THURSDAY June 5th
Campaigning to take forward the
Departmental Working Group Report/Goodwin & I Judgement
- update – PFC/LJ
The Government was still
indicating that a draft bill would be published before the summer recess. The Lord
Chancellor’s Department, now the Department for Constitutional Affairs has been very
good at liaising with the team the Forum appointed to advise them. Whilst there were
likely to be some disappointments, most obviously the pre-existing marriage issue, we need
to be careful that we don’t ‘cut off our nose to spite our face’ and that
it is crucial that we do not lose the Bill. One area that won’t be in the Bill
is the question of discrimination, to provide genuine equality of opportunity as this
would make the Bill too long. However, there are already proposals for
anti-discrimination legislation.
Note from LJ: The Draft Bill was published on 11 July. Details can be found via the
PFC website: www.pfc.org.uk Unfortuantely, on
the issue of pre-existing marriages the Government has not found a way of allowing these
to continue without legalising same sex marriages, which it is not currently prepared to
do. The JCHR has issued a call for submissions prior to pre-legislative scrutiny of
the draft Bill in September. Click
here for details. The deadline for evidence is September 11th
Police Guidelines on the
employment of Trans-people
Essex police guidelines are up
and running now and they are continuing with their work on educating the Police Service
nationally. They are trying to get the issue on the agenda of the Chief Police
Officer’s conference. They are also looking at a national conference to share
the information.
Forum to write to the Chair of the West Yorks Police Authority, along the lines that
his Authority are wasting their budget – over £¼ m has been spent on going to Court
already (see agenda item 6).
note 01.08.03 correspondence to date attached – Lynne Jones has since written to
Hazel Blears MP at the Home Office asking for details of any guidance the Home Office has
issued to police authorities on the matter of recruitment or retention of transsexual
officers.
Correspondence with Press
Complaints Commission
Encouraging letter received
from Sir Christopher Meyer of the PCC with an offer for a representative from the PCC to
come to the next meeting to brief the Forum on the PCC Code. LJ will also make the
offer for a member of the Forum to go to the PCC.
Professor Milton Diamond
Prof Milton Diamond, one of
the world's foremost respected authorities in the study of Gender Identity, gave a
presentation on his work in the US.
Professor Milton Diamond thanked all for his invitation to participate and offered support
for all the current work which aims to improve the legal rights and medical treatment of
trans people.
He spoke of his research of twins to see what might be learned about transsexualism
from 'twinning'. To date he has had responses from about a dozen sets of twins, in
which one or both had transitioned. These provide useful data, but Professor Diamond is
hoping to broaden the scope of these data by involving more sets of twins. The results
will be written up for the literature.
He is also currently researching the relationship between physical characteristics,
especially height, and transsexualism. He believes that trans women are
significantly taller than the average male and trans men are significantly shorter than
the average female. This is counter-intuitive. These data are being gathered and
will have to be corrected for other factors, such as diet etc.
Good Practice
- Draft guidance to Health
Organisations
It was agreed that the
guidance should cover all health organisations that have a duty of care to trans people
not just health authorities.
A draft of the document is now
posted on the GIRES website for consultation. There was some concern about this and
it was agreed that some clarification of the status of this document as a draft was
required.
A budget has been ratified for an inter-collegiate working party of the Royal Colleges to
produce guidelines for the medical profession and LJ: hopes these projects will coalesce.
- Guidelines for the treatment of
transsexual prisoners
Information was sent to LJ
from someone who transitioned in prison but who has now been released – she was
asking what has happened to the Prison Guidelines. LJ to write to Prisons Minister
to pick up on previous correspondence and to ask what is currently being done.
Legal cases update
Following recent legal cases
birth certificates have to be shown when marrying.
The West Yorkshire police have been given leave to appeal to the House of Lords in the
case of A v West Yorkshire Police.
Date of next Meeting –
September 17th 2003
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