Category Archives: gender

Draft Conversion Practices Bill – Office for Equality and Opportunity

The draft Conversion Practices Bill contains 3 proposed offences to ban criminal conversion practices.

The draft bill has been shared with Parliament to undergo pre-legislative scrutiny.

A conversion practice is an act that is carried out with the intention of changing a person’s sexual orientation or transgender identity.

The draft bill sets out measures which:

  • prohibit the carrying out of criminal conversion practices on individuals
  • creates an offence of encouraging or assisting conversion practices against a UK national/resident abroad
  • makes provision for conversion practice protection orders – civil orders which can be used to pre-emptively protect individuals from these practices

Applies to England and Wales

Go to https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/draft-conversion-practices-bill for copies of the Draft in different formats, eg HTML, pdf, etc..

June 29, 2026

26 June 2024 23:59 ~ Call for input: Incorrect guidance on single-sex spaces and gender self-identification – Government Equality Hub consultation closing date

The Minister for Women and Equalities is seeking examples of policy or guidance in which public bodies – or organisations that advise public and private organisations – wrongly suggest that people have a legal right to access single-sex spaces and services according to their self-identified gender.

The government is looking to understand how public bodies, and organisations who advise public and private organisations, might currently be misinterpreting the law on providing single-sex spaces or services within Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales).

Where certain conditions are met, businesses and other organisations can legally provide single and separate-sex services. This includes services such as toilets, changing rooms, and female-only fitness classes, which may exclude transgender people of the opposite biological sex who do not have a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC). Where it is justified, they may also be able to exclude transgender people with GRCs. In some cases organisations believe they are required to allow self-identifying transgender people to access these services.

The Gender Recognition Act 2004 enables people who have a diagnosis of gender dysphoria and who have lived in their acquired gender for at least 2 years to apply for a GRC, which changes their sex for most legal purposes. Transgender people without a GRC legally remain their birth sex.

The Equality Act 2010 allows service providers to operate single-sex and separate-sex services – such as toilets, domestic abuse refuges, changing rooms – when they have a good reason to do so (for example, only one sex needs to use the service or space) and the limited provision is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. The Equality and Human Rights Commission have published guidance on the existing legislation.

Please submit any examples of policy or guidance which states that people have a legal right to access single-sex spaces and services according to their self-identified gender by completing this short online response by 11.59pm on Wednesday 26 June 2024.

Submissions will be used to help the government understand organisations’ current interpretation of the law on single-sex services and spaces.

We do not ask for any personal details, so your response will remain anonymous. Individual responses will not be published.

How to respond

To respond to the call for input, please visit the survey link.

The call for input covers Great Britain and will be open for 8 weeks from 1 May to 26 June 2024.

When you respond, please:

  • submit examples of policy or guidance from public bodies or those that advise public and private organisations, which might wrongly suggest that people have a legal right to access single-sex spaces according to their self-identified gender
  • provide a link or upload a copy of your example of policy or guidance and then answer a small number of questions about your submission – we can receive most types of text documents and PDFs, but no audio or moving image files
  • do not include personal data of yourself or others in your responses – we are not asking for personal data
  • complete a separate response for each example of policy or guidance you wish to submit

Data protection statement

All submissions will be handled in accordance with the Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK General Data Protection Regulation.

NB Applies to England, Scotland and Wales

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/call-for-input-incorrect-guidance-on-single-sex-spaces-and-gender-self-identification

May 1, 2024

NHS England responds to the publication of the independent review of gender identity services for children and young people

An NHS spokesperson said: “NHS England is very grateful to Dr Cass and her team for their comprehensive work on this important review over the past four years.

“The NHS has made significant progress towards establishing a fundamentally different gender service for children and young people – in line with earlier advice by Dr Cass and following extensive public consultation and engagement – by stopping the routine use of puberty suppressing hormones and opening the first of up to eight new regional centres delivering a different model of care.

“We will set out a full implementation plan following careful consideration of this final report and its recommendations, and the NHS is also bringing forward its systemic review of adult gender services and has written to local NHS leaders to ask them to pause offering first appointments at adult gender clinics to young people below their 18th birthday.”

https://www.england.nhs.uk/2024/04/nhs-england-responds-to-the-publication-of-the-independent-review-of-gender-identity-services-for-children-and-young-people/

See also:

April 19, 2024

Cass Review Final Report – Overview of Recommendations

The recommendations set out a different approach to healthcare, more closely aligned with usual NHS clinical practice that considers the young person holistically and not solely in terms of their gender-related distress. The central aim of assessment should be to help young people to thrive and achieve their life goals.

