As Lady Simon was
assigned male at birth, later
coming out as a
transgender woman in 2015, she inherited the
Simon barony of Wythenshawe in 2002 after the death of her father, which only passes to the heirs male of the body of the first Baron. Her claim to the peerage was approved by the
Lord Chancellor,
Dominic Raab, in 2022 after she had changed her gender identity. According to the
Gender Recognition Act 2004, a person changing gender does not affect the descent of any peerage or dignity or title of honour. In 2022, she successfully applied to be added to the "Register of Hereditary Peers", the list of "eligible hereditary peers who have indicated their wish to stand in by-elections for the House". The
Daily Telegraph suggested she could stand in the by-election for the
House of Lords in 2023 to replace
Lucius Cary, 15th Viscount Falkland, but she did not do so. (Cary had been elected to the House as a Liberal Democrat in 1999, but switched to Crossbencher in 2011. By convention, he would be replaced by a Liberal Democrat, but peers from any party were allowed to stand for the by-election.) Had she succeeded Lord Falkland, she would have been the first transgender woman to join the House of Lords as one of the ninety-two hereditary peers. She would have become the first woman with a hereditary peerage to sit in the House of Lords since the retirement of
Margaret of Mar, 31st Countess of Mar and the second transgender person in
Parliament, after
Katie Wallis. Most British peerages (including the Simon barony) can only be inherited by men under the system of
agnatic primogeniture. No female hereditary peers have entered the House of Lords through the by-election process yet, Conservative politician
Anne Jenkin, Baroness Jenkin of Kennington, and
Charlotte Carew Pole both called into question the validity of Lady Simon's peerage, it would have passed to a male-line cousin of Margaret and Matilda instead. == References ==