Nick Fletcher is the Conservative MP for Don Valley
The Cass Review exposed a medical scandal that has taken place within the NHS. Thousands of vulnerable young people were given puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones and helped to believe they have an ‘inner gender identity’ unrelated to their biological sex.
Treatment was experimental yet had known serious risks and side effects. Any possible benefit should have been unequivocable for such a route to be even arguably justifiable. But Hilary Cass has stated that “the reality is that we have no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender related distress.”
NHS gender clinics did nothing to rectify this lack of evidence: no good data was kept nor patient follow-up undertaken. Many vulnerable children are likely to have been irreversibly harmed. The ideology, practices, and individuals responsible for this tragedy must be removed from the NHS.
Credit is due to Sajid Javid for commissioning the Cass Review as Health Secretary. It has provided a watershed moment which will have global ramifications.
However, the truth that we now cannot ignore is that we have witnessed a ‘schools to clinic’ pipeline. Our schools, and what they have been teaching children about sex and gender, have played a role in funneling vulnerable children towards a pathway of irreversible damage. Thousands of other children have been betrayed.
Any child who an adult has taught – in a position of responsibility – that we all have ‘inner gender identities’ unrelated to our biological sex, and which should be prioritized over biological sex, has been let down. The adult role to transmit knowledge, teach truth, and safeguard the young, has been pushed aside by ideology. This must end now. The Government must act quickly and decisively.
Such has been the reach of the gender ideologues that there is not one simple ‘quick fix’. Education Ministers are well aware that action is needed. Officials have been working on solutions. Some have been long promised. But it is taking too long – we need to act now. There are five things we need to do.
Updating the 2019 Relationship, Sex, and Health Education Guidelines (RSHE) This has been the main route for gender ideology to enter the school curriculum – it requires children to be taught ‘the facts and the law’ about gender identity. Despite the reality being that there are no facts and no law about gender identity this has caused immense confusion and harm. These guidelines must be updated now to make clear that gender identity must be taught in schools, only, if at all, as unevidenced and unscientific ideology – and one that can and does cause immense harms.
End the involvement of Stonewall and other gender activist organisations The Department for Education still points schools to Stonewall in its RSHE guidance. This must stop. Stonewall operates a Schools Champions scheme which gives them a wider remit to provide ideological advice to schools. Many other activist groups have spotted an opportunity to make money and promote ideology – and are routinely invited into schools to do so. The Secretary of State for Education should write to all schools with a list of gender activist groups and individuals who should not be used within schools henceforth, including Stonewall.
Improve statutory safeguarding regulations – Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) Stonewall has been open about how it worked with the Department for Education to remove a transgender identity in a child from being a safeguarding concern. This was via the insertion of Clauses 203 – 205 into the statutory guidance. But a transgender identity can be the result of and/or an indicator for harm.
It can indicate bullying or abuse. It can be a signifier that other safeguarding risks are present such as unsupervised online activity, online grooming into a trans-identity, breast-binding, or the use of unregulated medication. The above clauses must now be removed from KCSIE as a matter of urgency.
Put Gender Questioning Children Guidance (GQC)on a statutory basis The current draft guidance allows for some ‘social transitioning’ in schools. Yet we know that ‘inner gender identity’ is an idea not backed by science or evidence. Young people are being influenced by activists and social media. It is the most vulnerable of our young people who are most likely to fix on the idea. Social media influencers promise vulnerable young people ‘friends’ and ‘community’, ‘joy’, and ‘euphoria’.
But social transition sets vulnerable young people on a pathway to irreversible damage. Surely our shared responsibility to safeguard the young requires the government to place a blanket ban on any formal recognition of ‘social transition’ in schools – and the GQC guidance must become statutory.
Allow parents to view the material taught in – and remove their children from – RSHE Parents currently have a right to withdraw their children from sex education taught in schools as part of RSHE. Gender ideology has been taught to children as part of ‘relationships’ or ‘health’ education. Lesson resources have been provided that teach primary school children that ‘everyone has a gender identity’, that it is ‘an option’ to stop your puberty, and that children can have any of a long list of possible ‘gender identities’.
Plenty of providers also convey messages about relationships and sexual health that would appall many parents. To protect children, we must allow parents to view all RSHE materials and then to withdraw their children from RSHE if it is not right for their families. This will incentivise schools to think much more carefully about what they teach children in this area and who they engage to teach it.
This is quite a list of required actions. However, we are at a crossroads. Do we want to recommit to properly safeguarding our children; and to grounding our education system in science, reason, the transmission of knowledge, and the pursuit of truth? Or do we want to hand our children and the future of our country to the ideologues.
I know the path that I prefer – and it is one I am sure many parents will also choose. But it requires us to act decisively now.
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Author: Nick Fletcher MP
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