is objectively evidenced, so if the committee assesses all the evidence that is put to it and concludes that there is objective evidence of a real and concrete harm to specific people that will arise in relation to a specific provision in this bill, the next step is to say what is a proportionate response to that. As I say, that has to be the least restrictive measure in terms, in this case, of advancing the rights of trans people that will address the specific harm that has been identified. We would encourage the committee to approach it in that way and to consider whether a specific harm has been concretely set out, identified and then are you able to move to that next step to apply a proportionality test to any measures that are applied. The commission's position, as Ian outlined, is that we have very carefully looked at this in two occasions now. We looked at this in 2019-2020 and taken our mandate very seriously because we covered the rights of all people in Scotland. We always approach human rights assessment recognising the interdependence of human rights. We take very seriously concerns that are raised about possible harmful effects on others, in this case, in particular women and girls. We looked at that in 2019-2020 and we were not able to identify any objectively evidenced real and concrete harm that is likely to arise as a result of the reforms proposed. When the bill came around again, the commission took a very conscious decision to look hard at that again. That was in recognition of the time that had passed, the possibility that concerns had been clarified and perhaps further evidence had been produced of real and concrete harm that might arise. We made a very conscious decision internally to devote time to that to assess it. We have concluded again that we cannot identify any objectively evidenced real and concrete harm that is likely to arise from those reforms. The majority, if not all, of the concerns that have been outlined do not appear to have a relationship with the proposals that are set out in the bill. That is our assessment and that is why we continue to support the bill. We heard in a previous session that this comes down to the question of harm and what has been described to us as competing rights of different groups. Questions and, in both introductory remarks, the notion of confidentiality and, I suppose, link to privacy of trans people is important for us to keep in mind. When we heard previously that the right to privacy for trans people going through an accessible, non-invasive process would come with very serious consequences, are you saying that those serious consequences are not based in objective evidence at the moment? Your assessment indicates that there is no serious harm or serious consequences. There are no serious consequences that would arise if we were to pass the bill. We find it very difficult to see how changing the process for obtaining gender recognition certificate is going to create issues in relation to those matters that have been highlighted—data, sport, access to toilets, access to changing rooms, gym classes, etc. Trans people already go about their daily lives on the basis of self-id. It is hard to imagine a society in which we respect the dignity and autonomy of other individuals in which we could approach things differently. It is hard to imagine a society in which we would have a gatekeeping mechanism to check somebody's birth certificate before they can use a toilet or a gym class. Whether or not you have a gender recognition certificate does not affect any of those things. We have heard very clear evidence about that through the committee's evidence-taking. It does not affect your placement in prison. It does not determine your placement in prison, certainly. It does not determine whether you can have access to a particular sport. It does not determine whether you can have access to a particular bathroom. That goes back to the point that the concerns that have been outlined are very genetic. They have not been made specific, but they also do not seem to have been tied to the specific changes that are proposed to be made here. I think that Victor wants to come in briefly on that point. Thank you very much. Just very briefly, taking due note of the exceptions that exist in the Scottish context in which I will not expedite myself, I just wanted to share in relation to the question that that argument of the alleged competition of rights was also something that was present in my inquiry through some submissions. Of course, I took it very seriously. I reached a similar conclusion to that of the Human Rights Commission. The first thing is that it is not supported by evidence that there is any systemic, identifiable pattern or risk in the very nature of the situation that is created by legal recognition based on self-identification. Secondly, there is already evidence of numerous states that have legal recognition based on self-identification in which those theoretical concerns—again, I am speaking outside of the exceptions in Scotland because I do not know those. Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal and Argentina are examples of states that have implemented systems based on self-identification in eliminated pathologising requirements in which the numbers and the outcomes in terms of social inclusion and the scent of violence against trans persons and non-binary persons are actually quite remarkable. Whereas, if so to speak, at the other end of the scope of worries, there has been no materialisation of the concerns that were raised theoretically in the process of adoption of those processes. Thank you for your opening statements and the evidence that you have provided. I am just going to do a little bit more into what my colleague Maggie has just talked about. Some of the opposition to the GRA reform has focused on the potential impact on women, women and girls, particularly in relation to single sex-based services and exceptions in the Equality Act. The SHRC submission refers to the interdependence of human rights and states that the rights of women and trans individuals go hand in hand. Could you explain further what that means and do you think that it is possible that the GRA reform will cause conflict between the rights of trans individuals and any other groups, such as religious groups? Can I go to Ian first and Barbara, who has obviously touched on talking about that reform, this bill, would not touch on? It would either be Barbara or Kathy that are answering questions. Oh, okay. That is right. Can I have Barbara, please? Yes. I think that it is probably important just to speak firstly to clarify the pramty of our mandate in relation to equality. Obviously, we recognise and fully respect the role of the SHRC as the regulator in relation to equality's law and enforcement in relation to discrimination. We have looked at the Equality Act in relation to this matter because it is necessary to take it into account in carrying out a full human rights analysis. The Equality Act provisions are providing important mechanisms already under our national law in terms of how we apply that balancing mechanism. I do not necessarily think that it is helpful to talk in terms of competing rights. I think that it is perhaps better to talk in terms of tensions that can arise between certain rights, which can happen in relation to a whole range of rights. Most rights, most civil and political rights, certainly, are qualified. They are not absolute. You have to apply a balancing mechanism in a range of settings to take into account the fact that we live in society and there are different rights at play in different settings. We have looked at the Equality Act and we have noted that it provides very important coverage in relation to some of the concerns that have been raised. For example, the fact that it is possible to exclude trans people from single sex spaces. It is possible to exclude a trans person from a single sex accommodation, for example. The test that is applied under the Equality Act is very similar to the human rights law test that you need to have a good reason and needs to be a legitimate aim. The measure applied needs to address that aim and it needs to be proportionate. It is for the service provider to decide whether they are going to run their service in that way or not. That possibility of where it is necessary and proportionate excluding somebody on the basis that they are trans is available whether the person has a GRC or not. Again, it is not affected by the changes that are proposed in the bill. It is not affected by the process for obtaining a gender recognition certificate. Similarly, reference has been made to section 22 of the Gender Recognition Act, in recognition of the fact that gender identity is a deeply personal matter. If somebody obtains a GRC that, likewise, is deeply personal, there are provisions in the existing Gender Recognition Act to ensure that officials can only disclose the fact that somebody is trans or that somebody has obtained a GRC or applied for one where necessary. Again, that is appropriate and would mirror a human rights approach that we respect somebody's privacy unless it is necessary to look behind that and see what it does on their official documentation. For example, there is a specific exception in relation to the investigation and prevention of crime. There is a specific exception in relation to sexual offences that can only be committed by people of a certain gender. There is a specific exception in relation to disclosure to courts and tribunals. We heard also from Rape Crisis Scotland that those exceptions are working in terms of their provision of services. They gave evidence that they would still be notified if somebody had a criminal record that was relevant to the provision of their services, whether they have a gender recognition certificate or not. Our analysis is that the Equalities Act already provides mechanisms for addressing any relevant concerns in a proportionate way. That makes sense, of course, because the Gender Recognition Act came about in 2004, and the Equalities Act came after that. The impact of gender recognition certificates was fully understood and taken into account in creating the Equalities Act. However, trans people's protection under gender reassignment does not turn on whether they have a GRC or not. In our view, the two acts are working well together. I think that you mentioned the position of the GRC. That is on record, and we have said that publicly already. We have said that directly to the GRC. We have not been able to identify an equalities law analysis that underpins their current position. Likewise, we have not been able to identify a human rights analysis that underpins their current position, whereas they had set out in full a human rights and equalities law analysis that stood behind their support of the bill over a number of years, during which period they were advocating quite strongly for demedicalisation and the removal of the panel. Their current position has been set out only in a handful of letters without any further more substantial documentation, reasoning analysis and we have asked them to provide further clarification. If you are looking at a piece of legislation that is proposing to further the rights of a marginalised group and you are in a human rights body and your position is that you oppose that legislation, then there is considerable burden on you to set out very clearly on what basis that is. I hope that that explains where we are both coming from. Just to come back in on that, convener, if it is okay. We have heard from many witnesses in this committee that they have a worry that this bill will exclude women and girls from minority groups accessing single sex services and spaces. What is your view on that, Barbara? I am not certain what the specific concern is in relation to marginalised groups specifically in single sex spaces. The purpose of that is to outline the position generally, in our view, on the single sex space access. I know that there has been quite a lot of discussion around women of faith and perhaps difficult situations that they might be put in based on the tenets of their faith. We gave some thought to whether that was related to the bill here and what the possible answers might be. Our view on what Barbara said is that it is not uncommon for there to be a balancing of rights that has to take place in relation to human rights in general. It is well known that it is built into the mechanisms of human rights law. What is therefore required is an assessment of what the actual concrete harm or consideration is and then a question of a proportionate response to that. There is a lot of case law around balancing religious rights against freedom from discrimination, which would be the relevant right in relation to trans people. What would need to be done is to create a policy that upholds the rights of both insofar as possible. In some of that case law, you have examples where people of the Christian faith are entitled to manifest their religion by wearing a cross because there is not a sufficient reason to prevent them from doing so, but they are not entitled to manifest their religion in terms of discriminating against same-sex couples and providing counselling. There is a lot of case law that explores that tension and shows ways to balance those rights. I think that the same thing would apply here if we are talking about public service providers such as the NHS, for example. I would imagine that they have already been dealing with those issues for many years and that they would have policies designed to uphold the rights of both groups insofar as they are able to do so. The key thing for us is that that is related to the design of policy that balances rights. It is not a consequence of this bill specifically. It is not specifically about the holding or not of gender recognition certificates. It is about the day-to-day reality of managing balancing of rights in the provision of public services. Thank you, Cathy. Just on that, many of you spoke about this bill. It will be quick and it will be wildly available. Do you perceive anything in the future—a futuristic question here—that any of those rippling effects that, when you have more numbers coming through and it is easier to access, it will have more effect on other groups, whether it is minority, religious groups or anything, do you forecast anything coming up to see that that will open up more issues or people sounding off their concerns in relation to the bill? I think that that is a really important question. The key thing is that most of those concerns are not related to whether or not a person has a gender recognition certificate or not. That is the thing that would be anticipated to change, is that more people would hold those certificates. However, the areas of concern that have been raised are in almost no case determined by whether or not somebody holds a gender recognition certificate. I do not see that there would be a significant impact in shifting that one legal criteria of the person's status as opposed to questions that would arise from managing the presence of trans individuals in society in general. The accommodation of prisoners is a good example of that. I know that there has been discussion about that as well and any tensions that might arise. However, if we look at both the Scottish policy and the English policy that have been discussed, individual risk assessment is the core