Recommendation 29

We welcome confirmation from the Department of Health and Social Care that the LGBT Action Plan is considered a point of reference for the Department. However, we are concerned that the Government Equalities Office appears to have abandoned it. This demonstrates how disjointed the Governments approach to LGBT+ issues is. It is also concerning that the GEO is ignoring the valuable experiences and concerns of LGBT+ people across the UK. The Government’s own LGBT Advisory Panel made it clear that the commitments in the LGBT Action Plan should continue to be implemented, before it was disbanded. The Government should commit at the earliest possible opportunity to continuing the implementation of the LGBT Action Plan across all departments. It should also reinstate its LGBT Advisory Panel, to demonstrate willingness to implement the actions outlined in the Plan - driven by 78 Reform of the Gender Recognition Act the data from the National LGBT Survey. We call on the Government to write to this Committee outlining the next steps in this work and providing a timetable by which they hope to achieve it. (Paragraph 221) Non-binary Gender Recognition