Baroness Thornton – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Culture Media and Sport

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Baroness Thornton on 2014-06-17.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the feasibility of issuing non-gender-specific official documents to people who do not identify as a particular gender.

Baroness Northover

Under UK law only male or female is recognised as a gender. We recognise that a very small number of people consider themselves to be of neither gender. We are not aware that that results in any specific detriment, and it is not Government policy to identify such people for the purpose of issuing non-gender-specific official documents.

A specific review on gender markings in the British passport was carried out by Her Majesty’s Passport Office, which has been placed in the Library of both Houses. The review concluded that there would be no significant advantages to including a non-gender category along with male and female.