 Welcome to the Equal Opportunities Committee. It's the third meeting of 2016. Can I ask you to set any electronic devices to flight mode or switch off, please? We will come to the usual introductions in a moment after the first agenda item, which is the decision on taking business in private. You're asked to agree a paper on your review of the budget considerations at agenda item 3 in private. Are we all agreed? Thank you. Agenda item 2 is an evidence session on the Scottish Transgender Alliance Equal Recognition Campaign. We'll start the session with some introductions. At the table, we have our clerkin and research team, official reporters and broadcasting services, and around the room, we are also supported by the security. Welcome to the Observers in the Public Gallery. My name is Margaret McCulloch, and I am the committee's convener. I now invite members and witnesses to introduce themselves in turn, starting here on my right. Good morning, everyone. Sandra White MSP for Glasgow-Kelvin, deputy convener. I'm John Mason, MSP for Glasgow-Shetleston. Good morning, Christian Allard, MSP for North East Scotland. Matt Vaugh, good morning, John Finnie, MSP Highlands and Islands. Good morning, Annabelle Goll, MSP West of Scotland. Good morning, my name is Vic Valentine, I'm the policy officer at the STA. Just to let everyone know that I use gender neutral, they pronouns. Hello, my name is James Morton, I'm the manager of the Scottish Transgender Alliance. My name is Alison Ewing, and I'm the founder of a parent support group called Transparencies, which supports parents of trans children. We have a branch in Glasgow and one just started up in Edinburgh. Can I ask the witnesses if they would like to make any brief opening statements? Thank you very much for hearing this evidence session about the Equal Recognition Campaign. It's a campaign that is asking for a legislative change by the Scottish Parliament on reform for the Gender Recognition Act. We're calling for three things in particular. We're calling for the Scottish Government to remove the psychiatric diagnosis requirement from legal gender recognition. We're calling for the Scottish Government to reduce the age at which people can get legal recognition of the gender they live as. We're calling for the Scottish Government to provide legal recognition for people who do not identify as men or women. We're happy to elaborate on those in regards to questions. Anyone else would like to make a comment? No, I'm happy with that. Can I ask you about the current process of gender recognition, where you actually are with it just now, please? At the moment, since 2004, the Gender Recognition Act has provided a mechanism for transsexual people to change their gender on their birth certificates and therefore their legal gender from male to female or from female to male. It requires you to be over 18. It requires you to provide a whole load of different documents to prove that you've been living in that new gender for over two years. Bank statements, passport, rent statements, bills, all kinds of things, employment pay slips, so you have to create a file of those. You also need to provide a written report by your GP and a written report by your psychiatrist. There's a list of specialists that are allowed to write that psychiatric report. It's very restricted, as you've only got around seven people in Scotland who are allowed to provide that second report. Those two reports have to detail very specifically what, if any, medical treatments you've undergone is part of gender reassignment. You need to provide hormone dosage, length of time, medication names, exact details and dates of any surgeries. It's very easy for doctors to make a slight mistake on those or just not give the technical enough details and then the application gets rejected by the panel. It goes to a tribunal panel. You don't see them in person, but it's basically judiciary and medical practitioners who look at all your documentation in a very legalistic way. If there's any eyes that aren't dotted or teased that aren't crossed perfectly, they reject and require you to submit further evidence. People have found it a very traumatic and difficult process, very frustrating and very much feel that it removes their autonomy and their ability to self-declare and instead places in the hands of a judicial panel and makes people feel very demeaned. John Mason would like to pick up on that just now. You mentioned psychiatric diagnosis. I'm not very knowledgeable on that area, so I assume that I don't know very much. Can you explain what's involved in psychiatric diagnosis and why you feel that it should be removed? In terms of the World Health Organization's international classification of diseases, the only thing that's required to receive a diagnosis of gender dysphoria or transsexualism is to, for over six months, identify strongly with the different gender and wish to live in that different gender and potentially have medical interventions to assist with that. However, in terms of the psychiatric report that's required by the gender recognition panel, they go much further in their demands of what goes in that. They expect you to have the psychiatrist detail everything right back to your childhood, what your sexual preferences are, what toys you played with as a child. Indeed, if you took the average person and you listed all those things, I'm not convinced that the average person would get through the gender recognition panel. It's interesting that there's a World Professional Association for Transgender Health, which is the body that represents all the different psychiatrists, psychologists and other gender specialists around the world. They themselves have said that they don't think that psychiatric diagnosis should be a requirement for legal gender recognition. They feel that the medical profession should simply be evaluating your readiness for medical treatment, not your access to human rights. They stated that no particular medical, surgical or mental health treatment or diagnosis is an adequate marker for anyone's gender identity, so those should not be requirements for legal gender change. That was a quote from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. Is the UK unusual in the spectrum of countries as to how they deal with all this? The legislation of different countries reflects the year in which it was passed. The legislation that was passed back in the 70s often required sterilisation and things like that. The legislation that was passed in the very early 21st century such as the UK doesn't require sterilisation but requires these intrusive medical reports. The legislation that was passed in Ireland last year is taking a self-declaration model, and that is now the recognised best practice in human rights terms. Legislation has been improving each decade and the UK legislation is now falling behind the times, and we think that it is due for renewal. You would be arguing for self-declaration, but there is no need for anything to replace the psychiatric diagnosis. We believe that it should be similar to how you would change your gender on other documents at the