Mr Tim Boswell (Daventry, Conservative)

I beg to move amendment No. 12, in

clause 6, page 4, line 21, at end add

'and may not charge for the issue of a corrected certificate if the need arose because of official error'.

Mrs Marion Roe (Broxbourne, Conservative)

With this we may discuss amendment No. 13, in

clause 7, page 4, line 27, leave out 'an' and insert 'a reasonable'.

Mr Tim Boswell (Daventry, Conservative)

I sense that we now move on to easier territory conceptually, and I hope that I can be commensurately brief. Clauses 6 and 7 are practical nuts-and-bolts issues concerning the issue of certificates.

Amendment No. 12 can be dispatched immediately. It is hardly conceivable that the Ministers will object to its principle. If an official makes a mistake in implementing a gender recognition certificate, it is unreasonable to charge the recipient for the issue of that certificate. Considering that principle led me to have wider thoughts about the nature of errors that might occur in certificates, such as simple copying errors or something more radical. I suspect that some might relate to the transcription of names.

Not much has been said about what will appear on the gender recognition certificate. For example, someone christened Fred who has changed gender and is now a woman, might want to appear as Freda or whatever on the gender recognition certificate. The name by itself is a potential source of error. That brings me to a slightly wider question.

There is extensive provision in the schedules, which we need not bother with now, for compilation of the gender recognition registry. If an error is made, whether official or non-official—perhaps something is filed inaccurately with the registrar, for example—will there be an audit trail through the whole process of initial birth registration, the error-laden register and the final gender recognition certificate that makes the correction? That may be of concern, not least because we will want to consider the ability to trace people's identity in an unequivocal way.

Amendment No. 13 would require the Secretary of State to charge a reasonable fee. The Under-Secretary will know better than I do, because he is a lawyer and I am not, that Ministers and officials are always obliged to be reasonable, and I am sure that they try to be so. I am pleased that the Under-Secretary for the Department for Work and Pensions, with her legal knowledge, is nodding. I do not mind that thought. Occasionally, I am led to quote from ''The Judge Over Your Shoulder'', which, if not my Bible, is at least something that I read from time to time.

In the spirit of the debate, the Under-Secretary for the Department for Constitutional Affairs will wish to be fair and sensible about the fees that will be charged. Briefings that we received from Press for Change and others indicate that a fee in what one might call the normal case would be £700. I do not ask the Under-Secretary to give a precise figure now, but he could help the Committee by giving some idea of the charges that are likely to be involved.

Mr David Lammy (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs; Tottenham, Labour)

I did not hear the hon. Gentleman properly. Did he say £700?

Mr Tim Boswell (Daventry, Conservative)

My understanding, which is subject to correction, is that the ballpark figure for an application to a gender recognition panel would be in

the order of £700. I am not sure whether that is right. I would be grateful if the Under-Secretary could clarify it.

Clearly, there will be several charges. It occurred to me since I drafted the amendment that there will be a charge for the panel—goodness knows, they are professional people who are perfectly entitled to charge out their time at the proper rate—but possibly also for the certificate itself, which is not part of the panel's deliberation. There is an interesting question about the charges that would be required if both an interim certificate is issued and a full gender recognition certificate after the administrative process that we have just discussed, and if there is court determination of annulment. Those are important issues.

We would all agree that fees are entirely proper but that they should not be unconscionable. They should be proportionate and affordable so that people in modest circumstances, including retired people in long-standing relationships, can meet the cost.

I did have two other points to raise, but they have collapsed into one. The Under-Secretary may want to say a little—I am conscious that he is receiving assistance—about the transition from interim to full certificate, about persons who reapply, in which case the evidence is already in place, and about the fast track.

I do not wish to press this point with intensity. The Under-Secretary may also want to say something about the provision for a non-refundable fee. I fully understand that we do not want to encourage frivolous applications or applications that have not been fully considered. That is not in the spirit of the proposals, nor do I anticipate that such applications are likely. I accept that it is proper to charge a fee to reflect the costs of the procedure. However, I can imagine problems of hardship if things are taken literally.

