Baroness Barker (LD)

My Lords, this Statement takes place in the context of a relentless campaign against trans people that started among right-wing politicians in the United States of America but has been seized on here: the bandwagon has been jumped upon by politicians in this country. That is the context. We on these Benches have a policy towards trans people that is based on our belief that trans people not only exist but have a right to exist, and they have a right to exist with the same dignity as the rest of us—and part of that is having access to appropriate healthcare. I ask the Government, as, I hope, they seek to defend this test against the kind of political campaigning that we have just heard, to bear in mind that the use of puberty inhibitors is not the harmful intervention that has just been characterised. It is a safe medical intervention that has been used for different conditions since the 1980s, and there is already a lot of data on it. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Cass, identified in her review, an absence or at least an insufficiency of data about the use of inhibitors in relation to people who have gender dysphoria. That is why this trial, consisting of 226 people, in a highly regulated period of group activity, has been allowed to go ahead in order to generate the data that she says we need. It is true that last week the independent MHRA approved an update to the basis on which the trial is going to happen, in order to make sure that the safeguards were increased. It is not unusual for that to happen in a medical trial. It is not unusual for trials to stop and take note of what has happened initially and then for revisions to be made to the basis on which they are run. We on these Benches believe very strongly that medical treatment should be based on science and evidence, not on belief and ideology. This trial has been under sustained attack from political organisations such as Sex Matters which do not believe that trans people should exist or should exist with the dignities that they currently do. This trial is currently the only legal route for anybody to access puberty blockers, so in the interests not just of accurate scientific evidence but of children who need this treatment, will the Minister ensure that the people who have undertaken this research are protected from the relentless political attacks against trans people?