of those policies. A gender recognition certificate plays some role but is never determinative of the placement of a prisoner. We heard from SPS that they did not anticipate that there was going to be a major impact from the reform. That gives us an example of whether we are still going to have to deal with those situations. We have already been dealing with them for many years. There are policies that are designed to weigh into the balance of different people's rights and to arrive at conclusions that uphold everyone's human rights. It is not our forecast that that would be impacted by an increased number of people with gender recognition certificates. Perhaps a couple of very quick points. The first one is that I am very pleased to tell you that a colleague that I work very often and intensely with is the United Nations Special Rapporteur of Freedom of Religion and Believe, Dr Ahmed Shahir of Essex University. We have come to the conclusion in our joint studies and his reporting and thematic development that not only there is no real contradiction in human rights analysis of right to freedom of religion and belief and right to freedom from violence and discrimination based on gender identity, but rather there is an extricable connection between the principles that found both respect for both rights. The Human Rights Commission has already mentioned the reality of the right to privacy as a guiding principle and, of course, that includes the protection of overreach by the state by arbitrary mechanisms that show no probing value, such as precisely the medical certifications that we have been talking about and, of course, pathologisation in general. We find a common thread of concern and a common thread of work in the idea that promoting freedom of individuals to determine the confines of their existence is very much a common trait of his concerns and my concerns. Now, there is abundant jurisprudence and doctrine as to what are the limits and the scope of right to freedom of religion and belief and the limits, of course, very much determined by the rights of others, but I just wanted to bring that perspective in human rights analysis. The other thing that I was very much hoping to mention is that I believe that at the international analysis level in international human rights law, the argument that is presented by the Scottish Human Rights Commission to the effect of the necessity to apply a non-discrimination methodology of analysis to measures to exclude persons from access is evidently what human rights-based approaches would also support. Those steps that talk about necessity and proportionality and all other elements that Barbara has been mentioning is exactly the way that international human rights law would look at those type of exclusions at the moment. Thank you for the questions that you have answered so far, many of which I had on my list to ask, so I will skip them and also for the evidence that you have given in advance of the committee appearance this morning. It has been hugely helpful. My first question to all of you is how would you characterise Scotland's support or otherwise of LGBT people just now and how would you characterise that that might change if the proposed legislation was to go through? I might go first to Victor, if that is okay, and then to the SHSE. I thank you very much for the question. I do have to say that characterising in general the situation of the treatment of LGBT persons, if I understood correctly, is that your question? Yes. I would respectfully have to decline to issue a comment in that connection and I have two reasons for that. I hope that you will forgive me. The first one is that, of course, I am not carrying out fact-finding in relation to the overall situation. I was very much asked to provide evidence in relation to this issue, but I also would like to mention to you that the other reason why I feel not entirely uncomfortable not answering your question is that it has been announced and confirmed that I will carry out a visit to the United Kingdom very soon, and I will be able to examine and have conversations about the general situation, so you will definitely be hearing from me in relation to that. The other element that I would like to say, however, because I am in a position to issue a statement in that connection, is that I have reviewed the proposed legislation and, to me, it actually takes steps to bring into conformity the process of recognition of legal recognition of gender identity with the international standards that I have identified through my research presented to the Human Rights Council. I have reviewed that legislation and, to me, those elements are taking this legislation closer to the fulfilment of that set of requirements that I mentioned. We have not done comprehensive work on the state of LGBTQ plus rights specifically, and I think that we would defer to groups that represent those people to hear those experiences if we were to carry out that work, and that would certainly be the basis of our work. However, in terms of whether it would stand to improve in terms of the bill, I think that all signs point to the fact that the experience would improve. We have heard from groups that have appeared before this committee about the impact of the current gender recognition process on their lives and their experience of their rights, which would be significantly remedied and improved by this new process. I am also listening to Victor's comments this morning about countries that have brought in self-id and the measurable impact on the enjoyment of rights for trans people. We can only anticipate that the same situation would occur here. I want to move on to talk a little bit about what we have already heard, which is the interdependence of human rights. I wonder if the SHRC could comment. We have heard from some people who have given evidence to this committee that there are women self-excluding from services, public spaces, toilets and changing rooms, and that self-exclusion itself is significant enough to be proportionate and to meet the test that you have set to determine that perhaps changes would be needed. Can you tell us about your understanding of that behaviour and how it relates to this particular piece of legislation? I very strongly take the point that we must refer specifically to the legislation in front of us as opposed to anything else. I can take that. It follows on from what I said earlier. Firstly, the commission has not seen any objective evidence of these matters arising in society. However, if there is objective evidence that women are self-excluding from certain spaces, then you would have to look closely at the specifics of that and what is resulting in that. If they are doing that, it is not going to be affected by whether or not somebody has a gender recognition certificate because trans people exist in society and they move about society as is their right and as they must be supported to do. If there are specific concerns, you would need to really break it down. What is it that we are saying about toilets? What is it that we are saying about public life? I have considered the question of women avoiding participating in public life and found it hard to see what it is about making gender recognition certificates available that would result in that. If the concern is about numbers in terms of, for example, women on public boards, we will try to get a bit more specific about that. If we are talking about a possible increase in the number of gender recognition certificates of 250 to 300, it is difficult to see how that is going to have a statistically significant impact in practice in terms of women on public boards. However, you could look at much more detailed analysis of that. Professor Goon recommended to the committee that they look at the written evidence from close the gap as an example of the analysis that can be done. They have run the figures in different ways, making different assumptions, moving some people self-identifying as a particular gender over to another gender and see how that plays out. You could do the same for women on public boards. When it comes to spaces such as toilets and changing rooms, society has moved very far from what I still remember from many years ago, where you could go into a changing room and it was literally a room in which everyone changed. I have not seen that for many, many years. We have moved very far towards finding a way of providing private spaces for every individual. It is much more the default position now that you have cubicles. You would have to look again at the specifics, but if you have a reasonably spacious communal area plus individual cubicles, it is difficult to see that there is a major issue. However, again, you would really have to get down to the specifics. However, the further we do that, the further away we are from GRCs and what their actual impact is. Going back to what I said before, GRCs affect very deeply personal aspects of our private lives—marriage, death, birth and benefits. They do not affect how you move about society. Again, it is really important that we come back to that and that we look for a link between any specific concern that is highlighted and the proposals in this bill. We are not able to identify that link. One of the things that we had recommended in our evidence is that there will be a post-legislative review of the legislation if it is passed. One of the functions of that would be to identify if any of those concerns have materialised or if evidence to support them has materialised. The fact that we have not found such evidence so far does not mean that it does not or cannot exist. We think that there would be an important role for a post-legislative review to do in considering whether any of those concerns are actually playing out or whether it is more, as Victor said, that they have not transpired. There are other important aspects that a review could accomplish in terms of identifying if there are remaining barriers for trans people or if recognitions should be opened up to other groups, for example non-binary people, but looking at any possible unintended consequences of the bill could be a really important role for that. The point that you make on the impact on trans people is crucial in any post-legislative scrutiny on how trans people enjoy their human rights. That is really helpful. I am particularly pleased to hear the focus on the bill and what it does as opposed to other areas. I also have a question on your understanding. It touches on the point that you made about representation and I have seen close the gaps evidence and I am convinced by it. I am keen for the record if you could set out your understanding of the recent legal cases on the census and the representation on public boards. I will answer that one. We understand that there has been concern that the jurisprudence is continuing to evolve and that the recent cases from the Court of Session, both the public boards case and the census case, are contradictory or confusing. I have looked at those cases in some detail. What I have ascertained from them is that they were both looking at applying concepts of sex and gender in specific legal contexts. One of them was applying the term sex in the question of the census and in relation to public boards it was about applying the category of women in terms of determining protective characteristics. What I believe that they show is that the law already has sensitive and careful ways of applying concepts of sex and gender and that where it is necessary for a person's trans status to be taken into account in the public boards case, the law is capable of accommodating that and does so. Where it is not relevant in the census case, a person's trans status will not be taken into account by the law. Once again, neither of those cases were about whether or not a person held a gender recognition certificate. The Court was very clear that that was not the determining factor in either conclusion that they arrived at. They were also very clear that there is no universal test or application of concepts of sex and gender. The point is that they have to be applied carefully so that we can ensure that they uphold everybody's rights. Thank you. That is helpful. I just have one final question if that is okay, convener. What a different question. I will come back to you if that is all right. Thank you and welcome to the panel today. I would like to ask in regards to the EHRC and the SHRC. Has there been any agreement in regards to respective mandates in regard to the Scottish perspective? Are there any differences in approach to gender recognition and if there are, why? I can cover that. I touched on it earlier, but just to clarify, EHRC is the Equalities Regulator for the whole of Britain. That is a factor that relates to the devolved structure where equality law is generally reserved to the UK Parliament and EHRC is the regulator for England, Wales and Scotland. Its mandate in relation to human rights in Scotland is restricted and that is set out in its legislation. It is precluded from doing any work in relation to human rights on devolved areas unless it seeks and receives consent from the Scottish Human Rights Commission. That can happen, particularly if there is an area where the Scottish Commission is not able to perform work for reasons of capacity and focus on other issues. There is a memorandum of understanding in place between the commission that gives further specification to how that process is put into practice. The commission's mandate is broadly covering all human rights and all devolved areas. In terms of the position on the legislation, as I mentioned, EHRC was in favour of it and was promoting it until recently. Its position has changed and its position is on record. It is available in letters with the cabinet secretary. It has referenced concerns that are framed in broad terms and refer to areas that are familiar from the evidence that has been put to the committee. We have asked for further specification, because without it, it is very difficult to understand its change of position from being in favour of the legislation and highlighting the real need to demedicalise and depythologise, the real need for the bill to advance the rights of trans people, to change to a position whereby it is saying that we should not go ahead with that and we need to wait and see. Wait and see is not an appropriate human rights response, as Victor mentioned. There is the human rights framework that you would apply to assess any policy or legal development, and that is what we have fully set out in our submission. In regard to that, the bill provides that only those born in Scotland, or ordinarily resident in Scotland, may apply for the GRC. There has been some concern that this might mean that trans people from the rest of the UK will travel to Scotland, particularly young people who do not have supportive families. Do you have any views on the requirement for ordinarily resident? Yes, ordinarily resident is a term that is used in various areas of the law. The commission's view is that it is sufficiently specific to rule out what is being referenced as a concern. If you are resident ordinarily here, that would rule out somebody coming for a weekend or for a longer holiday or for a temporary stay purely to obtain a GRC. It simply would not cover that. However, we have heard and we agree with the points that were made by Just Right Scotland in relation to the need to make