Clause 7
Equality Bill
11:15 am
Vera Baird (Solicitor General, Attorney General's Office; Redcar, Labour)
No. The hon. Gentleman has that completely on its head, to be frank. No one is too young to cogitate about their gender identity. The consequences of doing so may be very different. We are not, as he seems perpetually to be stuck on, talking about the medical model of gender reassignment, on which some people may well be too young to be responsible enough to decide. This is not gender reassignment on a medical model. He really needs to come off that tramline and look at this for what it is. It concerns a personal journey and moving a gender identity away from birth sex. I am sure that that is as capable of being done by a young person as by an older person, and it is indeed likely to have manifestations. Those manifestations are the things that will indicate that some sort of process is in place.
If a person makes the proposal—it is a proposal, not a decision where someone says, “I will do it and never turn back”—that they may move along that pathway, at that point, and at that point only, does it become practical to protect someone. Someone who is having internal concerns about themselves is not manifesting it in any way that can be acknowledged and protected by any external person. As soon as there is a manifestation—as I have said already, and we discussed this last week too—the duty not to discriminate comes in.