British law should be amended to allow for dead people to have their genders officially changed following their deaths, a Member of Parliament for the left-wing Labour Party has argued.
In a written question posed to Parliament last month, Warrington North MP Charlotte Nichols suggested that the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) of 2004 should be updated to “allow transgender people who are deceased to be legally remembered by the gender they lived by”.
The push follows a petition last year signed by nearly 14,000 people asking for a similar change to the law following the killing of Brianna Ghey, a reportedly transgender teenager who died at 16 years of age, short of the minimum of 18 required for changing one’s gender legally in the UK.
Speaking to The Telegraph, Nichols said: “My question follows on from a recent petition supported by many of my constituents, regarding amending the Gender Recognition Act.
“The genesis of the petition was the murder of my constituent Brianna Ghey, whose life was brutally cut short before she was old enough to have formal legal recognition of who she was and how she will be remembered by her family, friends and our community.
“At that time, the Government said they did not believe any reforms were necessary, but it is something I continue to have raised with me by my constituents and will continue to raise with the Government accordingly so that this can be an option available to bereaved families should they so wish.”
However, there are concerns that amending the Gender Recognition Act in such a way could lead to “self-ID” — the practice of declaring one’s own gender without a sign off from a doctor — could become normalised.
Lucy Marsh of Tthe Family Education Trust said: “It’s extremely concerning that Labour appears to be pushing towards introducing gender-self-ID through the back door. If coroners are allowed to lie on public record about the sex of deceased children, this will surely be a slippery slope towards self-ID becoming normalised in the NHS.
“If this is legally allowed, what’s to stop deaths being recorded as ‘non-binary’ or babies being registered as the opposite sex? The Government needs to crack down on this and make sure the NHS is based on reality rather than fantasy.”
This concern was amplified by the supposedly Conservative government’s equalities minister, Stuart Andrew, saying that while there are no plans to change the law, if a person had self-identified as a different gender and this was recognised by an official organisation “then we anticipate that the organisation would engage with their family members using the new gender.”
“These organisations could include the NHS,” Andrew said.
The comments from the government minister were criticised by Brexit leader Nigel Farage, who said: “The Tories are a woke government who pretend not to be and will lie to the voters at the next election. Just look at the evidence.”