it sufficiently clear to avoid inadvertently excluding people who you are intending to include. By using the term ordinarily resident without further detail, are we seeking to cover or not those who do not have citizenship but are located here in Scotland? They have not chosen to reside here. Perhaps we would not even use the word reside, but they are located here while they are awaiting the outcome of an official process. If we are intending that they should have access to this process, which we would hope they would, then it would be good to see some clarity around that. That is really helpful. Thank you. Victor, would you like to come in on any of those questions? Thank you very much. Perhaps just to underline that the concept that has just been explained from the domestic point of view is very consistent with what human rights frameworks would actually prescribe. Persons under the jurisdiction of is the human rights language for the enjoyment of rights. Of course, there is always a certain margin as to what exactly that entails in relation to occasional visitors. Of course, as was mentioned, but I think the point being made about those persons that may not have residents but are expecting or waiting for the outcome of processes is particularly relevant given the connection with access to a number of realms of life and legal recognition. I think that it is absolutely consistent with the human rights framework analysis. Thank you. Thank you. Rachael Hamilton. Caffee, can you tell me how you pronounce your surname? It's Asanti. I wanted to address you by your full nose, so Caffee Asanti mentioned that the SHRC recommends post-legislative review following the reform. However, the Children's Commissioner expressed a different view and expressed concern that more research is needed to ensure that safeguards are in place before the age is reduced from 18 to 16, suggesting that pre-legislative evidence should be taken in more seriousness by the Scottish Government before we make significant changes within this Parliament. Can you comment on his view and explain your reasoning why you support lowering the minimum age? That could be for Barbara O'Ean as well. We have had discussions with the Children's Commissioner in relation to the bill. My understanding of his evidence was that he was supporting the lower age limit to 16, but the committee can correct me if I am incorrect. Within evidence suggested that more research needs to be done by the Scottish Government. One of the areas of his analysis touched on the possible need for additional support for 16 to 18-year-olds for clarity on what questions might be asked of them to establish capacity and what support would surround that process. We support that call to seek clarity on those particular areas, and that was my understanding of the position that he offered. In order to explain our position in relation to under-18s, looking to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, one of its core approaches is to recognise the evolving capacities of children and to balance that up with providing them with protection where that is needed. I noted that the Children's Commissioner highlighted that minimum age requirements require more scrutiny where they are acting to curb children's freedoms as opposed to serving a protective function, such as the justice system. Excluding young people from access to gender recognition procedures would be a curb to their right to private and family life, so we would not be in favour of imposing unnecessary minimum age requirements. We also find that the age of 16 is in line with Scots law in terms of the age of legal capacity Scotland Act 2016, which permits young people to enter into very significant legal transactions. If the bill was to lower the age to 16, it would be in line with existing Scots law that permits children to make decisions of that nature. Additionally, the international human rights standards have pointed out that minors should have access to legal gender recognition processes and that age in and of itself should not be a barrier, so the key aspect would be about recognising the evolving capacities of children and ensuring that there is sufficient support for them in order to be able to exercise those as they grow older. It is useful for the record just to clarify that Kathy's interpretation of what the Children's Commissioner with Chect said, and that is correct. He was talking in relation to support for young people. Yes, and that is relevant to the committee's evidence gathering. On particularly—you mentioned there—the age of legal capacity Scotland Act, which was 1991. On that basis, when that was—in 1991, a long time—has passed since then, can you explain what you mean by evolving capacities of children? The evolving capacities approach is recognition of the fact that, as children grow older and become young people and move towards adulthood, they gain greater autonomy and evolve a greater capacity to understand the nature of important decisions in their lives and to make decisions in relation to them. It recognises also that children develop at different rates. At certain stages, you may wish to apply a presumption that if a person reaches a certain age, they would have capacity to do a certain thing—that is what the Age of Legal Capacity Scotland Act does. At other stages, there may be a need for some assessment or support of their capacity before you are able to say that they have capacity to do a certain thing. There are examples in the Age of Legal Capacity Act again where children between the ages of 12 and 16 can be assessed as having capacity to make significant decisions, such as medical treatment, and then will be given the legal authority to make that decision. That is what I mean by the evolving capacities approach. I am not sure what that is based on, whether it is puberty or whether it is other social capacities, but it is something that the committee could possibly look at. I have asked everybody about the CAS review. There is a lot more young people accessing services, gender identity services in England. I wondered whether you believed that our reforms should be paused to take into account the full report being published, rather than just the interim report. I can answer that. The short answer is that we do not think that the legislation should be paused in relation to the CAS review, but just to explain that position a little bit, the CAS review, as we understand it, is looking at reviewing gender identity healthcare for children and young people in England. We have made some interim findings on data, which we understand to be relevant to the provision of gender identity healthcare. It is not clear to us how that relates to the provisions in the bill. Although it is about England specifically, when the full report is issued, it will be important for relevant bodies in Scotland to review it and see whether there is relevant information that can be applied here. There may well be useful learning in relation to the provision of medical services. There may well be things that prompt Scottish bodies to conduct their own review to understand the position in relation to healthcare provision to children and young people. What we did very clearly from the evidence of the national gender identity clinical network for Scotland is that whether somebody has a gender recognition certificate is not determinative of access to gender identity health services. They treat everybody as though they had a GRC, which seems appropriate. They said that it is absolutely relevant and important, but it does not change the direction of their clinical care. We enable greater access to gender recognition whether or not we have that additional estimated 250 to 300 GRCs is not going to have an impact on healthcare delivery. If we do, as the bill proposes, to do— We know that waiting times are up to four years. I wonder how that does not impact on how healthcare provision does not impact on a greater number of people wanting to access services in terms of their human rights. It is enshrined in law in the health service in Scotland in terms of a waiting times guarantee. Does that not apply to people seeking transitioning? Absolutely. There is real concern around the waiting times. When we listened to the evidence from David Parker about 4,000 people waiting for that initial appointment and about people waiting in Grampian in 15 to 18 months in three to four years in central belt, that is very concerning. It raises concerns about the right to health. Those issues must be looked at, but that is not affected by whether or not you have a gender recognition certificate. A young person seeking gender-related healthcare is entitled to seek that healthcare whether they have a GRC or not. David Parker gave very clear evidence that whether or not they have a GRC does not affect whether they are provided with care and it does not affect the direction of their care. Is the CAC's review in that sense relevant when young people from Scotland access healthcare in England because they cannot get access in Scotland? I am not aware of the CAC's review having said that whether you have a GRC in England is determinative of your healthcare in England, so I do not see that connection again to this bill. What I would say about cross-border impacts is that, again, going back to what a GRC does and does not do and because you have the same protection under gender reassignment characteristic whether you have a GRC or not, somebody going from Scotland to England is going to have the same protections in relation to their gender reassignment in school, in work, in medical context, as they would whether they have a GRC or not. Again, those concerns that have been mentioned about people travelling from Scotland to England, again, we really need that to be spelled out and, much more specifically, what is it about the provisions of this bill? What is it about making it less intrusive, burdensome and pathologising to trans people that would have these particular impacts? Again, we are just not seeing that. We have a couple more questions to come in. I just want to go back to something earlier that we were discussing. Obviously, we had a consultation and 59 per cent of people that spoke about this bill opposed the principles of the bill. It was quite a considerable number, but through a human rights lens, if the act was reformed, on the Equality Act, do you think that for women who are concerned about safeguards and the opt-outs on a single sex basis, do you think that the exemptions that are described by amnesty should be justified on the basis of less stringent criteria? They did not say that, so I will get this right for the convener. Amnesty said that they must be justified on the basis of quite stringent criteria. Therefore, do you think, from a human rights angle in terms of women's views of safeguards and opt-outs, that that should be made simpler in law so that the exemptions are there and those women feel protected for the reasons that we are hearing? I would like to break that question up if I can. The first thing that you referenced was the percentage of support for the bill in response to one of the consultations, I think that the easy-read version of the committee's consultation. Obviously, where society is at in terms of its support for a certain measure is always going to be a relevant factor to take into account. However, when you are approaching something from a human rights basis, what you are not doing is applying majoritarianism. What you are not doing is saying that it is the majority and favour of this measure. What you are doing is saying what are the fundamental rights of everyone? What are the inalienable rights that were set out following the fallout from the Second World War and the horrors of that and the international community coming together and identifying some of the fundamental rights that belong to everyone? Those rights stand, regardless of the views of the majority, and indeed they stand against the views of the majority in some cases. If you had the majority that wished to override the fundamental rights of some, those rights still exist and those people are still entitled to those rights. I am not suggesting that that is what is happening here, but I am countering the idea that that is a question of numbers. Fundamental rights are never a question of numbers, and perhaps Victor would have more to add to that. It might be useful, but I would also want to address the single-sex space reference. I am not sure exactly which part of Amnesty's evidence that was. I did listen to that evidence and I think that we were in agreement. I think that that evidence accords with ours. It may have used slightly different language. If the reference to stringent criteria was perhaps another way of describing the human rights test that I have set out, where you have a bill like that that proposes to advance the rights of a particular marginalised group and address the harms that currently exist under existing legislation, you need to have objective evidence of a real and concrete harm that will occur to others before you would, in order to then look again or be required to look again. Perhaps that is what they were addressing. I think that there was a third part, but you might have to remind me. It was just my take on this. Obviously, everyone has a human right and everyone has concerns whether they are bettering trans rights or protecting women's rights. That is how it is and that is how we are hearing it in this committee. I wondered whether the exemption set out in the equality act should be looked at in terms of how we are revolving as a society in terms of the different asks of people. Law needs to move on as well. I wondered if you had an opinion on that as well. It is always useful to review legislation, especially after a number of years. However, we have to be very careful again to be specific. Given that what we are talking about here is essential measures to further fulfil the rights of a marginalised group, if we are looking at the equality act and we are saying that we have concerns about the way certain exemptions or specific supply, we need to be very particular about what we mean, which provision, in what context and what is not working. Our assessment is that the exemptions that are available appear to work and the evidence that has been given to the committee has shown that they work in prisons, in single sex services, in special services for those who have suffered violence and gender-based violence. What we have not heard is evidence that they are not working. In principle, of course, it is always good to check that your legislation is still... I am just going to leave it there, but unfortunately there are people who are self-excluding because they do not want to come out and say what they are experiencing, so that they do not access services because of their fears or concerns. That is just one side of the argument. I will just come back quickly on that to remain the committee of the Great Crisis Scotland evidence, which is that they have been running a trans-inclusive service for 15 years and they do not believe that people are self-excluding. Thanks for that. Victor, we would like to come in on a few of the points that Rachel discussed. Victor, thank you very much to the convener. I will be brief, but I wanted to make sure that I touched upon a couple of things. Mention has been made of trans rights. There are not such a thing as trans rights. There