MPs are wrong to suggest that transgender people should no longer have to live for two years in their chosen gender being receiving legal recognition, The Christian Institute has said.

The cross-party Women and Equalities Committee said this week that the two-year period should be scrapped because there is "no clear, accepted or agreed definition of what living like a man or a woman is".

"The requirement also risks entrenching outdated and unacceptable gender stereotypes," it added.

The committee also called for an end to the current requirement of a medical diagnosis to legally change gender.

Following a public consultation, the government said in September 2020 that both requirements would remain and that "the balance struck in this legislation is correct".

Simon Calvert, of The Christian Institute, said the committee's recommendation was "totally out of touch" and would "jeopardise the safety of vulnerable young people".

He said the two-year period was "crucial" to giving people enough time "for genuine reflection and reconsideration".

Calvert pointed to polling last week in Scotland in which nearly three quarters of the public said that people wishing to change their gender should be assessed by medical professionals. 

"The Government has already rejected calls for self-ID, and the public is increasingly against it.  Polling last week in Scotland probably reflects the position across the UK as a whole," he said. 

He added that gender self-identification was "a danger to women", as shown by a recent case in which a physically male prisoner who identified as female sexually assaulted two inmates after being placed in a women's prison.

"It inevitably undermines female-only spaces," he said.