Updating the approved countries list for gender recognition

On 6 February 2024, the Third Delegated Legislation Committee of the House of Commons debated and passed the draft Gender Recognition (Approved Countries and Territories and Saving Provision) Order 2023. (We have written previously about this issue in relation to the Scottish Government’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill.)

There is no automatic recognition in the UK of any gender recognition certificates (GRCs) issued elsewhere. A UK gender recognition certificate (GRC) is always required to obtain such recognition under UK law. However, if a person comes from one of a list of “approved” jurisdictions, they need not show that they meet all of the tests usually applied here and have access instead to a fast track application process.

The system is lightly used; only around 350 applications have been made under it in the past 15 years. Most applications have been granted.

Only jurisdictions with similar system to the UK have been placed on this list, which was the policy aim of the then Labour government which passed the Gender Recognition Act in 2004.

Speaking in the Second Reading of the Gender Recognition Bill on 23 February 2004, the then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs David Lammy MP said:

“We want to ensure that the standards in other countries are the same as those that we apply here.”

During its earlier stages in the House of Lords, Lord Evans, then a minister in the Department of Constitutional Affairs, made the same point during Committee stage on 13 January 2004.

The list of approved countries was last revised in 2011. Jurisdictions on it that have since reduced their requirement for access to a GRC are now being removed from it. And some have been added.

On 9 January 2023, the Minister for Women and Equalities Kemi Badenoch MP announced that the government would be updating its list of approved overseas countries and territories for gender recognition certificates.

As noted at the time by Sex Matters, Stonewall and its allied organisations responded calling this a “trans travel ban” and saying that the UK was “ending reciprocal recognition of Gender Recognition Certificates”.

In a letter that it encouraged supporters to send to MPs, Stonewall stated:

As we noted in a letter to The Times on 16 January 2023, no “reciprocal recognition” scheme is being abolished, and there are no impacts at all on people from overseas who already have obtained UK GRCs via the overseas track.

Indeed, Stonewall was and is aware of this, as noted in the response that Stonewall Scotland submitted to the Scottish Parliament on the Gender Recognition (Reform) Bill.

There were 38 countries on the approved countries list in the 2011 order. 14 remain, 24 have been removed and 14 are added by the 2023 order.

Under the 2023 order, only four Australian states and territories remain on the list, no Canadian provinces or territories and 21 US states (compared with 46 in the 2011 order).

The Commons Committee debate can be watched here.