is not such a thing as gay rights. There is not such a thing as lesbian rights. There are human rights of people who are gay, human rights of people who are lesbian, and human rights of people who are trans. What this means is that the analysis that has been presented by the Scottish Human Rights Commission, which is the limitation of the rights of these human rights, is actually subject to a series of requirements that are very much part of the regulatory framework applied applicable to Scotland, as in many other countries in the world. Let me give you an example. The Convention on the Rights of the Child article 5 makes reference to the evolving capacities of the child. It says that state parties shall respect responsibilities and rights and duties of parents or were applicable members of extended family or community, as provided by local customs, legal guardians or other persons legally responsible, to provide in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child proper direction and guidance in the exercise of the rights of the child recognised by the Convention. The second reference to this is, of course, in article 14 of the Convention where the same concept of evolving capacities of the child is articulated. The concept of evolving capacities of the child is actually very much the consequence that children are recognised as subjects in the decision of the exercise of the rights. It is a principle stemming from the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which was ratified by the United Kingdom in 1991. Those principles allow for the recognition that children in different environments and cultures and faced with diverse experiences will acquire competencies at different ages and action is needed in law policy and practice so that the contributions that children make and the capacities that they hold are acknowledged. I think that the colleagues at the Scottish Human Rights Commission have explained the way in which public policy is being articulated in the specific Scottish context as to how that relates to public policy frameworks in Scotland, recognising how age intersects with other elements in the identity. Finally, I just wanted to mention and to bring into evidence that legal recognition at 16-year-old has already been implemented by several countries, that is the Netherlands, Ireland and Belgium. Norway has also under 18 legal recognition with a parent of guardian, and Luxembourg and Argentina are currently identifying similar legislation. Finally, in relation to impact of legal recognition of gender identity, I just wanted to share with you some recent evidence that has been provided to my mandate on the impact of inclusive legal recognition that follows the requirements that I spoke about. It is evidenced stemming from Argentina and New Zealand to other countries that have adopted legal recognition on the basis of self-identification. A survey carried out by similar parameters in national level in both countries revealed in Argentina a drop from 80 per cent reported exclusion and discrimination from health, employment and housing sectors from 80 per cent self-reported instances to 30 per cent two years after the issuance of the law. As I said, those are contexts, both Argentina and New Zealand, in which no evidence has been produced about the materialisation of risks that may have been articulated before as part of the discussion on the basis of views that were hypothetical and not supported by evidence. Thank you very much, Mr Convener. Thank you, convener, and my apologies to yourself and to all present about being late. I was impacted by the real strikes, as I am sure that the convener has reflected already. I am going to ask questions around the provisions in the bill around the three-month period for reflection and the three-month period for living in the acquired gender as it is referred to. What I would say is that, as apologies, if it is an area that any of the panellists have already covered, because although I have had access to the session remotely, you will understand in quite a lengthy journey that was this morning, there were certain periods where it was not possible to pay quite as much attention. On the three-month period, living in the acquired gender, have you got any thoughts on that? We have heard quite widespread criticism of that from, if you like to call it, both sides of the argument. Have you got any thoughts on where the committee might want to take this particular provision in the bill? Yes, I do. Thank you for that. The commission's view on that is that it is not being made very clear in the policy memorandum accompanying the bill what the purpose of that is, why it is necessary or proportionate. It seems from looking at this generally that there has been an effort to shorten the process, a recognition that two years is far too long and a desire to create a more reasonable expectation. However, from the commission's view of applying a human rights analysis, that does not approach it in quite the right way. To go back to what I said earlier, which you will not have heard, if we are accepting that this is about the fundamental rights of trans people and that they need to have legal recognition of their gender and that GRCs affect very intimate parts of their personal lives—marriage, death, birth and benefits—then any barrier that is put up in relation to their access to that legal recognition needs to be on a basis that it is necessary to achieve a legitimate aim and a proportionate measure to do that. The question arises why is there a requirement to demonstrate that you have been living in a gender for three months? We do not feel that that has been adequately explained or reasoned. Obviously, the three-month period creates a delay, which trans people have explained their concerns around that. Some of the evidence focused on that period of life where somebody is perhaps moving, taking up a position in a college or university or moving for work, and they wish to have their documentation match up. Three months would be potentially quite a significant period of delay in relation to that. However, our concern also is that it is about that requirement to produce evidence that you have been living in a certain way. It is difficult to see how we can require somebody to produce evidence that they have been living in a certain gender without supporting very harmful gender stereotypes. How do you demonstrate that you have been living as a woman? How do you demonstrate that you have been living as a man? I find it difficult to think of a way that you would do that without supporting and upholding what has been found to be very harmful stereotypes that affect women and girls as they affect others. We have real concerns about that, and we would invite the committee to press Scottish Government in proposing the bill that it will look again at that provision. We are concerned that the bill has a provision that seems to invite the registrar to provide more detail on what is required from trans people in terms of evidence. That raises the prospect that we may replace the panel with another burden, some bureaucratic process, where trans people find themselves in correspondence with a third party being assessed against something that is deeply personal to them. If you are introducing any element of third party assessment about somebody's very personal gender identity, there really has to be a good justification for that, and we are not sure what that is. I have thoughts also on the three months' reflection period. We will just say thank you for that, and I had heard your earlier comment. It was particularly important to get on record your concerns as you laid them out there. I was just going to come straight to you before going over to Victor and asking about the three months' reflection period as well, so if your best place to answer that is fine, but I was also going to give both Ian and Kathy a chance to come in, but if your best place to talk about the three months' reflection, that is fine. Kathy and I have been sharing out the questions, which is one of mine. I think again that the three months' reflection period, just to look at how that works, as we understand it, is a further delay in somebody securing a gender recognition certificate. Instead of applying and receiving as administratively possible or in the time that is possible, there is a requirement that you wait three months, and at the end of that three months that you reaffirm your request to obtain a GRC, so it is a further burden on trans people. Again, we think that there needs to be a clear justification for that. What is the legitimate aim there? What is the purpose of that requirement? We have heard reference to, including from the registrar, that they might introduce a process whereby people are alerted or signposted to relevant helpful support. That sounds appropriate and useful if it is done well, however it is not clear that that would necessitate a three month delay. I also wonder if it was deemed to be necessary to achieve some aim, if it might be more proportionate that at the end of the three months the trans person applying, if they wished to withdraw that application, they could do so within that time, but there wouldn't be a burden on them to essentially reapply or reaffirm that application. Again, we think that there needs to be a bit more thought given to what exactly is the purpose of that, why is it necessary, will it achieve the aim and is it proportionate? Thank you very much. Maybe just one final question. I know that the convener said that we are tight for time, but have you got some thoughts on the term acquired gender? That is something that, as you have heard in previous sessions, there has been quite a lot of discussion around. Yes, we have heard some concerns about that. We would generally defer to trans people as to how problematic that term is for them. We would also look at the term potentially differently if it is being used more specifically or not. Looking at the Gender Recognition Act, we think that the main intention of the use of that acquired gender term is to describe acquiring legal recognition of the gender. However, in relation to that, we can see that there needs to be a word to make the legislation work, so that that is why it is required. However, it is also being used in relation to more of a general description of the experience of trans people. That is where we think that it may be particularly problematic, because good evidence has been given about the individual experience of people and the suggestion that people acquire a gender in terms of their own experience is a poor reflection of what most people experience. If it is specifically on the legal point, and if it can be limited to that, we can see why it might be necessary, but perhaps more care can be taken around how it is used. If we get rid of the three-month requirement, a chunk of the problematic area will be removed, because what you are talking about in the amended act, which is what will result from the bill for Scotland, will be more specifically about that acquiring of your legal recognition of your gender. Thank you very much. Victor, if you would be able to comment on any of those areas of the bill, either the three-month reflection period or the living and acquired gender for three months, as it is currently written? In relation to the expression acquired gender, I share the point of view of the Scottish Human Rights Commission. I think that if it is an enabling term to ensure that legislation can function, that actually works, but if it is meant to refer to the lived experience of trans persons, I think that the evidence that has been presented to me over time is that this way of describing the deeply felt gender identity of persons is probably something that is more conducive to perpetuating stigma and their own self-perceptions as minimised. The three-month reflection period makes me think of a number of mechanisms that have been put in place all over the world and that appear to answer to the notion that this is something where the person has something to prove beyond what the legislation has established as a necessary and reasonable requirement. I would place this in the number of requirements that would seem ab initio neutral, but that, in fact, when confronted with the way that they interact with the lived experience of persons can actually present significant hindrance. I could note that, for example, recent concluding observations on Australia, the Human Rights Committee noted that delays associated with the process of authorisation that was required for hormone treatment and express concern that the success of treatment could be compromised because of time. I have received significant inputs on the fact that it is often the case that procedures take years to be completed and that long waiting lists often times contribute to several of the exclusion problems that people face. I actually think that the question would be what is a reflection period meant to do, is this person meant to prove something that is beyond what is reasonable in the context, then again why three months and then again why not, as was so eloquently expressed by one of the previous speakers in the previous panel, recognise the fact that persons have the ability to know how they have felt as long as they have lived and therefore that there is no need to interact in a way that is abusive of their privacy and their convictions. Thank you. Thank you all. That has been really helpful. We will now suspend for five minutes before we get the next panel. Welcome back. I welcome to the meeting our third panel. I am pleased to welcome Dr Sandra Duffy, lecturer in law and Dr Peter Dune, senior lecturer at the University of Bristol School of Law and Dr Chris Dietz, lecturer in law and social justice at the University of Leeds. Apologies for any surnames that I have mispronounced. I ask witnesses to make short opening statements starting with Dr Duffy. Thank you so much for the opportunity to appear here today. I will be brief. I am an international human rights law scholar specialising in gender identity and the law and on that basis I fully recommend a self identification basis for the Gender Recognition Act reform. I have worked on global and regional gender recognition law mapping and analysis. I co-wrote three editions of the ILGA World Translegal Mapping Report and most recently I have completed an analysis of gender recognition laws in Europe to be published next year. The international movement in gender recognition laws heard deep pathologisation and self-identification and non-medical non-judicial purely administrative approach is the only approach endorsed by the United Nations independent expert on sexual orientation and gender identity in his recent reports. Legal gender recognition should be accessible, affordable and deep pathologised. Legal gender recognition on the basis of self-identification has already been enacted in countries as diverse as Malta, Denmark, Argentina and my own home jurisdiction of Ireland. Although highly polarised concerns have been aired in the United Kingdom around the possibility of allowing for self-identification, they have not played out in those countries. There has not been widespread abuse of the process or an unexpectedly large number of applications. There has not been widespread reports of abusive use of the process by cisgender men to access women's spaces such as changing rooms or bathrooms. There