If there were administrative shortages, which I do not anticipate, or some other reason why the matter could not be determined within a reasonable period, and people had to sit around for three years waiting for the official process to take place—I am not saying that they will, and I hope to goodness that they will not—it would be entirely reasonable to say, ''Look, I've paid up front. When is my problem going to be resolved?'' There could also be cases in which the evidence, including professional certification, which had been obtained at great cost, went missing and had to be reprovided.

The Under-Secretary might want to consider that. Sadly, there could be cases in which an applicant makes an application in good faith and the evidence is tabled but the applicant dies before it is considered by the panel. I feel slightly less intensely about that for applicants who withdraw applications, but we could have a range of hardship cases.

I am sure that the Under-Secretary will not want to give the Committee the impression that he has any wish to bear down on people more than is necessary to meet the costs of the operation. It will help to have an idea of roughly what he anticipates those costs will be. It will also help if we have an understanding across the

Committee that fees could be waived in hardship cases. In that way, we would help people whose circumstances are difficult enough not to feel that they are being treated unfairly by the administration process and the law.

Mr David Lammy (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs; Tottenham, Labour)

The purpose of clause 6 is to make it possible for the person or the Secretary of State to apply for a correction to the gender recognition certificate. Clause 7(2) allows the Secretary of State to prescribe, by an order that is subject to the negative procedure, the level of fees that should be charged for making applications to the gender recognition panel. Applications for corrected gender recognition certificates would be included in such an order. Clause 7(2) also provides that the order may prescribe circumstances in which no fee will be payable and it seems entirely reasonable that if an incorrect certificate has been issued due to official error, the applicant should not have to pay for a corrected replacement.

It is unnecessary to amend the Bill, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman will understand, because we can achieve the desired outcome by ensuring that the fees order covers the situation. I commend that alternative solution and give an assurance that the statutory instrument will cater for the eventuality in question.

On amendment No. 13, clause 7 allows the Secretary of State, after consultation with Scottish Ministers and the Department of Finance and Personnel in Northern Ireland, to determine the level of fees that should be charged for making applications to the gender recognition panel. It is quite normal for people to pay for a range of services, including passports, birth and marriage certificates, driving licences and applications within the civil courts. I am afraid that it is too early to say what rate of fees would be appropriate, but we are looking, among other things, at the cost of processing an application and levels of fees for comparable applications in other areas. I am pleased to say categorically that the fees will be nowhere near £700.

As part of our consideration of the level of fees we shall consider whether there should be appropriate exemptions and in what circumstances. The Government are alive to the concerns of the transsexual community and others that a future, less progressive Government could increase the fee to an extent that made legal recognition a practical impossibility. We are also mindful of our legal obligation under the European convention on human rights to ensure access to justice. I wanted to put that on the record.

As a consequence of those key issues and given that other court fees are set by order, subject to the negative procedure, the Government introduced an amendment on Report in another place to provide that the fees for an application to the gender recognition panel should be set in the same way. I believe that that provides the safeguard that the hon. Gentleman is seeking in his amendment. I do not believe that the

amendment is necessary. Parliament will have a future opportunity to assess whether the fee prescribed by the Secretary of State is reasonable.

Mr Tim Boswell (Daventry, Conservative)

I make that about one all. The Minister made some slightly barbed comments and perhaps he knows something that I do not. I would like to share with people in and outside the Committee the possibility of a change of Government. For some reason, he seemed to be under the misapprehension that they might be less progressive than the present Government.

On the other side, the Criminal Records Bureau does not provide an entirely happy precedent for such situations, but that is private grief for the Minister and perhaps some of his colleagues in other Departments so I will not go on about that.

It must be sensible and the spirit of the whole Committee suggests that it would be reasonable, with proper understanding of the difficulties involved, to meet those concerns. The Minister has made a real attempt to do so and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 6 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 7 ordered to stand part of the Bill.