Anyone who thought the downfall of the Tory government might bring an end to the interminable debate over transgender rights should scrutinise Labour’s plans. It could be that the past seven years of political manoeuvrings was merely the warm-up act.

This is delusion on a grand scale

Labour reportedly wants to ‘simplify’ the gender recognition process – but this isn’t necessarily a good thing. Specialist reports, a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, the agreement of spouses and the panel of lawyers that checks each application against the legal criteria could all be ditched, according to a report in the Times. One idea is that gender recognition certificates might simply be signed off by a GP. This is self-ID in all but name.

Anneliese Dodds, the shadow women and equalities secretary, said the Labour party wants, ‘to see the process for gender recognition modernised, while protecting single sex spaces for biological women. This means stripping out the futile and dehumanising parts of the process for obtaining a gender recognition certificates (GRC), while retaining important safeguards.’

This is delusion on the scale of claiming that we could allow family doctors to authorise applications for British citizenship, remove further scrutiny and then claim that the country’s borders remained secure. Make no mistake, a GRC is a powerful document: it changes someone’s legal sex, as Section 9 of the Gender Recognition Act makes clear:

‘Where a full gender recognition certificate is issued to a person, the person’s gender becomes for all purposes the acquired gender (so that, if the acquired gender is the male gender, the person’s sex becomes that of a man and, if it is the female gender, the person’s sex becomes that of a woman).’

Not only that, it then shrouds that change in secrecy. Section 22 adds:

‘It is an offence for a person who has acquired protected information [that a GRC has changed someone’s legal sex] in an official capacity to disclose the information to any other person.’

We should treat any shake-up of the gender change process will caution. So why is Labour seeking to meddle? Dodds can hardly object to the cost to the applicant. According to the gov.uk webpage on how to apply for a GRC, ‘it costs £5 to apply’. That’s cheaper than renewing a driving licence. Not only that, ‘You might be able to get help paying the fee if you get benefits or are on a low income’. These procedures are already clearly accessible.

If changes to the Gender Recognition Act are needed, then safeguards against misuse must be strengthened rather than weakened. Had Isla Bryson – the male rapist who caused outrage in Scotland, and arguably led the demise of Nicola Sturgeons Gender Recognition Reform Bill – already been issued with a GRC, it would have been much harder for the Prison Service to relocate Bryson to a men’s prison. After all, Bryson’s sex would have become that of a woman for all legal purposes. Not only that, anyone who disclosed official information to the contrary could themselves end up in the dock.

One of the benefits of opposition is surely to be able to learn from government mistakes without taking any responsibility for them – but not, it seems, the Labour party. Governments in both Westminster and Holyrood have lurched from crisis to crisis over self-ID, prisons policy, hospital wards, sports, school policy and the rest. Yet Labour seems to want to double down on these errors.

Remember it was a Conservative prime minister, Theresa May, who pledged to press ahead with plans to let people change their legal sex without proper medical checks. That was 2017. Only recently have the Tories changed tack when they realised that LGBTQIA+ activists do not speak for the wider public. The voters are not impressed when they cannot call a man a man, rapists self-identify into women’s prisons, sex-based rights are overlooked by hospital managers and men beat women in what is supposed to be female sport.

Whether Labour has the capacity to represent more than its activist base remains to be seen, but if Keir Starmer forms the next government we may rapidly find out.