MP: ‘Dead people should be allowed to change legal sex’

The Government has quashed an MP’s attempt to allow family members to change a deceased relative’s legal sex.

Charlotte Nichols, the MP For Warrington North, asked the Government to amend the Gender Recognition Act to allow gender-confused people who died without a gender recognition certificate to be “legally remembered by the gender they lived by”.

In response, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Equalities Stuart Andrew said the process does not allow posthumous applications as it is a “deeply personal undertaking and choice” and the Government has “no plans to further amend the Act”.

Gender self-ID

The Family Education Trust’s Lucy Marsh commented: “It’s extremely concerning that Labour appears to be pushing towards introducing gender-self-ID through the back door. If coroners are allowed to lie on public record about the sex of deceased children, this will surely be a slippery slope towards self-ID becoming normalised in the NHS.”

MP for North Somerset Sir Liam Fox, who is a former doctor, added: “It is patently absurd, factually inaccurate and a statistical distortion.

“We should not be encouraging the idea that people can simply choose to change their biological status nor should we bend truth to accommodate an ever more extreme and dangerous ideology.”

Passports

Meanwhile, Government ministers are being urged to close a ‘major loophole’ which allows people to easily change official documents to self-identify their sex.

In order to legally change sex by obtaining a Gender Recognition Certificate and an altered birth certificate, a person must have lived as if they are a member of the opposite sex for two years, have a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria, and be approved by a panel.

But it is a much simpler task to change the sex markers on documents such as driving licences and passports.