Clause 6 - Errors in certificates
Gender Recognition Bill [Lords]
3:15 pm
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.