moment, so you could get your name and your gender marker changed on your medical records and on your bank statements. That is how I intend to live, and that would be an oath the same as if you were in a court of law. We think that that is what should be done for your birth certificates as well. That is how it is done in Ireland and in other countries. In Europe, it is the Netherlands, Denmark, Malta, Ireland, Sweden, Norway and Belgium that all use the self-declaration model. As James said, most of that legislation has been passed since 2010, so it is not that it would be unusual for Scotland to follow suit in doing that. It is what is moving towards being considered the international best practice. You said something about six months earlier on, so would that be relevant here, or is there got to be some kind of waiting period or anything like that? That six months is in regards to access to medical interventions because people need to be very confident that they are making the right decisions for irreversible treatments to their body. For a document change, we do not believe that medical diagnosis should be part of that. You would not require people to go through any kind of medical evaluation for other types of documentation change. Are there any drawbacks in that? Are there unintended consequences? Sometimes people are concerned that people might do that for some kind of nefarious purpose or as a joke. There is no evidence that people have been changing their gender on other types of document that you can do through self-declaration as any kind of joke or malicious intent. We think that that is highly unlikely to occur. We think that access to single-sex services, Scottish Women's Aid, Rape Crisis Scotland and the Scottish Prison Service are all voluntarily using a good practice self-declaration model for how they allow access to their single-sex services already. They are obviously confident that that can be managed appropriately. I would like to ask Alison Gallison about the involvement of parents or guardians. When she mentioned the fact that the psychiatric diagnosis and the aspect of toys that she played with, how involved do parents or guardians become in that so-called diagnosis? Are you asked about it or is it simply? When your children are under 16, the parent is involved in the assessment process. We see a psychiatrist and they ask about your child's history and encourage the child to answer that as well. If there has been a history of gender dysphoria, how did they play with their toys? They ask for that in assessment before they can get the diagnosis of gender dysphoria. When you come to the situation where there are some children who haven't got a parent and guardian or a parent who is still living, it must be very difficult for them to get that past to go through this psychiatric diagnosis. I haven't come across any foster carers yet, although I am a trustee on the board of mayor maids. We have some members who are foster carers and they have a lot of hoops to get through with social work involvement to get adequate treatment for their foster children. That becomes quite complicated. I don't think that I know of any foster carers so far in Scotland. Those are ones in England that should come under the different legislation. I think that clarifying that point is obviously difficult for hoops to go through. If they are over 16, the young people can go and access services themselves, but they will still be asked all the questions like what did you play with, what was your favourite colour, how many did you play with boys or girls, things like that. I won't comment on that part. I just wanted to reiterate that the process of legal gender change is separate from the access to medical treatments. We have our concerns about the questions that are asked in terms of readiness for hormone blockers or hormones or surgeries for people of different ages, but that wouldn't be something that we would be asking the Scottish Parliament to legislate on. In terms of legislation, we are asking about the Gender Recognition Act, which would not affect how the assessments for hormone blockers, hormones or surgeries took place. Annabelle? Just following on from John Mason's questions, James, under the existing law, is there any evidence of anyone who sought gender change under the 2004 act wanting to change their status after that? You mean people reversing their decision to transition. There is a very, very tiny minority of people that may decide to change back afterwards. The tiny number of people that we have encountered is virtually always been because of the amount of harassment and exclusion that they faced once they transitioned, so they ended up feeling like they had lost so much in being themselves, that they felt under pressure to change back in order to regain contact with their family and things like that. It's very, very rare that people have changed their decision, and it would be increasingly unlikely that society becomes more accepting. It's that feeling that you just can't take the discrimination any longer. That sometimes means that people go back. That's helpful, because if we were to move on to a situation based on self-declaration, I simply wondered how we would manage a situation where someone might subsequently decide that they had acted in error, made a mistake or regretted what they'd done. Would the change of law have to allow for that? At the moment, the gender recognition does already allow you to reapply and change your gender back should you be in that exceptional circumstance. The law for marriage recognises that, although people have every intention for their marriage to last the rest of their life in some sad situations it doesn't always. The number of people who transition back in terms of gender recognition is minuscule compared to the number of people who divorce. Thank you very much. Are you finished, John? John Finnie? Thank you, convener. As John says, there's a measure of devil's advocacy in a lot of what we are going to ask as you'll understand we need to probe deeply in those important issues. How much evidence is there that there are people who are ready to apply for gender recognition at the ages of 16 and 17? There's now increasing numbers of young people who are finding that their families are supportive and no longer need to hide who they are in shame and fear. So what we find is that pre-puberty, there's no need for any kind of major interventions or anything like that and we very much encourage parents to just allow their child to grow and develop and allow them to play with whatever toys they want and be whoever they want but not worry about whether this will or will not turn into gender dysphoria and distress at pre-puberty. The evidence suggests that if somebody is experiencing gender dysphoria and a significant difference between their gender identity and their assigned gender at birth when they're hitting puberty and going through puberty, then it's highly unlikely that they will then change their mind. The current NHS treatment in Scotland and indeed throughout Europe and the further field is to allow people to have hormone