Clause 4 - Discrimination
Gender Recognition Bill [Lords]
5:00 pm
Mr Hugh Bayley (City of York, Labour)
Members of the Committee who were present on Second Reading will know that I have strongly held opinions about the wisdom or otherwise of requiring transsexuals who wish to obtain a full gender recognition certificate to divorce if they happen to be married. I exercised some self-restraint during the last debate because the comments that I wish to make about that are best made in the context of the amendments that I have tabled on the pension entitlement of people in those circumstances.
The Bill is a good one, but it is marred because insufficient attention has been given to the interests and the rights of those married to transsexual people. One of those rights is the right to married life. The Bill assumes that it will always be in the interests of a husband or wife of a transsexual person to divorce at the point that the transsexual person applies for a full gender recognition certificate. I am afraid to say that that is not the case at all.
Instances have been brought to the attention of the House on Second Reading and in this Committee today where it is neither in the interests of the spouse, nor is it the wish of the spouse, to go through divorce proceedings. The hon. Member for Daventry referred to one such case, and circulated it to Committee members, where the couple concerned issued a long and detailed legal statement that pinpoints the conflict between the human rights of a married transsexual person who seeks registration in their acquired gender and the human rights of that person's husband or wife to marriage, privacy and financial security in circumstances in which neither party wishes to dissolve the marriage.
A couple in my constituency are in just such circumstances. They have been married for 35 years and they wish to remain together. On Second Reading, I raised their requirements for a waiver, which we discussed in the previous clause, to allow such a couple to remain married. Like the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon, I regret the Government's response. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that there is no reason why the Government could not, in this one
instance, make an exception to the wise general rule against same-sex marriages, as the Governments of France and Italy did.