Transgender Rights In The United Kingdom

Transgender rights in the United Kingdom have varied significantly over time, with the British transgender community facing ongoing challenges not experienced by cisgender Britons. These include various laws and public attitudes in regards to identity documents, as well as anti-discrimination measures used by or pertaining to transgender people, in the areas of employment, education, housing and social services, amongst others.

Trans people have been able to change their passports and driving licences to indicate their preferred binary gender since at least 1970. Transgender people were, prior to the ruling in ''Corbett v Corbett'', able to have their birth certificate informally amended to reflect their gender identity. The ruling prevented the amendment of the sex marker on birth certificates for other than clerical errors. The 2002 ''Goodwin v United Kingdom'' ruling by the European Court of Human Rights resulted in parliament passing the Gender Recognition Act of 2004 to allow people to apply to change their legal gender, through application to a tribunal called the Gender Recognition Panel. The application requires the submission of medical evidence and a statutory declaration. The tribunal is made up of medical and legal members appointed by the Lord Chancellor.

Anti-discrimination measures protecting transgender people have existed in the UK since 1999, and were strengthened in the 2000s to include anti-harassment wording. Later in 2010, gender reassignment was included as a protected characteristic in the Equality Act. With the 2013 introduction of same-sex marriage, it became possible for a spouse to legally change their gender without requiring a divorce in the UK, with the exception of Northern Ireland, where this became an option nearly a decade later on 13 January 2020.

Medical classification

In December 2002, the Lord Chancellor's office published the ''Government Policy Concerning Transsexual People'' document that categorically states that transsexualism "is not a mental illness", but rather a "widely recognised medical condition" characterised by an "overpowering sense of different gender identity".

Medical treatment for minors

In December 2020, the High Court ruled that children under 16 could not consent to puberty blockers, with NHS England consequently stating that any requirement for puberty blockers would have to be brought through a court order before treatment. On 29 January 2021, the High Court's order was stayed, pending appeal before March 2022; , however, no minors were being referred for puberty blockers or hormone treatment on the NHS. , it had not been made clear how a court order could be brought in order for a minor to access puberty blockers, and no court orders had yet been issued, with waiting lists for hormone treatment for adults on the NHS heavily exceeding targets of 18 weeks to first appointment.

In April 2022, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Sajid Javid announced an inquiry into gender treatment for children, following concerns raised in the interim report of the Cass Review.

In June 2022, The Times reported Javid announcing a proposed change in UK medical privacy law, allowing the state to gain access to and scrutinise the medical records of all minors treated for gender dysphoria within the preceding decade, estimated at 9000 people. The Times reported Javid having "likened political sensitivities over gender dysphoria to officials' fear of being labelled racist if they investigated abuse by men of Pakistani heritage in Rotherham".

In July 2022, it was announced that the NHS would close its only youth gender identity clinic, with the intent of transitioning to a more regional system of care access.

Proposed reform

NHS draft guidance obtained by Reuters indicates that, in response to a three year wait time for access to gender affirming care causing people to seek private-sector or unprescribed solutions, the NHS is considering banning private care providers from prescribing gender affirming care, and mandating that the authorities be notified if a patient is found to be using unprescribed hormone medication. If a trans patient is found to be accessing any of these resources, they will be barred from receiving gender affirming healthcare with the NHS. Furthermore under the guidance, if an NHS doctor determines a patient shouldn't be allowed access to gender affirming hormone therapy, they can advise the patient's primary care provider to initiate "safeguarding protocols". The draft guidance also included significant restrictions on social transition (such as changing one's pronouns and clothing), declaring it an active intervention with potential harms, and only authorizing it in cases of "clinically significant distress or significant impairment of social functioning". The reported justification for this was the NHS’s stated belief that most children who ‘think they’re transgender’ are just going through a “phase”. The proposed policy has been compared by some to conversion therapy.

The draft guidance's Equality and Health Inequalities Impact Assessment addressed potential concerns of discrimination based on the legally protected characteristic of "gender reassignment" by stating not all of the patients impacted by the proposal will be allowed to access such care by the NHS, and thus "To apply such a definition to these individuals is to make assumptions upon the aims and intentions of those referred, the certainty of those desires and their outward manifestation, and upon the appropriate treatment that may be offered and accepted in due course".

WPATH response

In November 2022, the World Professional Association of Transgender Health published a statement in which it described the methodology of treatment suggested in the proposed reforms as "tantamount to 'conversion' or 'reparative' therapy", and that the psychotherapy route of treatment recommended "seems to view gender incongruence largely as a mental health disorder or a state of confusion and withholds gender-affirming treatments on this basis". The statement further says that the proposal "makes assumptions about transgender children and adolescents which are outdated and untrue", and that it "quotes selectively and ignores newer evidence about the persistence of gender incongruence in children". It also describes the requirement to obtain medical approval to change one's clothing or pronouns as "an unconscionable degree of medical and state intrusion", and that the proposal document "makes unsupported statements about the influence of family, social, and mental health factors on the formation of gender identity".

Sports

In September 2021, the UK Sports Council Equality Group issued new guidance saying that in their view, trans inclusion and "competitive fairness" cannot coexist in sports. The SCEG based its guidance on 300 interviews regarding personal opinions on the matter, conducted across 54 sports and 175 organisations, with only 20 of those interviewed being trans people.

In June 2022, conservative UK culture secretary Nadine Dorries met with the heads of UK sporting bodies and told them that "elite and competitive women's sport must be reserved for people born of the female sex".

In July 2022, the British Triathlon issued a blanket policy banning any athletes not assigned female at birth above the age of 12 from competing, instead requiring them to compete in a newly announced "open" category. This was a reversal of an earlier 2018 policy which allowed for trans inclusion once certain hormonal prerequisites had been met.

British Triathlon Chief Executive Andy Salmon was reported as stating that he wasn't "aware" of any elite-level trans athletes competing in triathlons in Britain, but didn't want the governing body to wait for "that to be a problem" before it "tried to fix it".

Later that same month, both the Rugby Football League and the Rugby Football Union implemented similar bans. Both organisations described this as "a precautionary approach".

Transgender prisoners' rights

In August 2022, a statement was issued by the Ministry of Justice under Dominic Raab, that trans prisoners would be sent to prisons based on their genitalia.

Hate Crimes

The Office for National Statistics has stated that it is not possible to conclusively identify transgender victims in current homicide statistics because the gender of the homicide victim is determined by the police force that records the crime, however between 2017 and 2018, the Home Office recorded 545 violent hate crimes against trans people.

Research from the LGBT charity Stonewall has found that during that same period, 19% of trans people in the UK were victims of domestic abuse, compared to 7.9% of cis women and 4.2% of cis men.

Gender recognition

The Gender Recognition Act 2004 was drafted in response to court rulings from the European Court of Human Rights. On 11 July 2002, in ''