blockers if they're entering puberty and that's causing them to feel extremely distressed, it gives them some breathing space, time to work out how they want to live their life. They're not usually given any hormones or anything like that until 16 but they would usually have all their other documents except their birth certificate changed over at an earlier age and what we think is that if their parents are supportive then they should be able to get that birth certificate changed too so that they are not in a situation where they have contradictory elements of identity documents some showing one gender, some showing another and schools getting confused and uncertain about which one they should respect and how to register them for exams and things like that. That just magnifies the sense of difference and the sense of distress and the sense of their identity not being respected when they're already distressed about the changes that puberty are causing them. Are you able to add anything? There's been a huge increase in the number of children being referred to the Sandiford Children and Adolescent Gender Identity Services in 2013 there were 67 referrals which was absolutely fine for the psychiatrist who's only there one day a week to cope with. Last year there were over 180 referrals so there is a very big increase in the amount of young people being referred and as James had said they are trying to treat or to see and assess those who are approaching puberty so they are adopting what's called a stage not age criteria so that if somebody is experiencing acute distress and self-harm and suicide attempts then they will hopefully try to be seen quicker but unfortunately the waiting list is now a year for that and it was three months when my child first came out to me four years ago so that is increasing the distress. My child came out 14 and she totally transitioned when she was still 14 so she was already changed her name at school but we didn't get a passport till last February when she was coming up for 17. I do think that it would have helped if we'd been able to follow on that whole process and get the birth certificate changed along that route so then she can go forward. She has been living under her name for three and a half years since she transitioned at school and the school was extremely good but I do think that it would help the schools as well if that is brought down. For under-16s obviously parental consent would have to be there for that so it would be problematic if there was a young person who was in here or didn't have supportive parents but they may not have even come out to the parents if they don't have supportive parents before 16 and they wouldn't have been able to access services on their own without parental support really until they were over 16. Sorry, I've run out of things to say. Can I ask about what support is there? I mean, I understand your organisation. The broad-level support is that suitable for young people or would some additional support require to be put in place? In terms of voluntary sector support marmades and transparencies are doing an amazing job but they are under-resourced in terms of lacking adequate funding. In terms of NHS provision, it's at the moment one day a week of a child and adolescent psychiatrist trying to see the entire case load for Scotland so it would be a very small drop in the ocean of funding for NHS to double that provision and bring the waiting times down to a reasonable level. We very much review that NHS funding should be put in place so that outpatient appointments for people for gender identity issues can be achieved within the 18 weeks times treatment guarantee that everybody else's outpatient appointments receive. We don't want any special treatment, we simply want to be seen in the same sort of timescales as any other outpatient appointment and it would be a very small amount of additional capacity that would be needed to do that. Can I ask on that specific issue of the outpatient appointments? Have you made any representations and if so what response did you receive? We sit as part of the National Gender Identity Clinical Network for Scotland at NHS National Services in Iran. We've also made approaches to the Scottish Government Health Directorate asking for increased resourcing of the gender identity clinics. There tends to be a lack of recognition of just how many more cases there are now. People plan their services based on 10-year-ago predictions without realising that, as social attitudes improve, people are more confident that they have less to lose by coming out as themselves. We also encounter resistance in terms of people making assumptions that there aren't clinicians that would want to work in the area and that, therefore, there's no point in recruiting because no one would reply. We don't believe that that is true because we think that there are also multidisciplinary team models that you could use where you might use more nursing staff or more counsellors, and that would enable an increase in capacity without needing to necessarily have an additional psychiatrist if psychiatrists are somehow hard to come by. We don't feel that enough effort has been made to try and increase the capacity yet. Can I ask what the risks and benefits are of lowering the application age to 16 and possibly even further in the future? Because it's a document change, it's not irreversible, it's something that enables that person to feel valued, understood and accepted, we don't see there being a significant risk of lowering. The key thing is about making sure that people have their parental support. Because we are asking for under-16s with parental consent, that means that it wouldn't be pitching the child and the parent against each other. It would be about recognising that there are young people who do have that parental support. It's a very sad situation that there are still young people who don't have parental support, but they are the ones who feel too scared to come out. That's about education of society. We think that it's a positive thing to reduce the age. It shows that people do know their gender from a young age. If you think back, sort of like age 3, 4 or 5, you knew you were a boy or a girl. You knew to what degree that fitted. We think that it's only going to be those cases where the parents and the young person are convinced that this is the right thing to do and that the young person is already living in that gender successfully that are going to apply for a burst of kid change. It just means that the paperwork can be in order and they are not being constantly outied and quizzed and have to reveal their past when they go for their first job or if they are putting in sort of like a foreign exam certificate. OK, thank you very much indeed. John Mason, I'd like to come in. To follow up the figures about referrals, I think that if I got it correctly, it was 67, has risen quite quickly to 180. I mean, I just wondered from international experience if you've got any kind of forecasts or what the need might be in the future or if we're pretty much in the dark. It's hard to know exactly how many people still are