Mick Hartley

From the Times:

Rishi Sunak is expected to delay issuing transgender guidance for schools after the attorney-general and government lawyers warned that plans to strengthen it would be unlawful.

A Whitehall source said that No 10 and Kemi Badenoch, the women and equalities minister, wanted the guidance to be hardened amid pressure from Tory MPs.

The draft guidance stated that children should be allowed to socially transition with the consent of their parents, meaning that they could choose another pronoun or name and wear the uniform of the opposite sex.

But the government then commissioned legal advice from Victoria Prentis, the attorney-general, about whether a ban on social transitioning in schools was possible. Last week she concluded that such a move would be unlawful and said that the government would need to pass new legislation if it wanted to go further.

Sunak had committed himself to publishing the guidance by the end of this week, but The Times has been told that is unlikely given the attorney-general’s advice. The prime minister is concerned about the “long-term implications” of allowing children to socially transition….

Prentis said that a blanket ban would be unlawful because the Equalities Act states that gender reassignment is a “protected characteristic”, regardless of age. She gave the same advice when ministers asked whether there could be a ban on social transitioning for primary school children.

The law clearly needs to be changed. In particular, the ill-conceived Gender Recognition Act needs to go – passed in 2004 in response to court rulings from the European Court of Human Rights when it seemed a mnor act of kindness for the miniscule number of transgender individuals, but wholly unsuited for the radically changed situation today. This was consolidated under the 2010 Equality Act, when gender became a protected characteristic.

The dangers of allowing children in schools to socially transition, even with parental support, are set out clearly in this open letter to Gillian Keegan, from Dr Lynne Harne at The Glinner Update.