The Earl of Erroll (CB)

My Lords, I would like to say a few things about this. The first is that Amendment 5, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, is very sensible; sometimes the GDPR has gone too far in trying to block what you can use things for. It was originally thought of when so much spamming was going on, with people gathering data from adverts and all sorts of other things and then misusing it for other purposes. People got fed up with the level of spam. This is not about that sort of thing; it is about having useful data that would help people in the future, and which they would not mind being used for other purposes. As long as it is done properly and seriously, and not for marketing, advertising and all those other things, and for something which is useful to people, I cannot see what the problem is. An overzealous use of GDPR, which has happened from time to time, has made it very difficult to use something perfectly sensible, which people would not mind having other people know about when it is being useful. The next matter is sex, which is an interesting issue. The noble Lord is absolutely correct that biological or genetic sex is vital when applying medicines and various other things. You have to know that you are administering certain drugs properly. As we get more and more new drugs coming on, it will matter how a person’s body will react to them, which will depend on the genetic material, effectively. Therefore, it is essential to know what the biological sex is. The answer is that we need another category—probably “current gender”—alongside “sex at birth”. Someone can then decide to use “current gender” for certain purposes, including for such things as passports and driving licences, where people do not want to be asked questions—“Oh, do you mean you’re not?”—because they look completely different. I remember meeting April Ashley in her restaurant. I would not, in my innocence—I was quite young—have guessed that she was not a woman, except that someone said that her hands were very big. It never worried us in those days. I am not worried about people using a different gender, but the basic underlying truth is essential. It comes into the issue of sport. If you have grown up and developed physically as a biological male, your bone structure and strength are likely to be different from that of a female. There are huge issues with that, and we need to know both; people can decide which to use at certain points. Having both would give you the flexibility to do that. That also applies to Amendment 200, from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, which is exactly the same concept. I thoroughly agree with those amendments and think we should push them forward.