holding back from coming out. There will be some. Society's attitudes towards transgender people have improved hugely in the last few years, but there are still a sizable number of people who are not supportive. So we think that it will continue to go up for a while yet. I don't think that there will be the same level of dramatic rise. I think that the tipping point of social awareness of trans has hit and now if you take the average person in the street they know what transgender means and they are usually supportive but occasionally not. So I think that that biggest leap has happened, but there will continue to be a bit of an increase from now on and we can't really predict exactly how much and how long. The concern would be that that could mean that waiting lists got even worse than a year. Okay, thanks. Annabelle? Thanks, convener. The recent report from the Women and Equalities Committee at Westminster did not focus and trans people with non-binary and non-gender identities, but it certainly recommended that the UK Government should look into that aspect of the need perhaps to create a legal category for people who do not identify with either gender. The committee is interested in exploring that area as well. I just wonder if you could help the committee with explaining what it would mean to be able to identify as gender neutral? At the minute, obviously the Gender Recognition Act only allows people to change their birth certificate from male to female or vice versa, but personally I don't identify as either of those two things and we're seeing increasingly in the trans community that quite a big chunk of people are saying that the labels man and woman don't fit me and even though I don't feel like the gender was assigned at birth, I don't want to switch to what might be considered the opposite one. We're left in a position where lots of that community might be out to their friends, have people who know them, know how they identify, but when it then comes to maybe going out with their friends later to the pub and they have to pull out their ID, it's only got man or woman on it and that undermines that sense of who you are. What we would be asking for is basically the ability to opt out of having either that M or F on all of our official documents and instead to have, for example, passports use an X marker rather than an M or an F which is something that's already done in Australia in New Zealand and also to have something similar on birth certificates just so that you don't have this sort of legal marker that kind of undermines that sense of who you actually are. That's very helpful and I can understand both the logic and the personal sentiment behind that, but are there any potential risks in adding a gender and neutral option to legal documents such as birth certificates or passports? Well, there certainly aren't any risks in particular to adding them to passports. Passports have been able to have gender neutral markers for decades and decades now. It's widely accepted by the International Aviation Office and although I think there are a few countries that won't let people in with gender neutral markers, that would obviously be the choice of an individual if they would rather have a gender neutral passport and limited travel options rather than one in a binary gender and were able to travel everywhere. Also, there are already two countries in the world, Morta and Argentina, that allow people to be recognised as a non-binary gender on their birth certificates. Those are, again, recent pieces of legislation, but they're the two pieces that are considered to be the kind of absolute international gold standard on it because they do include non-binary genders. There's no reason why it needs to cause any problems realistically. All it is is about making sure that there's not a group of society that's got this kind of letter hanging over them that marks them out as something that isn't really true for them and it just means that all trans people have the same access to that recognition that trans men and trans women currently have. Thank you very much. James, are you wanting to... I just wanted to add that sometimes people think that allowing recognition of non-binary people might cause problems for fertility or parental law, but what you see is that there's already trans people in various diverse situations that aren't readily accounted for by fertility and parental legislation anyway, so it wouldn't actually make the issues around those areas any more complex because the lived reality of people is already just as complex. It's about just the law of recognising the diversity of trans people and we have our families and we have our relationships and we seek fertility treatment already as non-binary people or as trans men and trans women with our birth certificates not necessarily easily reflecting how our bodies are. I don't think that that makes it any more difficult. It just recognises the reality of people's lives. I'll follow that. I'm in the moment, James. I think that Alison is walking too. It's slightly related, but it actually came to me that for the very small amount of children who are born intersex with maybe ambiguous genitalia, it might be advantageous then for parents to have that ability to then register their child at birth as an ex. Of course it used to be thinking that because some intersex people are trans too so it used to be that they would decide whether the child was male or female and then they would be brought up like that and maybe have surgery early but of course current thinking is now is not to do any surgery at all and allow the child to grow up to express whichever gender or not that they are. Sorry, it was just a sudden thought about that that that would also be useful. I just want to point out that because being born with an intersex body is different from being transgender and having a gender identity that varies from what people's expectations might be, that we take the position that all decisions around intersex should be taken by intersex people and their activists. We are in consultation and discussions with intersex people to make sure that they are not left out or ignored. We have heard from them but we think that the committee should look at intersex issues in its own right. We have heard from them that they do have some concerns about registering an ex at birth. They worry that if you applied an ex on an intersex child's birth certificate at birth it might encourage parents to seek surgical interventions to make that child's sex more clear. The intersex organisations such as Intersex UK have said that they would welcome an ex that people could opt into later, but for an intersex baby to be registered as M or F but for no irreversible treatment such as surgery to be carried out to force their body to conform to that M or F. Where are such identification to be possible and the law of change to achieve that? Just thinking this through, does that create issues, for example, in the unfortunate event that someone was the subject of a conviction before a criminal court with a custodial sentence pending? How has that dealt with James in terms of