4. Statement by the Leader of the House: International Day against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:36 pm on 15 May 2018.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 4:36, 15 May 2018

Siân Gwenllian makes a number of very valid points, as always. There is always more that we can do, and the statistics show very clearly, as she says, that more needs to be done. We certainly accept that there's a holistic set of circumstances that need to be done: we wish to address that all the way through. So, as Mark Isherwood pointed out, we have a number of groups of people that we need to address the needs of—older people in the community who lived through the decriminalisation process and who often have mental health and other associated traumas associated with all of that process, which many of us remember only too vividly. But we also have, at the other end of the spectrum, youngsters coming forward who we want to have the very best possible outcome all the way through our processes in our schools. And we are addressing those issues all the way through. So, as I said—I won't repeat myself—we're currently looking at the bullying policies in schools, specifically with a view to addressing potential incidents. The Cabinet Secretary for Education is going to be making an announcement next week about the sex and relationships education agenda, so I won't stray into her announcement, but, of course, that impacts on this agenda in a very major way, and that is very much about establishing our education system to be the best that it can be in that regard and to follow on from the Diamond review's four purposes, which are very much at the centre of part of this agenda as well.

In terms of some of the very specific things you mentioned, I just said what we were doing on some of the trans healthcare issues, but there are some ongoing frustrations, I suppose. In July 2017, the UK Government announced proposals to streamline and de-medicalise the process for changing gender as part of the broad consultation on the legal system that underpins the Gender Recognition Act 2004. We expected that consultation last autumn. The latest communication between our officials and the Government Equalities Office suggests that they now hope that it will be before the summer recess this year. I'm sure Siân Gwenllian is aware that, currently, individuals need a diagnosis of gender dysphoria and have to provide evidence of transition for two years. We very much want to come away from that, but we're caught up in the consultation exercise. We want to remove the need for medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria before being able to apply for gender recognition and we want to streamline the entire process and propose a number of options for reducing the length and intrusiveness of the gender recognition system so that people can self-identify. Proposals for or a system of self-identification to change gender exist in quite a lot of other European countries: Portugal, Ireland, Malta, Belgium, Norway, Denmark to quote a few of them, and have been welcomed by trans communities, but it's led to a backlash in some cases, particularly, for example, in Ireland. The Irish Government is due to put a review of its complete system out, which we are hoping will be with us towards the end of the summer, the beginning of the autumn. So, we wish very much to learn from those experiences whilst developing our own system as well.

So, there are a number of things we are doing. There are things we could do to accelerate that. We are having a cross-Government conversation about this, and I myself will be reporting back to the Senedd towards the end of the summer term on an equalities platform generally, which will set out some of the detail of moving that agenda forward in some of the specific areas that you mentioned.