The Equality Bill has now passed to the House of Lords for their consideration. There are several issues that affect gender variant people that many of us have campaigned on, but only two that have had amendments tabled, both by the Liberal Democrats. Unfortunately neither of these amendments were discussed in the Commons.

The amendments tabled by the Liberal Democrats covered:

• The widening of the definition for protection in the bill to allow all gender variant people to be covered, and not just those currently covered under a Gender Re-assignment clause. The amendment asks for this to be changed from "Gender Re-assignment" to cover "Gender Identity". This would give us all more protection. Some MPs see this as essential, but most do not understand that "transgender" is different from "transsexual". Also
• To give protection under harassment for gender variant children at school. Currently the government does not see this as necessary stating that direct discrimination is enough and that gender variant children would never be harassed.

We still need to lobby our MPs, and we need people to be willing to do that. To that end a group of trans lobbyists have come together and have been working on the idea of providing some template letters. These have the bones of what could be used to write to your MPs. You can use those to add your own thoughts, or examples, or just the top and bottom bits to personalise it.

To find out more information, to grab the templates and be involved with lobbying your MP please click here.

If you are on Facebook there is a group linked to this too - click here.

If you can email and possibly follow up with a letter to your MP then please do this. Become involved in what are important issues that affect you and others. We are thinking of other ways in which to put our message across to members of the House of Lords.