Chamber and committees

Thank you.

I would like clarification about the exemption from court fees for people who are in receipt of personal independence payment and adult disability payment with a gross annual income of £20,592. We also need clarification about the impact of inflation. Reference is made to that, but perhaps the inflationary pressure should be considered sooner rather than later.

Is that because you believe that a GRC changes a person’s sex for the purposes of section 11 of the Equality Act 2010?

Convener, this is a bigger issue than I had envisaged when asking my supplementary question.

Would challenge through the courts be brought by a family member, for example? Is that what you are saying?

On that point, will GRCs that are issued by the registrar general have a United Kingdom-wide effect? What do you intend to do in terms of the information that is passed between registers in Scotland and those in England, Wales and Northern Ireland in relation to issuing a revised birth certificate? What happens in that situation?

Thank you. The last point was about the 12 hours between the written submission deadline and the bill being brought in front of the committee. It was quite a short time in which to digest 10,800 submissions and make a decision on who to bring forward as witnesses.

So you would not mind if we took longer.

I have a question on acquired gender, convener. A trans woman raised the definition of acquired gender in committee and put the question back to the female witnesses by asking them what traits they demonstrate that confirm that they are living as women. For the purposes of the bill, and if we are to reform the legislation and make it better, does the Government consider that there should be a definition of “acquired gender”?

This is a supplementary question on the cross-border effect, which I indicated to the convener that I would ask. Cabinet secretary, why has the EHRC said that there are implications for potential divergence from the Equality Act 2010 on services—which you have mentioned a number of—such as cross-border employment and education services and on single-sex exemptions?

We actually had sight of that last night.