an appropriate custodial facility? We have worked for several years with the Scottish Prison Service in partnership with them very successfully. They take a self-declaration approach. If somebody identifies and lives as female then they would treat them as a female in the custodial process, do individualised risk assessment and place them and supervise them appropriately within the female estate. If somebody identifies as non-binary then they look at their individual circumstances and recognise that they've only got male and female estates but they look at their circumstances and they work with that person and identify which of those two options is the closer fit. They already respond to non-binary people within the custodial system and that works quite smoothly. Having X on their certificate would not make that any more complex. It's about looking at that individual and saying, for the limited options that we have how can we best meet your needs? I was going to ask the same question in the context of hospitalisation, James. Presumably some arrangement currently exists. Hospital treatment is a bit easier because there usually are single rooms if somebody would be a lot more comfortable in one of those. In hospital it's about upholding someone's privacy and dignity working with them in a person-centred way. Again, large health boards such as Greater Glasgow and Clyde have policies that are non-binary and inclusive and uphold people's right to dignity and privacy. It works relatively smoothly as long as the clinicians are willing to follow their own policy and know that it exists. It's only when people are trying to be discriminatory that these sorts of things fall down and the more people have legal recognition and protection the better those processes operate because it's no longer seen as an option but a requirement to treat someone with dignity. That's very helpful. I've got three people that want to come in. John Mason, John Finlay, Christian and I don't know Sandra as well. Can we go with John Mason first? I was really following on from what Annabelle Gold has been asking. If somebody has the gender neutral option, where does that leave them for sport? Are they excluded? Sport tends to be quite rigid on the male-female thing. In terms of sport, the officiating bodies are much more interested in your physiology than your gender identity. They have rules about the level of testosterone you can have circulating in your body in order to be able to classify as female for participation purposes. We already have some non-binary people who participate in sport. They generally tend to continue to participate in their birth gender or they sometimes opt to go into a sport which is less gendered because that feels more comfortable to them. Having legal recognition would still allow sporting bodies to set their rules about what physiology someone needs to have to ensure safe and fair participation in a gendered sport. That's helpful, thanks. I think that Sandra... No, I think that they're okay to put out. We're just coming on the back of Annabelle's questions in regard to the NHS and prisons, et cetera. Obviously, the committee that reported back from Westminster, the Women's Equality Committee from Westminster, mentioned that there were problems with NHS difficulties with people being treated there and also we saw the true deaths of transgender people in the prison. Obviously, that has devolved to Scotland. You gave a very good explanation of what the health board does in the prison service also. Do you see or has there been difficulties in relation to what I've just said about what's happened down in England in Scotland as well? There are three key difficulties that I'd want to flag up. The first that we've already touched on, which is about capacity of the gender identity clinics to see people in a timely manner. That's been historic under resourcing. It would not require more than a couple of clinicians of time to make the massive difference in those waiting times and bring them to 18 weeks. The second one is around our concerns about some of the assessment questions. We would much rather that people focus in on whether someone has realistic expectations of what can be achieved by a surgery, for example, how well have they thought through the consequences of that decision rather than what toys did they play with as a child because we don't think that what toys you play with as a child is a very good way of deciding if you will or will not benefit from general surgery. The third one is around GPs. What we've increasingly seen is that as GPs have had tensions around their contract terms, they seem to be starting to use monitoring hormones and providing hormone prescriptions for trans people as one of those political footballs that they can flex their muscles around. We think that our strong approach needs to be taken to reaffirm that GPs must provide hormone prescriptions and monitoring for trans people and can't say that's out with their general GP remit. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you there. But what I was referring to was general practice, general services in the NHS. In that respect, it was falling on from Annabelle's question in regard to that. The report had mentioned that it seemed to think that there was discrimination against transgender people when they're accessing ordinary general services. I just wondered if you came across that in Scotland, similar to what the report has mentioned in England, and the prison service where the two people obviously tragically died. Have we seen anything like that in Scotland at all? Is there any evidence that shows that it's...? To take the prison service first, we're very pleased that the Scottish prison service does have a more progressive humane policy than the English prison service does around trans people and therefore places them in the gendered estate that they identify as, even if their paperwork isn't yet in order. That's not to say that the prison service in Scotland does everything perfectly and there are still discriminatory attitudes among prison staff and difficulties in terms of making sure that people aren't misgendered while they're in that estate. In terms of the NHS, yes, there are still problems around discrimination by practitioners. I myself have experienced and so have many people that change in the way that people are interacting with you and they realise that you're trans and that change in the level of care and concern and more of a kind of, well, is this your own fault for having decided to transition? Maybe you've harmed your health and it's your own fault. People outing, clinicians outing trans people to other clinicians and not respecting people's privacy. Misgendring them and sometimes outright refusal of care. One of the things that sometimes comes back is particularly around mental health service provisions. Say you're depressed after a bereavement or you've got some sort of social anxiety that you're wanting some cognitive behavioural therapy for. We have recognised that people sometimes get refused by their community mental health care provider saying, oh, you're too complicated