Downing Street has backed away from suggestions Rishi Sunak is to drop plans to ban schoolchildren from changing their gender identity, after draft guidance from his attorney general determined such a move would be unlawful.
The government is proceeding with “extreme caution” on the issue and additional time was being taken to hear from experts, the prime minister’s spokesperson said on Thursday.
While draft guidance had said children should be allowed to socially transition – which involves changing names and pronouns – with parents’ consent, ministers later considered bringing in a new law to ban it outright.
A number of newspapers reported on Thursday that such a bill will not be introduced in the king’s speech, which outlines proposed legislation for the year ahead.
That has provoked anger from social conservatives including the Don Valley MP, Nick Fletcher, who said it was “mischief-making” to suggest there was a need to wait for new laws “to safeguard children at school & ground them in reality”.
Fletcher is one of a number of MPs continuing to press Sunak on the issue. He published a letter he sent to the prime minister on 31 August in which he said that his understanding was that the guidance was delayed because children expressing concerns about their gender have protected characteristics of gender reassignment under the Equality Act.
He said this was not a reason to hold up the guidance, asking that Sunak and relevant ministers “look again” at the legal opinion received about the meaning and impact of protected characteristics and fast-track the guidance, which he said was “urgently needed”.
A Labour MP, Ben Bradshaw, welcomed suggestions that Sunak was going to block any legal plans to bar social transitioning.
“Encouraging, if true, that Sunak will block culture warriors Braverman & Badenoch and ease Tory attacks on trans young people, having been warned their plans are illegal & would leave them on the wrong side of history,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
After a thinktank survey in March reported that some secondary schools were not informing parents as soon as a child questioned their gender identity, Sunak promised to publish guidance for schools in England later in the term.
But amid a continued delay and suggestions that the issue could be deployed by the Conservatives as a “wedge issue” in elections, school leaders later warned that schools are being left in limbo by the government’s “political squabbles”.
Asked on Thursday about the development of the guidance, the prime minister’s spokesperson said that no final decision had been taken, telling reporters: “We recognise the need to do this as quickly as possible, but more information is needed about the long-term implications of a child acting as though they are the opposite sex and we need to take care to understand how such action affects other children in the school or college. That’s why we’re taking this additional time.”
“We’ve always said that this guidance will provide clarity so that parents have control, that children are kept safe, and that teachers have the appropriate information they need.”
