Labour will overhaul an “outdated” law to make it easier for transgender people to transition while maintaining protections for single-sex spaces, the party’s chair and shadow equalities secretary has said.
Writing in the Guardian, Anneliese Dodds accused the Conservative party of seeking to stoke “culture wars” by pinning its hopes for electoral success on “demonising vulnerable LGBT+ people”.
She set out Labour’s commitment to trans people and women in the aftermath of the party’s national policy forum in Nottingham, which saw delegates back a platform to be put before activists and members at the autumn conference in October.
Dodds accused Lee Anderson, the Conservatives’ deputy chair, of trying to “stoke division” when he suggested in an interview prior to his appointment that the Tories should focus on “a mix of culture wars and trans debate” to hold on to power.
“Changing gender is not a decision anyone makes lightly,” wrote Dodds. “The process is intrusive, outdated and humiliating. So we will modernise, simplify and reform the gender recognition law to a new process. We will remove invasive bureaucracy and simplify the process.”
The Gender Recognition Act was passed by Labour in 2004 but Dodds said that “now, in 2023, we have a much better understanding of the barriers trans people face”. She pointed to the legislation passed by Tony Blair’s government, and the 2010 Equality Act under Gordon Brown, as among Labour’s “crowning achievements”.
Dodds accused the...
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