A former married man now living as a woman today failed in a High Court bid to amend her birth certificate to reflect her change of sexual identity.

A judge told Paula Wilhemina Ryder, 53, that the law currently did not allow such an amendment.

But Mr Justice Lightman, sitting in London, offered Ms Ryder some hope when he added: ''It is perhaps possible that the law might one day develop so far as to recognise as a human right the entitlement on the part of transsexuals to the issue of an identity card which records the current as opposed to historic sex of the holder.''

It was also possible that Parliament might alter the law ''so as to permit the (birth) register to be amended to record a subsequent change of sex''.

Ms Ryder, from Henknowle, Bishop Auckland, County Durham, had asked for permission to seek judicial review of the Registrar General's refusal to allow any alteration to her birth certificate.

She wanted either to be described on her certificate as female after undergoing gender reassignment surgery, or at least to have some marginal note added to the certificate reflecting the fact that she was living as a woman.

Rejecting her application, the judge upheld the Registrar's argument that her case was unarguable because ''the register of births is a historical register of fact''.

The judge said there was also a House of Lords ruling last year in the case of Bellinger v Bellinger which was binding on all courts and stated that ''sex is determined at birth and cannot subsequently be altered by any such operation as was undergone by the claimant''.

He added: ''Unless and until the House of Lords state the law to be otherwise, in my view permission to apply for judicial review in a case such as the present must likewise be refused ...''