Clause 9 - General
Gender Recognition Bill [Lords]
4:30 pm
Mr Tim Boswell (Daventry, Conservative)
There are possibly three time references here.
A full gender recognition certificate becomes valid at a point in time, and at that point the gender of the person becomes the acquired gender. That is straightforward.
However, things will have happened in the past. The first part of subsection (2) clearly states that the proposed legislation
''does not affect things done, or events occurring before, the certificate is issued''.
The explanatory notes confirm that. We cannot rewrite the history of the person involved and we do not seek to do so. If they did something as a man, the fact that they subsequently acquired the gender of a woman is irrelevant to the act that took place.
Will the Minister give me further clarification on what the second part of subsection (2) means? That is the purpose of amendment No. 16. The explanatory notes are not wholly pellucid. I think it is meant to recognise that, although the gender change took place at a moment in time, enactments that refer to people in their different genders were already in place; and because those refer to a particular gender, and the person that we have in mind was not of that gender at
that time, those enactments would not apply to them until after the date of the gender recognition certificate. At that point, they will have changed gender, and that continuing legislation might now be applicable to them.
I cannot imagine a real-world case, but I can synthesise one that may be helpful to members of the Committee as we relax from these difficult concepts. Imagine a situation where it is said that no male shall be prosecuted for speeding if they exceed the speed limit by less than 15 per cent. I am not canvassing that idea to members of the Committee. If a person had previously been female, they could not have availed themselves of that legislation; but if they then became a man, they could do so from the date of their change. I say that only jocularly because I would be grateful if the Minister would explain how things would work.
Amendment No. 17 relates to subsection (3), which is again a little time-neutral, and is potentially more worrying. I think that I am right in saying that their lordships would describe this as a Henry VIII clause, which means that the Government can change primary legislation when they need to do so. Their lordships tend to get rather excited about that—perhaps not always with bad reason. We should not give the Government unbridled powers to change legislation unless there is a very good reason for that.
I understand what is going on. The complexity of legislation that refers to different genders—the Minister touched on this—is so great that however extensive the search through the evidence, something may come up and it may be necessary to change something in another enactment because it is giving rise to difficulty, or some other change in subordinate legislation may required. I do not know how that will work. The issue comes up again in clause 23, which contains explicit powers to modify statutory provisions. I hope that the Minister, if he can take us through this and explain what is going on, will satisfy me and I shall be able to withdraw the amendment.