has not been a sea change in the number of cisgender women selected for sports teams. Trans people know their own minds, they do not take the decision to transition be it legally, socially or medically, likely. Young trans people too can be trusted to make their own decisions especially if supported by their families. It is unfair to make them choose between pathologising their nature and respect for their autonomy. The law needs to respect the human rights to dignity, equality, privacy and autonomy. Scotland needs to respect its trans citizens. On that basis, I recommend that the committee considers self-identification as the best option for legislation. Hello, my name is Peter Donne. I am a senior lecturer at the University of Bristol and a member of garden court chambers. My research focuses on the intersections of law, gender and sexuality, particularly on issues of family law and European law. In recent years, I have had the opportunity to work with the number of public institutions such as the Scottish Government, the UK Government, the European Commission and the Council of Europe. I am particularly interested in looking at questions of law from a comparative perspective, and it's that angle that I'm probably going to contribute to today's conversations. I started working on questions of legal gender recognition about 10 years ago, and in those 10 years, there's been some welcome progress, laws which more respect people's lived experiences across Europe, and we've also seen across Europe as well a greater understanding of the reasons why people seek to obtain legal gender recognition. There has been some less welcome developments. There has been legal stagnation, even legal retreat, and there has been, at times in public policy debates across Europe, a failure to remember the humanity and the dignity of the people who these laws affect. In addition to the specific questions that I'm sure we're going to discuss today, I want to, or I suppose I come to, this conversation from maybe three broad outlines. The first is to acknowledge that this is an area of immense complexity and nuance. Legal gender recognition cannot and should not be reduced to pithy quotes of 290 characters. It requires you to engage with, to acknowledge, and indeed to embrace that nuance and that complexity. Secondly, unfortunately, because of the historic invisibility of trans and non-binary communities across Europe, there isn't perhaps as much hard law as we might like or expect. But as Dr Duffy has already said, and I know, as you've already heard in prior committee meetings, there is a strong body of regional and international consensus around soft law standards and best practices, and I'd encourage you to allow those standards to both inform and to shape your discussions. Finally, from my own research, what I would say is that when we look at those jurisdictions around Europe, which today we hold up as models of good practice, yes, they have shaped their legislative debates by looking to their international human rights law considerations and the existing domestic rights standards, but they've also done so by considering the lived experience of people in their society. The laws that you are considering today, which I fully support in terms of the draft bill, are going to affect people, many people in this jurisdiction, and I would encourage you to remember their lives, their experiences, as you consider this bill. Thank you. Thank you, Peter. Dr Deets. Hi, thank you first for inviting me to the panel. I'm Chris Deets. I'm a socio-legal scholar, again, of law, gender and sexuality, and based at the School of Law in the University of Leeds. I'm a cisgender man, so I would also emphasise the experiences of trans people being taken into account, and I'm just going to try and stick to, rather than focusing on those experiences, which aren't mine, the research that I conducted on the adoption of self-declaration of legal gender in Denmark in 2014, which I wrote my PhD on and also have been publishing on the findings of since then. Denmark became the first European jurisdiction to implement self-declaration in 2014, which was timely for me as I was conducting my PhD at the time. I travelled to Denmark on various occasions but conducted most of my research over the course of three months in the spring of 2015, interviewing trans people and non-binary people, but also campaigners and officials who were involved in the legislative process there. At the time, it looked possible, or just after that, that England and Wales would follow Denmark, but various political shifts have made that not possible. It's quite exciting that Scotland is going to go ahead or trying to go ahead with reforming the Gender Recognition Act. To quickly summarise my findings from my research in Denmark, it's that self-declaration is no panacea. On its own, it has limited effects, and I've been sitting in this morning and hearing that that's well understood by the committee now that just making it possible for people to access a gender recognition certificate doesn't change wholesale trans people's legal inclusion. However, that can constitute an important first step in the right direction towards improving the everyday lives of trans and gender diverse people. Okay, thanks very much. You've all put your pronunciation of your names on the record, hopefully. I'm going to stick with first names of going forward on this session, so thanks. We'll move to questions. I'm starting with Maggie Chapman, please. Thanks very much, Jo. I'll stick with first names too. Thank you all three for coming along this afternoon and for giving your opening statements. It's been helpful to hear your opening statements in relation to some of the other things that we've heard both today and prior to today. I wonder if I can ask a couple of questions around the case for change and some of the requirements that we would be removing from the gender recognition process if we pass the bill as it is, the requirements around medical and psychological diagnosis and that the panel of experts being an important assessment or gatekeeping role. Sandra, you talked about the polarised concerns that we experience in the UK not being manifested elsewhere. Can you maybe say a little bit more about how the case that we are hearing, the case for reform that we are hearing in Scotland particularly, how it was different elsewhere and I suppose where then the catalyst for reform came from elsewhere if it wasn't born out of the same kind of debate that we might be having here? Absolutely. Just to clarify what I was saying, it's not that concerns have not been raised in other jurisdictions and it's not that legislative debate has not happened fully in other jurisdictions and the one I can speak to most fully is Ireland as obviously that's my own jurisdiction and it's one I've conducted some of my research including my doctoral research on. In Ireland, Angus Peter has actually already said as well, these debates are happening, they are fully nuanced, they are taking place in legislative chambers, they are taking place in the public eye as well and they were at the time of the passage of the Gender Recognition Act. Although the atmosphere in the UK at the moment is very polarised in terms of this, it's not that there hasn't been a debate and it's not that there hasn't been robust public debate in other jurisdictions, it's just that those jurisdictions have come to the conclusion that reform or indeed legislation, new legislation is the way forward. The case for reform basically from my point of view as a human rights scholar comes out of an understanding of the basic human rights of the individual. So the case for removing a pathologised requirement, a diagnosis or a medical or psychological, the case for removing a judicial process such as an expert panel from the process comes from that understanding of the autonomy and the equality of the individual that the individual should not have to, and I'm borrowing and slightly adapting some logic from the European Court of Human Rights here, but that the individual should not have to choose between their autonomy and respect for their identity. And as my colleague reminded me earlier and I'm just saying that, that's from a European Court of Human Rights case called AP Garconlynyd Co, which was the one that removed sterilisation as a requirement for legal gender recognition in France, but as as Dr Dun would tell me that was meant to be a floor, not a ceiling, so I think I can use the logic when it comes to de-pathologisation. That's helpful. So in your view the de-pathologisation is actually an integral part of the reform, the bill that we see in front of us that we are scrutinising. In my view, yes, it's very important. Okay, thanks for that. Peter, if I can come to you, you talked about the need to and the importance of mixing international good practice and the human rights standards with personal, the lived experience of trans people and those who are going to be most affected by this. We've heard in various, in different evidence sessions around the potential for conflict or competition of views around who will actually be most affected. I suppose in your comparative analyses, how have you drawn out any conflicts or competitive notions of impact to come to the view that you have for reform? What I suppose I would say is that when we see, when we look at the reasons in a comparative context, particularly in Europe, why jurisdictions have adopted reform and why jurisdictions have adopted reforms which are similar or identical to the reforms that you're advocating or you're proposing, the Scottish Parliament at least is proposing and you're adjudicating upon, we can see a couple of reasons why that was and then we can see how issues of conflicts of rights have played out. So, I think it's fair to say that jurisdictions like Denmark, like Malta, like Ireland, like Norway have absolutely been conscious not just of emerging standards within the Council of Europe, so things like the Parliamentary Assembly or the UN, sorry, the High Commissioner for Human Rights who have advocated for a significant period of time now that the existing structures within human rights law require or compel us to remove a diagnosis requirement. We also see in these jurisdictions they've just taken evidence as you were doing, evidence from people who are talking about how the diagnosis doesn't work and I think that's really important. I did work in 2018 for the European Union and I was involved in a second project in 2020 which looked at legal gender recognition laws across the European Union and there was no common reason, there was no common reason across all jurisdictions why people advocated for the removal of a diagnosis requirement but there were some which we could pick out as themes in which I think are really important. So lack of accessibility, right, the problem that people couldn't access the diagnosis requirements that they were, that was necessary to get and that's of course something that you have already heard about here. Issues about contraindications and diagnosis so medical complications across Europe which prevent people from being able to access a diagnosis of gender dysforia, also something we've seen within the UK context. The symbolism of not being the person who is able to advocate your gender, right, the indignity of having to go to a third party and to say actually you need to tell me who I are, who I am. If you look at international soul flow at least one of the common themes you can see is people saying listen even if we don't agree there needs to be self ID we do need that the process needs to be quick, quick, transparent and accessible and the diagnosis requirement has been considered by the cross Europe and across the European Union and the Council of Europe as being a major obstacle to that question of quick and transparency. It creates a huge amount of time. I think what we have seen is it's very much true that if you look in jurisdictions like Spain, if you look in jurisdictions even like outside of Europe like New Zealand the processes towards self determination have been in some ways delayed because of greater consultation around potential conflicts of rights. What I think is interesting in a number of jurisdictions is that having gone through that process like for example they did in New Zealand, like having gone through that process like they are going through in Spain they still passed the self identification law in New Zealand they are still proposing to pass that self identification law in Spain. I suppose one thing that I would say and sorry I realise I'm taking a lot of time so I will stop talking is just considering some differences between the debates and one I think which is really important is that when we talk about the policy debate in not just the United Kingdom but specifically here in Scotland very often the difference between the debate that we're having around gender around self ID in this jurisdiction and elsewhere is that actually it often seems like under the guise of opposition to self ID we are actually seeing policy debates which are really contrary to the gender recognition act itself and that is not similar to the type of public or policy conversation that we've seen in jurisdictions like Ireland and in Denmark and even in places like Germany or Spain that's more analogous to the type of anti-gender analysis and arguments and conversations we see happening for example in Hungary where they have recently repealed their gender recognition laws and around the decision of the highest courts in Bulgaria where they've taken a very regressive step back so I would just be careful about this we need to focus on self ID not on the GRA sorry for quite a long answer no no that distinction at the end there is really really helpful Chris can I come to you with your detailed analysis and knowledge of the Denmark situation it's been suggested that your your research finds that there's a desire in Denmark to make the access to the medical treatment pathways self-declared as well can you say a little bit more about that and what from your analysis from your research what is your position on the kind of medical gatekeeping around I suppose the different stages of transition that people might might go through okay thanks for your question that's not quite the point that I'm making my research actually in relation to the point I was I've made previously in a published article in feminist legal studies was more to do with the fact that which was kind of specific to the Danish case which was that provision of healthcare had been accessible or more accessible in the private healthcare sector in Denmark than in the public healthcare sector and around the time they enacted self declaration they also closed down some of the private provision of healthcare which was based on a kind of informed consent or shared decision making model which I know in a previous evidence session David Parker mentioned is at least the aspiration of a Scottish healthcare for trans people I also heard about the wait times and things these are also you know making things inaccessible for people and plenty of room for improvement but and actually out of the trans people I interviewed I mean some of them may well favour treatment on demand based on their own self declared gender but a lot of them were mainly arguing for a movement back towards this kind of shared decision making informed consent model briefly