After the Cass Review
by Lara Brown, Artillery Row:
[…] However, simply implementing Cass’ recommendations is far too little too late. It is not enough to patch holes in a broken system after decades of failure. We need to ask the basic question: how was the situation allowed to get to this point?
Who are the activist groups who have influenced clinical services and institutional culture? Mermaids, a charity established to “support” transgender children, made referrals to Tavistock even when a child’s GP refused. Stonewall, a pro LGBT+ pressure group, has been repeatedly involved in controversies over its position on transgender issues. Despite this record, they have been allowed to help draw up gender policies for thirty NHS trusts. Previous Health ministers have warned against Stonewall’s influence, but they have not been able to prevent it. This begs the question as to whether current ministerial powers are sufficient to ensure there is wholesale implementation of these measures — something that Streeting queried in a recent interview. This is vital to ensuring a genuinely national approach for matters such as these.
In the past, the NHS has commissioned a “rainbow badge” scheme in partnership with the LGBT Foundation and Stonewall. The scheme warned doctors not to use “gendered language” like “woman” or “mother”. Activist influence led doctors to fear they might be branded “transphobic” for speaking out against harmful gender ideology and child transition, deterring whistle-blowers from raising the alarm about the state of gender services. Ministers must intervene to ensure Stonewall’s pernicious presence is rooted out of public life. Opposition parties too: has Labour done a full audit of what it means to be a “proud member of the Stonewall Diversity Champions Programme”?
Similarly, Dr Cass makes it clear in her report that NHS clinicians were profoundly confused by the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH). They were convinced by WPATH guidelines of a clinical consensus in favour of youth transition and medical intervention when this simply isn’t true.
The scale of WPATH’s influence is clear. NHS guides for GPs and other healthcare staff have been “informed by the seventh edition of the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) Standards of Care”; documents from the Tavistock clinic stated doctors will follow a “modified version of the WPATH Standards of Care v7”; and two NHS Foundation Trusts link healthcare professionals to the current version of WPATH Standards of Care. An activist, not-for-profit organisation continues to steer NHS policy with impact upon clinical service delivery on the basis of ideology.
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