Scotland gender reform bill: row intensifies as Gillian Keegan says 16 is old enough to decide

Sixteen-year-old children are capable of making a decision about changing their gender, the education secretary has said, as the row between London and Edinburgh on gender identification intensified.

Gillian Keegan said that she had left school and was working by the time she was 16 and — in her personal view — was not too young to make such a decision.

Her comments come after the UK government blocked Scottish gender recognition reforms that would make gender recognition certificates available to 16-year-olds, saying that they risked “fraudulent or bad-faith applications” from people seeking to access single-sex spaces.

Keegan also said it was a “very tricky area to get right” and not all children would be in the same position.

Rishi Sunak’s government has blocked Scottish gender recognition reforms, in a move that Nicola Sturgeon described as an attack on Scottish democracy

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Pressed on her personal view by