well actually for several years there was only one hospital after the legislation passed where you could get a transsexualism diagnosis which was the diagnosis they were using in Denmark people talked about a state monopoly basically at this clinic where it was slightly more old fashioned in its kind of approach towards trans issues so I think that was quite specific to Denmark and maybe wouldn't be so applicable in Scotland the point that you know when people have access to different kinds of protections whether that is or different types of recognition whether that's in the healthcare system protections in employment and how's access to housing these kind of material issues the point that when people get a gender recognition certificate that their experience of everyday life will be improved if they have the access to those other things as well I think stands in a Scottish context as well but I wouldn't say that there would be any kind of negative reason not to make the reforms as proposed here based on the Danish case as like I said before an important first step towards improving trans peoples everyday lives okay thank you if I can just explore a little bit further with you the sort of deep pathologising then in in the and I appreciate the context of private versus state healthcare in Denmark is different and we have the issues around waiting times and that that that we have we have well explored the the trans people that you interviewed that that you've spoken to that deep pathologising that was did that come across as a really significant shift for them for for their own experiences so yes and no so yes in the terms of the legal change and for the people who had you know accessed healthcare and and was you know kind of had reached levels of support in different areas for them the the fact that they could easily change their legal documentation without going through what was previously kind of a sterilisation process in Denmark was huge okay for the people who were struggling to who maybe had their healthcare taken away basically that some of the private healthcare providers that they were going to had been shut down and maybe they'd been rejected or or just couldn't go back to the state healthcare system and the question of deep pathologisation was a bit more muddy but I think purely within a legal frame taking a diagnosis like gender dysphoria out of legislation would make a significant impact on people at least on a symbolic level for you know their inclusion okay great thanks and I suppose being mindful of an earlier comment about what the reform we are scrutinising seeks to do and what it doesn't do I think that your comments are well made thank you and can we go to Rachel please just a quick question I just wanted for your experience international experience of looking at different models in terms of obviously jurisdictions across the world are very different and I just wondered can you talk us through how how you see the differences between Scotland and other jurisdictions for example you've stated some countries that now have self-id but in some of those countries medical documentation might be required to be produced so I mean we don't have a standardised approach it's kind of how can we learn from this and no one country has one standardised approach do they so the question is really can you can you talk us through where all these differences lie and which is your favoured country that has taken the approach that you agree with and in what principle has that been established thank you that's a very interesting quite a broad question so I'll try and and no it's it's good it gives us an avenue to explore I think so it's good to it's good to have so there you're you're absolutely correct that there is no one standardised approach there are basic minimum human rights standards that we need to follow according to our international obligations okay so things like the removal of sterilisation as a legal requirement for legal gender recognition was done by the european court of human rights and therefore applies to nation states of the council of europe things like the introduction of legal gender recognition as a human right under article eight of the european convention on human rights after the goodwin case again is a basic human rights standard now that we have so what I would say when it comes to different approaches from different countries in countries where there is self identification medical documents do not need to be produced okay so that's that that is a standard self identification requires it works on the autonomy of the person themselves as opposed to the authority of doctors or judges I personally find the the Maltese system to be a high standard for human rights I think the Danish system which obviously Dr Dietz can give more more detail on is a good system I think Iceland has recently adopted a very good gender recognition law based on self identification with provisions I believe for some minors with parental support and also for non-binary recognition which obviously isn't a reform we're discussing today but is is something that has come up in quite a few jurisdictions as regards to sort of more I guess at this point they are older legislations but such as the Irish gender recognition act 2015 I think the process was as I've said before it went through robust legislative debate but I think the process that that came out was quite simple where it is there's a payment of a nominal fee and the applicant makes a declaration to the registrar general in Ireland to to have their legal gender updated and I think that is is probably the most human rights compliant system I think self declaration in general is the most human rights compliant system with with that deep apologisation that my colleagues have have discussed as well Dr Duffy just on the thank you for that by the way on the the requirement for documentation in other countries like Croatia, Finland, Germany why did they come to that decision rather than the examples that you've given where no medical documentation is required why again is quite a big question it would have been through the legislative process taking evidence I suppose as as you're doing here in in parliament and in hearings there is currently although it is accepted as a human rights standard that deep apologisation is the kind of the gold standard for for legal gender recognition there is currently no legal requirement to deep apologise one's legislation so if elements I believe in in the parliament in the in the legislative debate came to the conclusion to keep medical documentation as part of their legislation that is of course the right of the country to do however I would submit that it is far more in tune with with human rights standards and with with the development I suppose of the the discourse in in human rights law around gender identity to to deep apologise and to remove the the judicial and medical requirements from the process okay Peter yeah so I suppose when we think about the development of these laws right we think about so the first law being developed in Sweden in 1972 and I think what you have to really understand is the legislative context right the legislative context I suppose we would say it was very much one which was inherently linked into a into a medical context right so our only understanding of trans identities was worn through a medical lens and that extended in the council of Europe well into the 1990s indeed act to the to the to the to the 20th century so you talk about Finland Finland as far as I'm aware adopted its law in 2002 where this notion of a trans identity being inherently medicalized would have still pervaded a lot of the of the of the kind of the legislative understanding so you ask why did they adopt this this medicalized model well it was because that was what was the standard of the day right when many of these jurisdictions like Germany or Italy adopted their original looth that was the understanding I think what's really important in that context is we look at what's happened post Goodwin what's happened post Argentina adopting a law in 2012 right and if we look at the majority of jurisdictions across Europe that have changed their laws more recently they have opted for that non-modicly standard because our understanding as a society has changed and our understanding of the human rights norms has changed I would say that if you look at kind of why why are there of course are differences right because there's a common law jurisdictions there are roman law jurisdictions civil law jurisdictions there are mixed law jurisdictions like Scotland right and so how the law plays out is going to be different in all of those countries I think what I would say is when we're thinking about medicalization we have seen some jurisdictions which have specifically put into their law that this process is not going to be medicalized so the really good example is Malta which really makes that strong affirmative statement and that's not something that you have to put in but of course I think as somebody who's conscious of human rights standards it might be it might be something I think what's really interesting with your point is we can see some differences right around different self-determination models so Malta for example has this waiting period that you are thinking about adopting and maybe we'll talk about later um Thur I think that's human rights compliance and to the extent that I don't think there is any rule of international human rights law that says you can't have it I would say what is it doing right so is it just an arbitrary waiting period is it actually serving some purpose and if not whatever I think the key issue is around young people and maybe if somebody has a question about young people I'm happy to to leave it there and we can consider the differences um yeah cool perfect I don't know if anyone else has got up the age question but it came up in the last panel yeah in terms of evolving capacity was that you can asked that yeah I was going to come in and sweep up any questions aren't the answer I will also say I'm conscious that I just spoke for a bit can I just go to Chris before can I just go to Chris on my question please before we come in about age yeah so just briefly I mean in Denmark I think the government that came into power in 2011 was it was part of their coalition agreement that they would look at how gender was registered by the state and from the people involved in the government and also some of the campaigners who were involved in lobbying the discussion of why they became the first European country to adopt self declaration was mainly that they thought that was the direction that things were going and in in time I think they've been proved proven to be correct actually in terms of if you look at all the other jurisdictions around Europe and elsewhere that have followed this route that originally Argentina was the first one that it went down and also this sense that they wanted to yeah make sure that it was fireproof in terms of human rights standards later they didn't want to enact something which would then fall below European human rights standards international human rights standards so they went you know with the because there was a proposal in the consultation stage of lots of different models and they just went with self declaration because they thought it was the most accessible um that the end and the best in in terms of human rights and also some of the things I mean to consider I suppose things like that it was cheap and easy to implement that when you don't have a lot of bodies and organisations and panels and things that yeah it just makes it the responsibility of the the human rights commission this morning suggested that um we should have a post legislative review um does that happen in um is there any international comparisons that have done that um yes uh in Ireland three years after the gender recognition act was brought in and so in 2018 they conducted a review um which included um uh legislative scrutiny committee hearings and public consultation okay thanks and that worked actually quite well in our and actually was then placed in as far as I'm aware into the 29 legislation or the the subsequent legislation on abortion yeah so we it was deemed to have worked well as a process and therefore was deemed to be an appropriate process for the abortion legislation okay so we've touched on the waiting time so I'm actually going to go to Fulton McGregor who I think wants to prove a little bit more on that I think Peter started answering the question that maybe Fulton wants to cover so go there thanks convener and good afternoon now to the to the panel thanks very much for your input so far yeah I'm going to ask the questions that I asked of the previous panel and um in previous weeks the the line of questioning and um if you managed to see any of the the previous panel you'll know what that's about it's about the provisions in the bill to live in the acquired gender as it's termed for three months and also the three month reflection periods I wanted to ask your views on that so start them on the the three months prior have you got any views on that and do you have any views on the term acquired gender this is an area where we've we've heard quite widespread criticism of this particular provision perhaps that we yourself dr Duffy okay so two parts to the question I suppose the term acquired gender to start off with personally when writing about this about this form of legislation I tend to use true gender or lived gender as opposed to acquired um as uh to represent the trans people doing out suddenly acquiring new identity that they have actually always had that identity they just may not have been living out in in the particular identity so I tend not to use the term acquired um and I think my colleagues would probably um agree on on that um with regard I suppose to waiting periods my own personal opinion is that they they don't seem to serve much of a purpose uh they as uh dr Dun pointed out in his previous answer and and I'm sure we'll we'll pick up on this as well the question is why are waiting periods so why are we introducing that term that that um aspect of temporality into into these legislations why do we require permanent why do we require waiting periods I suppose the answer that's given is is legal stability um and that but if if legal gender recognition um as is envisioned by this by this bill otherwise is an administrative process um is a depotologised process is is something that then um I don't see why a waiting period is a necessary addition to uh to the to the bill I would also say that the the current gender recognition at 2004 standards for two year waiting period is is very much out of line with uh with international standards on on the issue um I think if I might hand over to Peter to come in on that I don't have much oh go ahead no please mind I think you will maybe just about to um go with my point there I was going to say um if you've not got anything else to add to that is it to be something new stand to be would add much to us okay no okay so on the thanks very much for that so on the um the three month reflection period perhaps if I can ask about that I might I might start the reverse way resting just in case the same happens again and sorry Dr Dunger in the middle so Dr Dites have you any thought on the the three month reflection period so in Denmark they had a six month reflection period