Chamber and committees

I will ask you a bit more about the Cass review in a minute, but would you like to come in, Karon?

I was not a member of the committee at that point, so it is important to get that on the public record.

I respect the differences between the positions of Naomi Cunningham and Sharon Cowan—I think that Karon Monaghan is somewhere in the middle. For clarification, I want to ask about the legislative competence of expansion of the legal definition of “woman”. We cannot do that, can we, in the context of gender representation and the examples that Karon gave? Sharon Cowan talked about not reducing the definition to biological sex, but I do not understand how that can be interpreted in law.

I want to develop the questioning around reducing the age from 18 to 16 and open a discussion on whether you believe that people aged 16 are mature enough to make such decisions. We have heard a lot of examples—as you will know from following the committee evidence, the discussion is very polarised. At 16, someone can get married or join the Army, and at 18, they can buy fireworks, have a tattoo, buy alcohol and all the rest of it. There are very different settings within those two years.

I am interested in Karon Monaghan’s point that the European convention on human rights does not require such a scheme. I would like you to develop that point and say whether it relates to the age difference. How does that sit with the specific safeguarding concerns that some people may have in this area, and with the European convention? Do you think that parental consent should be required? What are your views? Naomi Cunningham can start.

I will pick you up on that point. Does that mean that if a scheme, to use your word, was insufficient, inadequate or had an absence of procedural safeguards, it would infringe article 8 of the European convention on human rights?

If somebody came to seek medical treatment to obtain a GRC, you would keep that data, but if they sought medical treatment and did not obtain a GRC, you would not keep that data—or do you not keep such data in either case?

If fewer trans people seek medical treatment to obtain a GRC by self-declaration, how will you know what your service provision should be in the future?

In the committee’s work, it is important that we are able to understand the legal implications from the point of view of someone who has the specialist ability to comment on that. I do not expect you to be able to do that, but perhaps it is something that we should consider. Accessing life-saving clinical treatment may be slightly different from accessing puberty blockers. Perhaps we should develop that with an expert on specific case law—

Naomi Cunningham, do you have any further comments?

That is helpful. Do you have a minimum age for service provision in your clinics?