Non-binary gender is a fact of life. Not everyone feels comfortable identifying as male or female, and to force these definitions on people is simply factually incorrect as well as being a serious day-to-day problem for non-binary people. This is, moreover, an extremely easy problem to fix in the critical case of passports, as outlined in Lib Dem MP Julian Huppert's early day motion this year. As the motion states, "the International Civil Aviation Organisation's Document 9303 already contains X (unspecified) as a permitted character". Allowing people in Britain to use the "X" character rather than the current "M" or "F" allows people to not specify their gender identity on their passport, finally legally recognising that not everyone can be constrained into two simplistic categories. Australia and New Zealand are already using this system, and it is already in place in international law and accepted worldwide by passport machines including our own, making it very easy to implement.



This measure would, in short, go a long way to ameliorating the continued legal suppression of non-binary gender identities and make a very real and positive difference to those whose lives it would affect with minimal cost to anyone at all. It is a fundamentally liberal policy, it addresses a major issue that has a huge effect on people's lives, and it is long past time that this policy was adopted by the Liberal Democrat party and by others.