Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)

My Lords, I commend the Secretary of State—and, indeed, the Minister. I commend the Secretary of State for his very clear Statement and for his courage, because he has had to stand his ground. He kept his cool, despite receiving unpleasant smears and abuse not only online, but even, to a certain extent, from the Back Benches in the other place. I am slightly confused about something. I think we can see now that puberty blockers are a medicalised euphemism for chemical castration. The same kinds of drugs, when given to Alan Turing, were used as punishment for being gay. I am still not convinced, and do not really understand why the Government still think it is appropriate to conduct a clinical trial on children with these drugs. The Minister emphasised “uncapped” as though that was positive, whereas I thought that was scary. As this medical scandal unravels, more and more young people are de-transitioning, but the NHS has no services to deal with this. I wonder whether the Minister would agree, perhaps, to meet some of the charities that are doing this kind of thing—there is Genspect’s Beyond Trans and its special service providers —just to discuss what the NHS might need to look at, moving forward in a different way.