because you're trans or, well, you're trans, so the gender identity clinic should be dealing with all your mental health needs and it will know, actually, that the gender identity clinic is only about your gender reassignment. Sorry to interrupt you. Do we have any hard evidence data in regard to what you're saying? We do have some statistics from surveys we've done and don't have the exact figures with me today, so I'm happy to send them to the committee afterwards. Over to you again, Annabelle. Thank you, convener. I just wondered what engagement you've had with the Scottish Government about your campaign for the changes you seek to the Gender Recognition Act and whether your contact was before or after this recent report from the Women and Equality Committee. We've been engaging with the Scottish Government for over a year now around the gender recognition reforms that we're seeking that's continued through the report from the UK Parliament. We are very clear that gender recognition is devolved better. It relates to birth certificates, which are devolved. We think that legislating at Scotland would provide us with the best opportunity to get the law right. It was passed by Soul Motion previously in 2004. We think that a tandem approach, ideally with the UK Parliament, legislating for England and Welsh birth certificates and Scotland for Scottish birth certificates, similar to how equal marriage was progressed by the two parliaments, would enable us to make sure that the legislation is right for Scotland and maximises the potential to achieve all the good practice that we desire. Would your ideal James be to see the same changes both north and south of the border? We think that it might end up being that Scotland has better legislation. For example, if you look at marriage law, there are more restrictions on whether 16 or 17-year-olds can marry down in England than there is in Scotland. Likewise, we could end up with more progressive legislation in Scotland. There are already differences in some of the aspects around how gender recognition works in Scotland versus England. For example, there is a slightly obscure way that you can get gender recognition if you have been transitioned for many years and were prevented from getting gender recognition initially because you were still married before equal marriage. In Scotland, there are less onerous requirements for evidencing that than there are in England. You would not see any particular difficulties if the laws were slightly different? I think that there are so many things where the laws are slightly different in Scotland and in England that people are very used to that, and I do not think that it would cause a problem. I think that it would mean that we would get the right law for Scotland. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you, Annabelle. Christian, over to you. Thank you very much. I would agree with you, James. I would ask whether you are trying to change the law in Scotland first, being likely to be more progressive, to give a good example for the rest of the UK. Would you be one of the intention? Yes. I think that in 2004 the original act was written quite defensively to try and get it through the House of Lords, and there were some very unpleasant statements made in the House of Lords about the bill back then. I think that the Scottish Parliament, by its design, is easier to engage with by trans people and considers legislation in a slightly different way from the two-house manner in Westminster. I think that Scotland should lead the way and it should put down that blueprint and I think that that will make it a lot easier for the Government down in England to legislate for England and Wales successfully through the House of Lords. I think that I should not remember the House of Lords at that time. There are still some reserved issues. Of course, the Equality Act 2010, what changes do you want? Do you want to change to be gender identity more than gender reassignment? You talked about that already. What about the exemption and employment as well? We were pleased that the Women's Equalities Committee recommended changes to the Equality Act. That is something that we have been calling for for a long time, but we have been directing to Westminster rather than Scotland because it is a reserved matter. We would like to see the protected characteristic defined as gender identity rather than gender reassignment to make it clear that it includes all trans people, not just those who undergo a more medicalized transition from male to female or from female to male. We would also like to see the removal of the exceptions that currently exist. At the moment, an employer that only highest women, for example, can refuse to hire a trans woman even if she has been many, many years transitioned, we think that that is not appropriate. We are really pleased that women's equality organisations and violence against women's services in Scotland have been very trans-friendly. As far as we are aware, none of them have used that possible exemption and they have trans women employed within women-only posts there. However, down in England, they are sometimes using that exception and we think that that is wrong and unfair. I wanted to be in further. I was a bit surprised by some of your evidence this morning. We seem to want to go into a binary system to a system of three, adding the X to it. Is it not another constraint that it will be asked constraint instead of two gender, we ended up with three? Is there not a view somewhere and you talked about and I think the Parliament would want to hear from them from the intersex community to know that it is really the right way to go about it? You can make an argument that we should simply de-gender documents. For example, we do not have legal ethnicities recorded on our documents but we still do minority ethnic equality work by monitoring in diversity forms people's race. Likewise, we do not have legal sexual orientation recorded on our documents but we still do sexual orientation equality. A case can be made that you do not need to have a legal gender and indeed the Government should maybe not be involved in legislating people's gender. We think that that is something that would take a lot more discussion and consideration by society. I do not think that society is in that place at the moment where I need trans people like myself so as I am a trans man who transitioned from female to male it took me a lot of effort to get my documents saying male and it helps to ensure that people respect my gender identity. There are trans people who would not want to have a non-binary passport for example because they might feel that they would be more vulnerable to discrimination if they could not show that they were legally recognised as men or women. I think that the more that we can move to a system where gender is not made a kind of required answer the better so many forms at the moment you can't get past that stage on the online application unless you tick male or female and it's often not remotely relevant but we think that for the time being allowing people to opt out of being classified as M