  • Services must operate to the same standards as other services seeing children and young people with complex presentations and/or additional risk factors.
  • Expand capacity through a distributed service model, based in paediatric services and with stronger links between secondary and specialist services.
  • Children/ young people referred to NHS gender services must receive a holistic assessment of their needs to inform an individualised care plan. This should include screening for neurodevelopmental conditions, including autism spectrum disorder, and a mental health assessment.
  • Standard evidence based psychological and psychopharmacological treatment approaches should be used to support the management of the associated distress from gender incongruence and cooccurring conditions, including support for parents/carers and siblings as appropriate.
  • Services should establish a separate pathway for pre-pubertal children and their families. ensuring that they are prioritised for early discussion about how parents can best support their child in a balanced and non-judgemental way. When families/carers are making decisions about social transition of pre-pubertal children, services should ensure that they can be seen as early as possible by a clinical professional with relevant experience.
  • NHS England should ensure that each Regional Centre has a follow-through service for 17–25-year-olds; either by extending the range of the regional children and young people’s service or through linked services, to ensure continuity of care and support at a potentially vulnerable stage in their journey.  This will also allow clinical, and research follow up data to be collected. 
  • There needs to be provision for people considering detransition, recognising that they may not wish to re-engage with the services whose care they were previously under.
  • A full programme of research should be established to look at the characteristics, interventions and outcomes of every young person presenting to the NHS gender services.
  • The puberty blocker trial previously announced by NHS England should be part of a programme of research which also evaluates outcomes of psychosocial interventions and masculinising/ feminising hormones.
  • The option to provide masculinising/feminising hormones from age 16 is available, but the Review recommends extreme caution. There should be a clear clinical rationale for providing hormones at this stage rather than waiting until an individual reaches 18.  Every case considered for medical treatment should be discussed at a national Multi- Disciplinary Team (MDT).
  • Implications of private healthcare on any future requests to the NHS for treatment, monitoring and/or involvement in research, and the dispensing responsibilities of pharmacists of private prescriptions needs to be clearly communicated.

Read the full statement and download the report from https://cass.independent-review.uk/home/publications/final-report/

April 18, 2024

2 April 2024 ~ Ending conversion practices in Scotland: consultation closing date

Overview

In the 2022-2023 Programme for Government (PfG), the Scottish Government reaffirmed its commitment to introduce a Bill on ending conversion practices in Scotland, including both sexual orientation and gender identity.

The UK Government committed in its 2018 LGBT Action Plan to end the practice of conversion therapy and published a consultation in October 2021. However, a Bill has not been included in the UK Government’s legislative programme 2023-2024.

The Expert Advisory Group on Ending Conversion practices (EAG) was set up in March 2022, to advise the Scottish Government on its approach to ending conversion practices. Its report was published in October 2022.

The Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice (EHRCJ) Committee also published a report in January 2022. This report responded to Petition PE1817: “Calling on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to ban the provision or promotion of LGBT+ conversion therapy in Scotland”.

Policy context

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that the rights of everyone in Scotland are respected, protected and fulfilled.

Conversion practices are harmful. They are promoted within an ideology that views LGBTQI+ identities as wrong and believes that they can be changed. This legislation aims to protect people from the harm of conversion practices.

Growing international momentum to tackle conversion practices 

Laws on conversion practices have been passed in: Malta, Ecuador, Germany, Spain, France, Greece, Cyprus, Belgium, Iceland, New Zealand, and Canada, as well as several states and territories in Australia, Mexico, and the USA. The Republic of Ireland has also committed to bringing forward legislation to ban conversion practices.

What are conversion practices?

There is no international, universal definition of the term “conversion practices”.

The Expert Advisory Group (EAG) on Ending Conversion Practices’ defined conversion practices as “any treatment, practice or effort that aims to change, suppress and/or eliminate a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity and/or gender expression”.

Our specific proposal for defining conversion practices for the purposes of this legislation is set out in Part 4 of our full consultation document.

Read our full consultation document

To see more detailed information about our proposals, we would encourage you to read our full consultation document.

You can also view a summary version, and an easy read version of our consultation document.

Why your views matter

Consultation is an essential part of the policy-making process. It gives the Scottish Government the opportunity to get public opinion and expertise on a proposed area of work. We value your views on this important issue.

Give us your views

Closes 2 Apr 2024

https://consult.gov.scot/equality-and-human-rights/ending-conversion-practices/

See also

 

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January 16, 2024