which works I think similarly to how it's proposed in the bill so a person would make an application and then have to confirm that themselves and if they didn't confirm that you know the application would fall away um the trans people that I interviewed the people who um had applied or would consider applying for recognition found that a little bit patronising and yeah again weren't sure what they were supposed to be reflecting on based on this understanding that you know when you go to apply for legal gender recognition in a lot of cases it will be towards many years into reflecting on your gender and gender identity um in terms of the um authorities that I interviewed that yeah there was some kind of practical reasons in Denmark you can um change your gender back um if you realise that you know it wasn't the right thing for you and so I think the reflection period they put in as a kind of to stop people uh you know doing that constantly um I don't know if that would be a significant consideration in Scotland or not but um yeah thanks for that I'm not so done if you get any thoughts on no I think what I would say is that I don't think there's any prohibition on the implementation of one of those periods right so I don't think you know for example the European Convention on Human Rights it's certainly not a violation of article 8 we haven't seen anyone try and bring a case to or make that argument in uh in in Denmark I think what I would say is that I do think can we think about international soft law norms uh there might be a significant number of actors within the system within the both the Council of Europe system and within the UN human rights system that say that it is not necessary or who might say that it's not compatible with that idea of of self-identification and potentially raises questions for the this sort of speed and the length um of the of the process what I would sort of say is very much what you've said is that when when when there was a sort of a Europe-wide survey in 2019 and 2020 there was an acknowledgement that these periods did exist but there wasn't a huge amount of consideration of it within the survey results some people I think said it might have been a bit excessive but it wasn't one of the major concerns that I think people were talking about in terms of accessing legal gender recognition. Just to add very briefly to that as I mentioned in my opening statement trans people know their own minds so this is not something that people come to likely this is not something as Dr Dieter said this is something that people think about for many years often before they enter the legal process um and what we're trying to do here and what I believe most of the reforms that are put forward in this bill um are aimed at doing is returning the agency to trans people returning the agency and the autonomy over their own uh legal status to trans people and it seems to be an interposition of getting other standard of authority if we impose a waiting period on them as well um that we're saying that you don't know your own mind you need to think about it for another three months and I don't find that that is um in keeping with the spirit of some of the other reforms that have been proposed so um personally I would I would recommend against implementing a waiting period okay thanks very much so okay thanks so we'll pick up Karen in terms of the the area that we started talking about so um yeah so I was going to ask a question um it's quite general so if you want to come in there with the with the age and answer about that that's perfectly fine it's you know in terms of this proposed bill that's before us at this time the purpose of the bill is to make life that bit fairer and more dignified for trans people to acknowledge their human rights and put that into legislation so with that in mind looking at the key aspects of the bill are there any parts of that that you feel could be improved upon to meet that goal I think could start with it okay um I think I'm going to give the floor to Peter just to talk about the age thing um I would have I would have if we hadn't already spoken about it I would have singled out the waiting period um as something to um to keep in mind when thinking about that but as regards uh age and uh that I think my colleagues can probably speak more to that and as well um I would also add that um the bill doesn't seem to consider non-binary recognition uh which is something that has been picked up by several European jurisdictions recently and would be um something that uh that that would render it in my view more human rights compliant but that's obviously something we can talk about later if you if you prefer thank you yeah so I know the Scottish Government has very clearly said um that non-binary gender recognition is not going to form part of this roses and I also appreciate that I'm part of the Scottish Government's non-binary working group and so when I say that I should be very clear that this is my own personal opinion that I am expressing not the expressions of the group I do think that there is space um not as a matter necessarily of human rights or requirements but of good policy reform to consider further the ways in which if not the the gender recognition reform bill Scotland can make life easier for non-binary individuals will certainly the ways in which the law operates in other different spheres that as I say is a personal opinion when we think about young people I think it's very welcome that we can see that the legislation provides for 16 and 17 year olds we've seen in other jurisdictions which have adopted self-determination that they have at least in some way or not even that have adopted self-determinations that have uh I suppose taken out the diagnosis requirement because there we could also include the Netherlands for example they have extended legal gender recognition in some way uh to those who are under the age of 18 there's been no standard way in which that has been done so for example you have some jurisdictions like Malta like jurisdictions for example like Norway jurisdictions like like the Netherlands which have taken out a diagnosis requirement and provided one system for all people over the age of 16 in Ireland Portugal Belgium they've made it slightly more difficult in some jurisdictions a lot more difficult for young people who are 16 and 17 to be able to access legal gender recognition some jurisdictions have left at 16 Scotland is choosing to do that other jurisdictions haven't so places like Malta and Norway have allowed for children under the age of 16 to access legal gender recognition but have done not on a much more um conservative process involving parents sometimes involving courts um I will admit to being probably slightly more conservative so I think for young people under the age of 16 having parental consent um having that involvement of other actors is is a good thing a lot of human rights actors would say not what you there was a question which I will answer which is that I think that there potentially could be space for children under the age of 16 to be provided in a quite supervised process but to provide that possibility I think if we are thinking as we've talked about the best interests of the child the evolving capacities of the child that absolute bright line at 16 presents issues and the final thing I would say is let's not just think for young people about legal gender recognition young people's lives are not young people's lives rely upon the government providing adequate advice to schools schools respecting their identities and key ways in fact I think that those on the ground policy and legislative reforms true for example non-discrimination law for some young people would be more important than having legal gender recognition thank you was it only specifically around age that you wanted no just any key aspects of the bill that you feel is relevant to to bring up okay well I think in Denmark there's also this um penal kind of sanction threat that's also included in the offence of making a false declaration that's been included in the bill and I think if we're talking about sort of the spirit of the bill being one of inclusion then this sort of threat of potential imprisonment is um yeah it's at least interesting from an academic perspective of um yeah not necessarily yeah there's a the Danish people sorry the Danish trans people that I spoke to spoke about you know suspicion level of suspicion from the state that uh that this kind of threat um of of penal sanction would come with so I don't know if that's been mentioned previously but that was something that um that looked quite yeah I don't know how to describe it kind of heavy-handed in the um in the bill and something that I think is at least uh well would be maybe subjects of criticism interesting so the question is how would it operate right what does it mean to live in your gender what would it mean to give a false declaration are we after somebody obtains a gender recognition certificate going to require them to engage in a very stereotypical performative expression of their gender identity and if they don't have they committed fraud and so I would I'd be interested at least from your perspective to consider more how that would um how that would apply in operation and just yeah just to add if possible um some of the um not i interview some non-binary people in Denmark who present quite masculine or feminine and so therefore chose to make use of the ability to change their legal gender within the confines of the legal binary which had been offered which you might find is also something that was possible here in Scotland as well that somebody who is non-binary identified but looks more masculine and was assigned female gender at birth might prefer to have a male legal gender even if that doesn't really reflect their true gender identity but just for practical purposes and in that case you know the yeah would that constitute a false declaration if they declare that they plan to live in the acquired gender for the rest of their life when on a personal level they don't you know there's this threat of criminalisation is something that yeah like I say to me seems a little bit heavy handed sorry just to note as well that gender identity is often for the individual not a fixed quantity gender can be fluid gender is as as dr Dietz says um something that perhaps perhaps a non-binary person feels more masculine perhaps they feel more feminine perhaps they feel um outside the gender binary altogether um and how do we equate that lived experience in that the the current human rights standard for sexual orientation and gender identity set by the Georgia Carter principles in the yp plus 10 documents and they consider gender identity to being internally felt thing and a sort of an innate attribute to the individual um which again it doesn't really um correlate to to something that has you know carceral terms and and that has um very standardized sort of um and as I mentioned in in reply to Mr McGregor um temporalized terms as well so gender identity is something that can be a lot more fluid a lot more um changing uh or you know for a lot of people it is fixed but it's not the case for everybody um thank you Pam Gossel thank you good afternoon panel and thank you very much for your opening statements my question is around the potential of these reforms to allow bad faith actors to obtain grc's more easily the self-id based gender recognition system in victoria australia includes additional checks and safeguards for applicants such as registered sex offenders and prisoners are there any other international examples of such additional checks that you are aware of and do you believe these additional checks would provide an important additional safeguard and my question will go to Dr Daffy first please okay um I am personally not aware of other jurisdictions especially in the european context that have such limitations that is not to say that there aren't any it's just that personally um through my own research I haven't encountered any um as regards the situation of say people um who are incarcerated um obviously there are some points at which rights apply differentially but so far we have not seen um a diminution of say one's article 8 ech or right to legal gender identification um to be one of those rights when it comes to when it comes to to to people in incarceration um similarly uh with regard to registered sex offenders um again we need to to consider exactly how much we're intruding on people's human rights in in in a long related area if that makes sense um to the judicial process that they have already gone through um personally I am not a fan of the arguments around bad faith actors I tend to believe that bad faith actor arguments are a problem that stem from cisgender men not trans women um if you are arguing that a bad faith actor is going to try and obtain a GRC in order to gain access to women's spaces which seems to be the the main argument that is made against it then um I would say that that is is not it's not a trans person seeking a GRC that is an abuser seeking a GRC um and internationally that has not seemed to happen um possibly because most cases of um you know of sexual violence or around that that happen happen on the actions of cisgender men there isn't a GRC required in order for for these people to you know to access women to victimize um and I tend to find that the the bad faith actor arguments don't play out internationally um again I speak to the Irish jurisdiction there hasn't been a rush of people seeking gender recognition certificates since self ID began it's been very steady um there hasn't been uh reports as far as I'm aware of crime happening um you know with regard to uh to to people trying to to access say women's bathrooms or or things like that uh in in relation to having obtained a GRC um GRCs are for trans people to go about their daily lives they are to promote the dignity and the inclusion of trans people um this is not something that we this this goal this is the goal of the legislation this is not something that we should forget because we are worried that potentially cisgender men might abuse it and again as I say that has not been something that has played out in in what I have seen in in my research thank you so I would say quite similar um so certainly within the european context I'm not aware of jurisdictions basically placing limitations on people who are uh serving custodial sentences um from being able to access legal gender recognition and I think you know of course we have to consider those balancing of rights so when you go into the carceral system absolutely you don't have the same enjoyment of all of the rights that you have for example your article fights right five rights to liberty what we do sort of see is that you do however retain some key rights and so you'd retain that right to private life to personal development which we see under the european convention on human rights is the core of your right to legal gender recognition now of course we have to think about exceptions and what you actually think what you what you see within the uk and what you see within scotland is when you do this comparative analysis of different jurisdictions in europe actually the uk is quite interesting in that we have specifically provided for carve outs and exceptions where we think that there's going to be bad faith actors so actually some of the protections that we