Clause 19 - Sport
Gender Recognition Bill [Lords]
3:00 pm
Mr David Lammy (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs; Tottenham, Labour)
I accept the arguments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak. Clearly, there will not be many transsexual people who play competitive sport. That is partly because there are not many people who play competitive sport at any
significant level. However, it is also because the transition process, and the treatment that transsexual people undergo, can affect their bodies substantially.
Clause 19 is not, however, premised on the idea that all transsexual people pose a threat to competitive sport. Indeed, it expressly does not apply to transsexual people as a class. It permits a sporting body to restrict the participation of a transsexual person only if it is necessary to ensure fair competition or the safety of other competitors. That means that wherever a transsexual person does not have a competitive advantage, by virtue of having previously been of another gender, a sporting body will not be entitled to exclude that person from competition. The Government do not wish for transsexual people to be unnecessarily excluded from sporting competitions and we do not think that clause 19 creates that scope.