or F but not forcing people to not be classified as M or F is the way forward allow it to be optional so it's not about creating a third gender category it's about creating a space where people don't need to have a gender category you see what I mean it's a subtle but important difference you still not convinced me Jen I would love to hear from the European panel as well of that idea that society should become less and less binary having an X not new schools for example when facilities are not female and male anymore we wouldn't want them to add another door saying X for example we wouldn't dream of that I know society you said society is maybe not really for it but if we want to change society on that particular topic is there not a time to maybe add that as a fourth only to see how society could become not insisting so much on gender, not only on paperwork but as well on employment and as well on schools and how we define ourselves members of the panel would want to take up on that? Certainly with schools you see increasingly schools trying to avoid gender stereotypes for their pupils trying to make sure that every pupil knows that they can be who they are and achieve whatever their ambitions are and that they don't have to be restricted by their gender and we wholeheartedly support that work and what we also see increasingly within public toilet provision and things is a move towards more single cubicles and not requiring people to go through an M or an F door I remember going to a service provider and there was all these individual cubicles and they'd alternately labelled them M, F, M, F and it was just like well why can't these just be labelled toilets they're individual fully contained toilets that they'll be sharing with anybody so I think that is increasingly what people are moving to and people are less hung up about gender now than they used to be but it's a process and I think there's so many instinctive assumptions we make about gender still that it can be quite challenging for some people to to realise that actually gender is a lot more diverse and a lot more complex than just a binary I think Vic would like to come in I think it's important that at the minute the reality is that we live in such a binary society that it's important that right now there are changes that people that don't identify in either of those binary ways are included so to give an example when I moved back to Edinburgh and tried to set up my bills I had to pick a title in order to sign up with British Gas they're all gendered if I didn't pick a title British Gas assumes that I'm a business so can't provide me with energy so I have to pick one or the other so I've reached the point where I've just started arbitrarily picking titles just out of the list somewhere because realistically none of them are my title none of them do describe who I am so although I think there's a lot of value in looking at where we can break down binaries in terms of facilities and things like titles I think for right now though whilst people are having to navigate these spaces that are so one or the other it's really important that we do create additional space for people that don't identify in that way to be able to access things and to not have the very first thing they do be sort of which way should I lie a little bit today because that is kind of the reality at the moment Well you see the point which may be not going to be the answer for some people or will be difficult to navigate individually why not removing them all I think that you could remove them all definitely from some things but I don't know that we would necessarily consider it to be kind of a third option though because it wouldn't, I wouldn't consider it to be a third gender it would more just be the category that describes all people whose gender is not male or female because at the minute the way we gender everything is one way or the other so it's not so much that it's your third option and everyone in that option is the same it's more just that at the minute we organise everything with two options those two options don't fit everyone so actually we need to make sure that people aren't pushed into just one of those two for right now My point is that kind of legislation you want to bring is going to reaffirm the idea that you have to make a choice and does parents think that it's the right way to go about it to having people to make a choice of gender whatever it is or ex or do you think we should have a space to make sure that you don't need to define that gender would it be easier for the life of parents? I think as James said earlier on it's a difficult question as a parent being led by your child I think would be the one I would say so let the child define their gender because there are still some young children even under 14 who are still coming out as non-binary I need to think about that one I just wanted to re-clarify that what we're asking for is the option to opt out of that binary to say I don't want to have a legal gender I just want to be a human being so it would be a kind of optional rather than blanket and forced de-gendering for those who feel that the two current options don't fit them so it's not about saying there's male female or a third kind of legal gender it's saying there's male female legal genders and then there's the option of not being legally gendered that's what we're doing what you would probably say is ultimately you'd want everybody to pick that don't legally gender me I think the majority of people are comfortable with having a legal gender I think that there's no need to immediately remove gender off everybody legally I think that it's simply about allowing those people where those two options don't fit to be able to opt out of that being a human being I don't need to have a legal gender of male or female I can simply live my life as me as a human being I think just to say as well that obviously if you're not trans people accept your gender because it matches and it's easy and it's probably something you never need to think about so therefore probably the concept of removing legal gender seems much easier because you're not going to then be challenged to use that as a reason to undermine your identity whereas realistically if you're a trans person there's much more value in having documents that reflect who you are so I think yes although in some ways moving beyond having gender recorded at all would be really valuable for right now it's more important I think to make sure that trans people have passports they have birth certificates that say this is who I am and the government recognises me that way Can I ask you Vic how do you feel when you were saying you had to pick a male or a female how does that actually make you feel personally when you've got to go through this process and what difference would it make if you had the third option I think that I mean it's mostly one of annoyance and also I'm not really sure what to put because I don't know for example if it's important for them to know what my gender is and I can't tell them what my gender is and I'm not sure which one to pick that gives them the information