A majority of organisations responding to the consultation, which ran from December 2019 to March 2020, broadly supported changing to a statutory declaration-based system, according to the government’s analysis.

The shared policy programme agreed by the SNP and Scottish Green Party last week includes a commitment to “reform the Gender Recognition Act in a bill introduced in the first year of this parliamentary session”.

The promised bill will “ensure the process by which a trans person can obtain legal recognition is simplified, reducing the trauma associated with that process”.

The gender recognition process for transgender people is currently underpinned by the Gender Recognition Act 2004, which was introduced on the foot of the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Goodwin v United Kingdom.

The process under the 2004 Act requires applicants to submit a detailed medical report and evidence that they have been living in their “acquired gender” for at least two years to a gender recognition panel.

It has been criticised by LGBT+ organisations on the basis that it is too bureaucratic and medicalised. LGBT+ charity Stonewall said in its consultation response that the process is seen as “arduous, humiliating and invasive”.

A number of European jurisdictions including Ireland, Denmark and Norway have moved to a self-declaratory system where medical evidence is not required and the period of time applicants must have lived in their “acquired gender” is either shortened or abolished.

The Scottish government’s draft Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill would introduce a new system whereby anyone over the age of 16 could be granted legal gender recognition after living in their “acquired gender” for three months and after a three-month post-application “reflection period”.

The Law Society of Scotland, in its response to the consultation, said: “In terms of the rights of individuals around gender recognition, we believe that the law currently, and as proposed under the draft bill, meets human rights obligations.

“As jurisprudence develops across Europe, it will be important to keep issues around gender recognition under review, particularly if other jurisdictions in the UK adopt a different approach to that in Scotland.”