Call to allow 'dual-gender people' to keep ID cards

British citizens who wish to live as both a man and a woman should be able to keep their identity cards or be allowed two passports

With the government set to scrap the 5 billion ID cards scheme, shadow Home Office minister Meg Hillier and Labour MP Julie Hilling are arguing that transgender people will lose out because the cards allowed them to travel abroad as a different gender.

Ms Hilling said changing gender was "not something that happens overnight" and it could take years for people to decide to have a sex-change operation.

In the meantime, they should be allowed to go on holiday as the gender with which they feel most comfortable.

Ms Hilling pressed ministers to allow "dual-gender people" to have two passports.

She said: "Of course there are already single-gender people who are issued with two passports, particularly when they need to travel to countries where it's inappropriate to have the stamp in the other country. So actually physically there's a means by which there could be two passports issued."

The transgender community was a "very small group of people", she added.

Ms Hillier backed the amendment and said she was yet to be convinced there was "serious action under way to address this issue within government".

But junior Home Office minister Lynne Featherstone said that, in practice, the move would mean only transgender people would have ID cards.

"Apart from the huge cost of maintaining the ID infrastructure, whenever that card was used, the gender background of the cardholder would be immediately identifiable," she said. "It would bring (transgender people] unnecessary and potentially harming attention and focus.

"The same problem would arise if transgender people were issued with a bespoke identification document."