The UK Government has produced a very long briefing document on the Gender Recognition Act, the Equality Act, official guidance and the debates around gender recognition. The document was published two days ago, on the 15th of July. It seemed to give undue prominence to the views of anti-trans groups but it did accurately report the current legal protection for trans people, including children.

24 hours later, significant sections were removed.

The document was quietly replaced with an updated version with significant sections removed. Almost all of the content about trans kids, the law and their rights has been taken out. At the time of writing you can see for yourself here.

Here’s an example, from page 4 of the first version. This entire section has been removed.

Six pages have simply gone, including almost all of the content relating to schoolchildren: the explanation of how the Equality Act applies to children and to schools, the details of trans kids’ experiences of bullying and discrimination at schools, the explanation of official guidance for schools, the details about access to sports, the details of policies of devolved governments… all disappeared.

This is gone:

And so is this:

It’s hard to see any other explanation other than this: Liz Truss knows she can’t change the Equality Act to allow overt discrimination against trans children. So instead, she’s going to change the official government guidance to achieve the same result.

I don’t have words to describe my disgust.

Update: The House of Commons Library says the missing sections are being updated and that yet another version of the document will be published “early next week”. It is not clear why entire sections on sports and on bullying had to be removed in order to clarify one item and add a reference to an ongoing legal case, which are the only changes the HOCL says will be made; in the meantime MPs are not being given very relevant information in a document they do not know is incomplete.

Liz Truss’s statement on gender recognition reform, which this document is supposed to brief MPs on the background to, is scheduled for Wednesday.