would want to see within segregated spaces for example within sport within prisons already exist and there's no reason to suggest why those also wouldn't work under this new system if guarantee if having a gender recognition certificate doesn't guarantee you access to a prison or when you're in a prison doesn't guarantee you being able to change a state well then there's no reason to understand the question why that case by case analysis couldn't happen i actually happened to believe that when we're legislating we do need to think about what's just probable but what's also potential i think that's appropriate way in which we consider however what i do slightly worry about is where we seem on the conversation about gender recognition to always start from the image of the trans rapist of the person in the bathroom who's going to mug you of the cisgender man who's going to try and gain the social welfare system i think i would ask where else i suppose do we start from a position by saying we think this is there are key policy reasons to adopt this legislative reform and we think that this reform would be appropriate and would make people's lives better where else do we start from the position of saying well actually we're going to start by looking at the potential abuses we're not going to look at the merits of the reform we're going to look at the potential abuses i would say let's look at the system that exists let's see can we approve it as this i think bill does and then let's see what are the potential problems what are the potential abuses and let's create appropriate exceptions and i would say if there's anything that's welcome about this debate it's that we're finally talking about abuse of women in public spaces in private spaces in prisons let's focus more upon that and upon the male perpetrators of violence rather than i suppose trying to scapegoat the trans community because whether or not this legislation passes women are still going to experience abuse in the home in places of in public spaces let's put our efforts towards that as a family lawyer i would very much support that approach thank you clear on that peter i no way am i saying that these trans people are these bad things that unfortunately there are people out there it's not the trans people that made that that's why i'm focusing on this because people have asked that question that people may um you know say they're trans and use that which is absolutely wrong and these bad faith actors could end up you know if they've got the grc think that that's something there that they can go into these places so that's why i'm asking more about the safeguards to make sure that we don't let these people in and make sure that we're fair but no way am i seeing any trans people i like that and i personally actually believe that we have to have these conversations about safeguards and good people within academia would maybe sort of think about well what is the limit of that conversation i think we do but i just i suppose we have to kind of apply the same legislative standards to this legislation as we would with anyone else and you know it seems that that's what you're doing so i think i think it's great to see thank you thank you and dr Chris is there anything you want to add to that only to add that i'm not aware of any evidence of systematic misuse of self-decoration in Denmark or in any of the other jurisdictions that have adopted self-declaration legislation i've just got one more additional question on this is there anything that you've got that you can compare from internationally whether it's in europe or outside when it comes to religious rights obviously making sure that you know that we don't take anybody's rights away whether it's trans rights or religious in that we work in a balance so is there anything out there that you've experienced or seen or can speak about that how we can balance both rights whether it's to single sex spaces or whether it's to single sex services i come at this from the point of view that trans women are women and trans men are men and therefore if a trans woman is accessing a woman's space then she is in the correct place um i am not aware of religious exemptions in other laws although i'm not i'm not aware of them um but from my point of view like i said if if a trans woman is in a women's space then then she's a woman and she's allowed in that space um if you feel about the religious people that are minority you know groups out there that feel that their religion will be impacted if somebody else is in that space and so when you say trans women will be a trans woman and trans man will be a trans man obviously how do you feel about that that we've heard this from one of our private sessions that basically it would exclude more women and girls from minority groups so just if you don't know an example it'd be good to hear from your thoughts on that that how do you say that that basically they wouldn't be affected if basically if a trans woman came into that changing room or that space service or again i can only say that i i i come at this from from the perspective that a trans woman is a woman like me or like any other um i appreciate the question um i think it's quite a difficult one to negotiate um without wanting to harm either the minorities you're referring to or the the tiny minority of society that is the trans community um i think this is possibly something peter could speak to when it comes to exemptions and exceptions and equality laws um slightly better than i could so i might i think i'm going to be quite i'm going to be quite a let down on that um so no i think i wouldn't so what i would say is a couple of things i think what might be good to consider is the work that the UN special rapporteur on freedom of religion has done because he's looked at issues of gender and he's looked at potential conflicts around issues of LGBT rights gender and freedom of religion um and i think he's come to quite a nuanced perspective on that so he might actually be somebody certainly you could look at his reports but he also might be somebody to consider in in evidence um i would i would say that i'm not aware of any legislative building what i would say is that you know there are jurisdictions around the world in in Asia in Europe in South America in North America which have adopted self identification laws um and so there might be at the local level either specific local rules or there might be individual practices um and that's something which i'm certainly happy to to look at further if it would be useful to give you follow-up information around that um as somebody who come from quite a religious background i'm quite sympathetic to um the religious perspective but once again i think that we have to realistically think about how that that um how that balancing works and i think we have to kind of say objectively well what are the potential rights that are our conflict here um i would certainly say that there always is the possibility of a conflict of rights and sometimes we have to come to complex compromises and i don't think that's necessarily a bad thing but once again i would sort of suggest let's realistically and objectively obsess whether or not that conflict really exists because i think too often sometimes we're very quick to to see the conflict but where it does absolutely let's have a conversation about balancing people's rights i mean just on that peter if you do have any information it'd be great for the committee to see that um that how we can balance both rights i think it's about having that balance um and respecting both rights but there certainly is from um you know we have heard basically there are people that are feeling that so we mustn't make sure that we can balance that so if there's anything that you could send to the committee it'd be really welcome very happy to see that thank you it's brief um it's just to get some um examples of countries that have impact studies on the particular issues that pam has just explored if you may thank you i'm not sure if there is but absolutely very very happy to look at um very much happy to look at off the top of my head i haven't actually seen anything which specifically looks at that issue but there may very well be and we can certainly ask connections thank you thank you okay thanks and Pam Duncan-Gwan said thank you convener and good afternoon to the panel thank you for the evidence you've given so far and also for the information you submitted in advance which we found incredibly helpful i a lot of the questions that i had have kind of already been covered with the exception of a couple so i'll i'll focus on that you've touched on this but can you can you tell us from experience elsewhere are there any countries who have monitored the impact of self identification on the use of single sex spaces not aware of research on that from the countries that i would be conversant with the the law in um if you wanted to expand on the question then i could maybe give some more information but i'm not currently aware of of research on that so i guess and we have this this issue where where people have presented to us concerns about the risks associated with self identification and the risks to women and we heard some fairly compelling evidence actually this morning from the shrc on that on that matter but i'm aware that countries elsewhere have have done this and they've done it for for quite some time for example argentina has done it now for nearly 10 years so i'm i guess as a legislator i'm asking you what did other legislators do about this how did they navigate that particular issue if i could speak to the the danish case i mean one of the things that came up in the parliamentary debates in denmark was this access to single sex spaces so it's not like kind of post legislative review but it was something that was discussed there and one of the things one of the ways that the minister who was involved for presenting the legislation to the parliament said was you know that these aren't new issues and they're not going to be significantly affected by the passing of self-decoration legislation and i think that seemed to be the the view in the previous session as well that whether you have a gender recognition certificate or not doesn't necessarily determine whether you can access a single sex space so i think in that respect that they had a similar approach in denmark and the minister said you know people who run leisure centres or they you know they they they do deal with these things they have dealt with these things in the past and yeah they'll they'll come up with with solutions and i guess it's kind of a hands-off approach from the government which could be criticised but but yeah i mean yeah i agree with you it seemed quite compelling this morning in relation to what this specific bill the effect of it would be it's sort of hard to hard to determine thank you did you have something to add doctor to yes well so i supposed what he said is so so we i don't think i don't think i think the reality is i'm i'll be pretty confident to say that i don't think there is a significant amount of research out there which is looked at specifically the question of monitoring and so there's no point i'm i'm you know i wouldn't equivocate on that from my perspective i don't think there is but i do think there's a couple of things so first of all we have seen a review of the legislation so we talked about the two-year review in Ireland and many issues were raised about potential difficulties with the legislation in that particular jurisdiction one of them which wasn't raised was the fear that it was being misused so there didn't seem to be in this government report any indication that Ireland which is actually quite a good comparator jurisdiction in terms of size of population and legal culture um it's quite a good it's quite a good example of potentially what might happen so we haven't seen abuse in Ireland and certainly i would say anecdotally i could add to that and say i haven't heard of abuse what was interesting when we did a review so with uh my colleague dr Marilyn van den Brink in 2018 in 2018 we looked at different laws across the european union and a certain effort of member states and what we were really surprised to see was as chris has sort of said is that there wasn't a huge number of jurisdictions even those jurisdictions which adopted self-determination which had specifically provided for this type of of of legal rule it seemed to operate more on the basis of a kind of a common social understanding the one jurisdiction that did stand out for having quite a clear regulated framework in terms of who can and can't access single sex spaces was the united kingdom and so actually we might think that there are potentially the framework that we already have existing in this jurisdiction potentially could be more of us then would exist in other jurisdictions um the final what i would say is that there has been more general studies in the last two years or so about how legal gender recognition operates in the council of europe and happens in the european union and no they have not specifically looked at how single sex spaces might be effective and so therefore the relevance for the question that you've asked has to be considered and has to be lessened that's just that's just a fact but what we once again don't see is massive concerns being raised by the possibility that this has had a material impact in terms of creating unsafe spaces once again it's one of those things where i absolutely do think it's something that you have to take into account um but i i think we also once again need to be realistic in terms of the threat and if that sort of potential risk exists putting in place appropriate safeguards thank you thank you dr doffy i was also going to point to the irish review um and how this did not seem with regard to the report anyway that from the committee that that uh actually reviewed the bill did not seem to be um a problem um did not seem to be something that was raising concern um as i've said before there hasn't been um a rush on gender recognition certificates in ireland um as i've also said before this is um this is an issue where we're not talking about trans people anymore you know we're no longer talking about the actual community that this legislation has aimed at we're we're talking about bad faith actors from another community um i think the uk as as dr dun has mentioned um has quite a robust framework regard to who can access what space and what exemptions and exceptions apply um i am not sure that the bill that we're debating and adjudating on here today would actually uh impact that that much if that if that makes sense that we already have a framework for these kind of things that deep pathologising scottish gender recognition law would probably not have such a huge effect on on current kind of equalities law and that for the for the whole of the uk thank you i appreciate that and i also appreciate um your reminder that that this is about looking at what we can do for trans people that's an important reminder thank you thanks that's all okay thanks very much well thanks to all three of you um it's been quite a long session over the course of today and everyone's been kind of watching all the sessions so so thanks so much for helping us with our stage one inquiry and that concludes the public part of our meeting we'll now move into private for the final item on our agenda thank you