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People have been able to change their sex through the 2004 act since it came in. They were already able to do that, so any prisoners we are talking about have already done that through the 2004 act, because this bill is not in place. If any of the people whom we are talking about have a GRC, they will have one through the existing 2004 legislation.

The point that I am making is that, for the Scottish Prison Service, if someone has a GRC it is not a pass for a trans woman into the female estate or for a trans man into the male estate. What matters is the risk assessment of that individual, and not just whether they pose a threat to other people but whether they are at risk themselves. You could clearly see in the case of trans men, in particular, why that might be the case, which is why 75 per cent of trans men are held in the female estate.

That is really a matter for the committee, not me. How the committee operates its business and the time that you allocate for the bill is a matter for yourselves, not me.

Living in an acquired gender generally means living your daily life in a gender that is different from your gender as recorded at birth. In the context of the bill, that is the gender in which a person is living when they make an application.

It is important to recognise that living in the acquired gender is an existing requirement under the 2004 act. I do not think that that causes widespread confusion among applicants currently, so we do not envisage that that will be the case with the bill.

It is important to say that the requirement is not about dressing or looking a certain way; it is about the ways in which a person might demonstrate their lived gender to others. Ultimately, interpretation is—

Yes, I can. I was just going to say that examples include consistently using titles and pronouns in line with the acquired gender; updating official documents, such as a driving licence or passport; updating utility bills or bank accounts; updating the gender marker on official documents, such as a driving licence or passport; describing themselves and being described by others, in written or other communication, in line with the acquired gender; and using a name that is associated with the acquired gender. Of course, a change of name is a personal choice and not a requirement, but it is an example.

The gender recognition panel that currently exists—it will no longer, if the bill is passed—advises in its guidance that examples might include a person having changed the gender marker on their passport and driving licence, or that their friends, family and employer know their gender.

I hope that that is—

First, it will be for the other parts of the UK to decide on their own systems, and the UK Government’s recognition of Scottish GRCs will be a matter for it to consider.

There are some fundamental rights that will remain the same—rights that are enshrined under the Equality Act 2010 and apply to people whether or not they have a GRC. Those would be everyday things such as people’s rights at work and in any interactions with public bodies. Those remain the same whether someone has a GRC or not, because they are protected under the 2010 act.

I will ask Peter Hope-Jones to pick up on the specifics.

I am aware that Shirley-Anne Somerville also undertook consultation and met a number of organisations. Peter Hope-Jones was closer to that process than I was, but I understand that the three-month reflection period was one of the areas that emerged from that. Peter can maybe say more about that in a second.

There has also been ample opportunity for written comments, all of which have been looked at and considered. I undertook a round of engagement once I came into the post and had got my head around the extent and detail of this complex area. I held personal meetings with organisations from both sides of the argument around the bill. One of the areas that I looked at in a lot of detail was whether the minimum age of applicants should be 18 or 16. I gave that a lot of consideration. I looked at all of the views on that and, as I said in my statement, the reforms are finely balanced because of the differing views. The commitment to annual reporting came directly out of that round of engagement with organisations, because I was being asked how we would know how many GRCs had been issued, whether there had been a spike, and what the pattern was. That was an absolutely fair point, so we agreed to put that in the annual reporting requirement.

The other area that was changed was the cost of applying. Some organisations in favour of the bill said that they thought that having a cost might be prohibitive to people, so we listened to them and we removed the cost on that basis. Those are two examples that came directly out of that round of consultation. Peter is best placed to talk about what happened before that, because obviously I was not in post then.

Application for a GRC is still a very serious step to take: it is a statutory declaration, in which the person declares that they are going to live the rest of their life in that gender. The international evidence that has emerged shows that there is no evidence of changes in laws being misused by what you described as “bad-faith actors”. The evidence of the Scottish Human Rights Commission is very strong on that: it could find no evidence of the misuse of the process.

There are quite hefty penalties for misuse. As I set out in my opening remarks, someone who makes a false declaration will feel the full force of the law.

The equalities impact assessment sets out all the organisations that were met and all the evidence that was looked at. As I said earlier, we have reflected on that evidence. After I had come into post and had the meetings and looked at the evidence, I had some key decisions to make, one of which was on age. I looked at that issue in a lot of detail, and on the basis of the evidence on things such as the age of legal responsibility in Scotland and the evidence that was given by young trans people in particular, I found that 16 was the appropriate age. The areas of annual reporting and costs were also raised during those discussions.

The central premise of the bill has remained the same, and that is that we do not believe in the medical model. The bill uses a simplified, demedicalised model of statutory declaration, and that is very similar to the model that has been taken forward in other countries. We have not moved from that central premise of the bill, but we have listened to evidence that has been set out in relation to areas such as age, cost and reporting.

As I alluded to earlier, this was probably the area to which I gave most consideration. Clearly, moving away from the current age of 18 for the process to 16 is a significant step, so we looked at international comparisons. In some cases, the age is 16 and in others, 18; in some cases where the age is 16, additional measures are required for 16 and 17-year-olds, while others do not require such measures. We had a range of international examples to look at.

We then brought it back to two other considerations, the first of which was the Scottish legal context. In other words, what have we done in Scotland with regard to other legal responsibilities? In that respect, the Age of Legal Capacity (Scotland) Act 1991 was really important, because it gives legal capacity to 16 and 17-year-olds to enter into any transaction having legal effect. That was, for me, quite an important area of the law, in that it fits in quite well with the ability to make this kind of statutory declaration.

The other consideration was the evidence of young trans people themselves, who were saying that, at 16 and 17, they were at a pivotal point in their lives. After all, they were about to enter college, university or the world of work; they wanted to be able to do that in a way that aligned with how they were living their lives, and they wanted their documentation all aligned instead of differing. I thought that that argument was quite powerful.

Taken in the round, that was why I made that decision.