The battle over gender ideology is only just beginning, Kemi Badenoch has warned as she calls for “more bravery and less cancel culture” in the wake of a landmark review of child gender services.
In her first public intervention since the publication of Dr Hilary Cass’s report, the business secretary calls for a review into public bodies and their policies on transgender issues.
She also launches an extraordinary broadside against politicians of every stripe, the police, the media, the NHS and universities. She says the “cowardice of those in positions of influence” was “worse than the ravings of the militants”.
Badenoch’s comments will be welcomed by right-wing Tory MPs but seen by critics as seeking to reignite the so-called culture wars that have dominated British politics since the last election.
Cass found that children experiencing gender distress and wanting to transition had been let down by a lack of research and “remarkably weak” evidence on medical interventions such as puberty blockers.
Advertisement
Badenoch, who is also minister for women and equalities, claimed the recommendations could not be fully delivered until the government addressed the “underlying problem” of “ideological capture” in British institutions. Cass called for more NHS research into young people seeking help over their gender, different approaches to care depending on a child’s age and a more cautious attitude to social transitioning.
Related developments:
• Cass reveals today that she stayed off social media and her team had to screen her emails to shield her from “toxic” abuse.
• She warns of “dangerous” influences online trying to convince children they were transgender.
• Women in Brighton have protested against a GP they allege prescribed cross-sex hormones to 16-year-olds without their parents’ knowledge.
Writing in The Sunday Times, Badenoch, seen as a frontrunner to become the next Tory leader, says: “Over three decades, politicians of all parties have outsourced power to so-called independent institutions. They were meant to take the politics out of decision-making but have themselves become politicised, often with little to no ministerial oversight.
“They may be independent, but they are no longer impartial. As politicians ceded control, many institutions became captured by a minority of ideological activists.”
Advertisement
She adds: “At the heart of many of the review’s recommendations is a failure of institutions to self-regulate. Ministers have intervened time and again, but it is time for institutional leaders to step up and recover impartiality. It is also time for an in-depth review of decision-making across the public sector. How is it that senior leaders ignore the law and allow groups like Stonewall [an LGBT rights charity] to make up what it should be?”
The Cass review, which looked at gender identity services for under-18s, was commissioned in 2020 following a sharp increase in patients being referred to the health service who were questioning their gender.
It came after whistleblowers raised concerns about care at the gender identity and development service (Gids), the only specialist gender clinic for children and young people in England and Wales. It shut last month, four years after it was rated inadequate by inspectors, with regional hubs in London and Liverpool replacing it.
Cass, a former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, concluded there was a “lack of evidence” on the long-term impact of taking hormones from an early age and studies had been “exaggerated or misrepresented by people on all sides of the debate to support their viewpoint”.
She also said that the “toxicity” of the row over gender and trans issues had made medical professionals “afraid” to openly discuss their views.
Advertisement
The NHS has been prescribing puberty blockers since 2011, but in March it said they would no longer be available to under-16s unless they were participating in a clinical trial.
Cass has also revealed that six of the seven NHS adult gender clinics “thwarted” her report on children’s services by failing to share data on the long-term consequences of medical interventions.
The NHS has now ordered a separate independent review of services for adults amid concerns that they have been “captured by ideology”.
Adult clinics have agreed to comply, but Badenoch writes today that they too should be “held to account”.
