As the supreme court made clear, that right never existed.
Yes they did say that. The problem is that it did with very clear evidence that is powerful enough to give it the status of disputable.
Q70 Dr Harris: You will know the question. This Committee has had evidence from Press for Change and the Equality Network that the definition you are using, which is clearly not merely medical but which defines gender reassignment as the protected characteristic based on people proposing to have, or undergoing, or having undergone, medical gender reassignment, it is not sufficient to capture those people who are subject to discrimination on the basis of their transsexual status who are not proposing to have, or undergoing, or have undergone, gender reassignment. There is a group that are not covered who are being discriminated against.
Vera Baird: And who are they?
Q71 Dr Harris: They are trans people who are not proposing to have gender reassignment, and not necessarily only self-defined, they are people who, for example, manifest different gender identities at different times. The key point is that because they are not proposing to have, or undergoing, or have undergone, gender reassignment they fall outside your definition. The organisations representing those people feel that the definition is therefore too narrow to capture the protection that they want from discrimination. I was wondering whether your objection to widening the definition is either because you disagree, the definition is wide enough to capture those people who are proposing to undergo gender reassignment or, as you have said in previous examples, there is not enough evidence of discrimination against people who are not proposing to undergo gender reassignment.
Vera Baird: We did not get any body of evidence, as you have just said, about discrimination against such people. We are quite open to wanting to protect as many people as we can and what we have done, of course, is to get rid of the whole medical model and turn this into what you can best describe, I think, as a personal process which can be manifested in however the person wishes to manifest their gender reassignment: just proposing it; changing the way they dress; changing their name. That is all it requires to be part of a process. What is difficult to envisage is some freestanding definition of gender identity that is not linked to that process, and I know you tried one in Committee but it did not work. That is the real difficulty. Buttress this definition, which I think is wide, with the availability of protection against discrimination by perception and you may think that we have covered 99.9 per cent of the people who are likely to be discriminated against here.
Q72 Dr Harris: We have just had a very good summary of the debate in Committee, a fair summary as well, and one of the issues raised was the perception has to be of someone considering undergoing gender reassignment.
Vera Baird: Just to make a point: I do not know how fantastically well informed the public is about all of this. It is quite possible that there would be discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, is there not? People may well think that a man who dresses as a woman is gay or a woman who dresses as a man is a lesbian, so there might well be that perception of discrimination as well which, again, ought to widen the ambit of protection.
Q73 Dr Harris: That may be true, but the trans community may well want protection in their own right. I just want to bring in a human rights point here, which is that there is concern that the right to privacy might be infringed by the exemptions that exist from protection for trans people in Schedules 3 and 9, which we have also debated, which exist for organisations to discriminate against them even where a certificate is held. Under the Gender Recognition Act, of course, that requires that people be recognised in their new gender for all purposes. Therefore, one of the questions I have is whether to protect their human rights and be compliant with that law, even if the Equality Bill could write out that one did not have to be compliant, if there was not to be regression how can you allow exceptions on grounds of gender reassignment even where people have a Gender Recognition Certificate? I do not think we raised this in Committee so it is a new human rights based point.
Vera Baird: What are the specific exceptions that you are worried about?
Q74 Dr Harris: For example, in Schedule 9 there is the ability of a religious organisation to discriminate, so they could say, "We will allow a woman priest", that is if they had women priests—
Vera Baird: There are not many of them.
Q75 Dr Harris: Yes, indeed, but let us say they did, "But we are not going to allow a woman priest who is in possession of a Gender Recognition Certificate, who is a woman". They would argue that is a permitted exception under gender reassignment. Is that a clash with the sex discrimination provisions?
Vera Baird: Is that right? She is a woman now for all purposes, not a transgender person, a woman.
Q76 Dr Harris: Right.
Vera Baird: That is the point of the certificate, is it not, to make it clear beyond doubt and that is where all her rights come from.
Q77 Dr Harris: So what you are saying is someone with a certificate does not fall within the protected ground and, therefore, exceptions on that protected ground—
Vera Baird: Will fall within the protected ground of sex.
Chairman: I think you have answered the question.