that they need so a good example would be probably that I haven't been I've lived in back in Edinburgh now for almost a year and I haven't registered with a GP because all GP's ask you for your gender and only provide those two options and I'm not really sure what it is that they're asking me for and I'm sort of toyed with the idea of just drawing a third box and taking that one but it's just that sense immediately because it's often the first question that's asked of you that this service isn't for me almost just immediately well this service probably doesn't know that people like me exist and even if it does it didn't care enough to put a third box on a form so it's just that sense of well I probably won't go there then or use their things so if you then did have to use that service you would then have to go and explain to the GP that you don't fit this absolutely and as I said with titles now I've just often so with my bills in the end I decided to go for Mr and every time I have to speak to someone on the phone about my bills they go to me it says Mr Valentine here is that a mistake do you want me to change that because people hear my voice on the phone and assume that I'm not a Mr and I'm just like no that's fine oh okay Mr Valentine and you just get those kinds of quite strange interactions where people aren't entirely sure why you've given certain types of information so and that's the thing it's not like we don't exist until you put our identities on forums we're already using all of the same services as everybody else people are already working with us and helping us it's just that services aren't aware enough to kind of provide things in an inclusive way which they should be doing have you found out at all is there any large employers or any organisations that give you the option in an application form to use a third option well there are quite there are for example now on driving licences you can get gender neutral titles and also most bank accounts will allow you so my bank card has the gender neutral title mx on it so that it is becoming much more common and it's actually often becoming much more common in the private sector there's kind of an entire project set up by non binary people to basically spam private sectors neutral title fields etc and sort of say to them add this or everyone's going to stop using your services etc and there are definitely kind of good practice there's good practice out there particularly for LGBT services that are more used to working with non binary people who'll do things that ask more inclusive questions about gender identity they'll also ask you about what pronouns you want to use on forms that it avoids sort of having to guess but yeah it's something that needs to be worked on James do you want to come in? Yeah I just wanted to add that the Law Society of Scotland has moved to allow sort of its solicitors to be gender neutral that was in part because one of their trainee solicitors is openly non binary so it's I think when people realise that non binary people exist and that they are there things easier and clearer so that it's no longer a distorted bit of information that you're getting it actually reflects their lived reality then even sort of organisation you might traditionally might think of as relatively traditional and will often move and be able to accommodate this quite easily it's not that hard it just requires that will you think that I suppose it's a small question but I think it's very far reaching and it's to Vic you've obviously experienced instances, problems etc in living a life of non binary I just wanted to put this in the mix when you have cultural religious differences how difficult would that be for yourself and others I think it's kind of difficult to say in a generalised way because obviously individual members of different cultures and religions are going to respond to you differently and I also think that it's really important to emphasise the fact that binary separations of gender are very much a kind of Western Christian phenomenon so it's actually probably our societies that are the most divided in that way about gender and I don't necessarily know why non binary identities would be I mean would be more of an issue in terms of engaging with people of faith than anything else to do with the LGBT spectrum is and I think it's just something you have to take on a case by case basis The point that I wanted to raise was James mentioned the fact that transgender there are obviously some religions that won't allow a man to treat a woman etc etc I was interested when you said you got your bills addressed to Mr rather than MS Miss or whatever it may be I just wondered about that also but the difficult that would cause not just for yourself and others but obviously the cultural differences and religious differences for people who didn't want a certain sex to treat them or how would you go over that non binary James does discrimination for yourself and others or James, do you want to do that? I think that it's about recognising that there are a wide range of reasons that service users might want to service delivered in a particular way and that's not purely simply just about gender there can be all kinds of other factors that people would like taken into account in order to give them the person-centred care that they would need provision of services where somebody is trans that those can be accommodated and already are because the fact that Vic can't get documents that reflect their gender doesn't mean that Vic might not necessarily be in a service provision role anyway all that allowing legal recognition does is allows that person's identity to actually be reflected on their documents clearer who they are and enables a service provider to assign their staff more appropriately, not less it's not something that needs to be in competition it can be something where we respect everybody's different views and make sure that the staff allocation reflects the needs of service users Thank you Thank you very much Do any of the witnesses have anything else they'd like to say that you've not had the opportunity to put forward Alison would any of you would like to say I do think that yes the if you did adopt the self declaration that it should be available for 16 to 17 year olds and also with parental consent for under 16s Thank you Thank you again for taking this evidence session I know that we've covered a lot of diverse issues some of which can be legislated on and some of which are more about the practice within the NHS or other public services if you have any further questions or points you want to clarify we're very happy to send written submissions as well Thanks Vic Just to reiterate James's sentiments and say thanks for hearing our evidence today Okay, thank you I'm assuming none of the committee members have any other questions you would like to ask No, okay Can I again thank the witnesses for your contribution and that concludes the public part of today's meeting Our next meeting will take place on Thursday 11 February and I will now suspend the meeting for the committee to move into private session Thank you