Why Sturgeon’s gender bill had to be stopped
These wretched reforms would have endangered women and children in Scotland and beyond.
Nicola Sturgeon is angry. The SNP leader’s pet project, of making it easier for people in Scotland to change gender, has been stopped in its tracks. Thanks to an 11th-hour intervention from UK prime minister Rishi Sunak, making use of powers enshrined in Section 35 of the Scotland Act, the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill will no longer go forward for royal assent and will not be passed into law. Thank goodness.
Passed in hurried late-night parliamentary sessions in the days before Christmas, the proposed legislation would have made the process of changing gender easier and quicker by removing the need for applicants to have a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria, and by reducing the time adults are expected to have lived as their acquired gender from two years to three months. The new law would also have lowered the age at which people can apply to change their gender from 18 to 16. Children would have been able to start the clock ticking on living as their chosen gender while still only 15 in order to secure a gender-recognition certificate on their 16th birthday.
The UK government has stopped the bill from passing into law because it would come into conflict with already existing laws that are effective across the entire nation. Never before has Westminster intervened in the workings of the Scottish parliament in this way.