Mother is no longer a gender-specific term that applies only to women, lawyers on behalf of the Government have said.

A barrister representing the Department of Health made the remarks at a High Court hearing over whether a transgender man can be recognised as a “father” on his child’s birth certificate.

The man, who was born a woman and is identifiable only as TT for legal reasons, became pregnant after undergoing successful fertility treatment despite already being legally recognised as a man. He has taken the General Registar and the Government to court after he was told he had to be cited as the child's mother, not father, on the birth certificate.

Earlier in the hearing, government lawyers cited confidential documents written by civil servants which suggested TT could simply be known as a “male mother”.

Echoing those documents, Ben Jaffey QC told the president of the High Court’s Family Division, Sir Andrew McFarlane, that “the status of a mother is no longer gender specific”.