Sir Keir Starmer has voiced concerns that 16 is too young to change legal sex.
Speaking on BBC1’s ‘Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg’, ahead of last week’s Westminster vote to block the Scottish Government’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill, the UK Labour leader said that although he backs making it easier to change legal sex, he feels 16 is not old enough to make the decision.
Starmer voiced “concerns” about the potential impact on UK-wide equalities law but did not vote on the decision to block the Bill which would have allowed 16-year-olds to change their legal sex by self-declaration without a medical diagnosis.
Self-ID
Labour has also previously pledged to allow people to change legal sex by self-declaration, although the party leader stated: “We’re looking at what the options are. There are all sorts of different definitions in relation to self-certification.”
Sir Keir came under fire last year for claiming that the legal definition of ‘woman’ includes men who self-identify as members of the opposite sex.
Speaking to The Times, he stated: “A woman is a female adult, and in addition to that trans women are women, and that is not just my view – that is actually the law.”
Currently, just over 6,000 people have obtained a Gender Recognition Certificate from the UK Government to say they have changed legal sex.
Stonewall
According to The Daily Telegraph, the Labour Party is still enrolled in Stonewall’s discredited ‘Diversity Champions’ scheme.
A Labour spokesman claimed: “It’s important we have measures to promote inclusion, and that’s what the Stonewall diversity scheme is designed to do”.
The ‘Diversity Champions’ scheme, which has been mired in controversy, costs organisations around £2,500 a year; rewarding them for promoting LGBT ideology inside and outside of the workplace.
Several public sector organisations including the Crown Prosecution Service, Ofcom, and the Equality and Human Rights Commission, have quit Stonewall schemes in recent months.
Sturgeon
In an interview with the BBC, Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon claimed that 16 is not too young to change legal sex and “it is right to look at, why can’t a 16-year-old drink alcohol in a pub”.
Similarly, the UK’s Secretary of State for Education Gillian Keegan told Sky News: “I was working at 16, I was paying tax at 16. I could make decisions for myself at 16”.
Both politicians later said that their comments had been misinterpreted.
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