Results of responses of proposed amendments to the Gender Recognition Act: FOI release

Information requested

Please accept this as a freedom of information request to obtain the results of the public consultation carried out in 2020 on proposed amendments to the Gender Recognition Act.

Response

The consultation on the draft Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill closed for responses on March 17 2020. Around 17,000 responses were received through Citizen Space, the Scottish Government’s online platform for consultations, or by post.

On 1 April 2020, the Minister for Parliamentary Business and Veterans announced the Government's plans for managing its legislative programme in light of the impacts of COVID-19. Following the Minister’s announcement, we updated the Scottish Government’s consultation hub accordingly.

We have since taken forward work so that the consultation responses could be analysed independently of Scottish Government, with the intention of publishing both the analysis report and the organisational responses, where we have permission to do so.

The Cabinet Secretary for Social Security and Older People said on 8 March that the impact of work in response to the coronavirus pandemic meant it was no longer possible in the time available to ready both the analysis and the organisational responses before recess for the Scottish Parliament elections. The Cabinet Secretary’s response to the parliamentary questions is available on the Scottish Parliament’s website.

The contractor has since concluded their independent analysis of the consultation responses and we intend to publish both the analysis report and the organisational responses in due course.

As stated by the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government, we remain committed to reforming the Gender Recognition Act 2004 and will be announcing our legislative programme to the Scottish Parliament in September 2021 as part of the Programme for Government.

Under section 25(1) of FOISA, we do not have to give you information which is already reasonably accessible to you.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.