Baroness Cass (CB)

My Lords, we are faced with a situation where, for 15 years, clinicians in this country have told children and young people that these medications are safe, fully reversible and indeed life-saving. Last year, they were rightly banned from clinical practice. However, the upshot is that now, of the 75 children a month who are coming to the new services, about 20% are getting these medications and, worse, testosterone and oestrogen from unlicensed and unregulated sources—and those are the ones we know about. In addition, referrals to the new services have dropped from 200 a month to only 30 a month, so we think that a large number of those young people are also being harmed through those mechanisms. We are concerned about this much broader harm; children are voting with their feet now. Does the Minister agree with me that, for the very tiny number of young people who clinicians believe will ultimately have a long-standing gender incongruence and will therefore be eligible for this trial, it is better that they get their medication under careful clinical supervision rather than on the dark web? Secondly, does she think that this trial will be a way of attracting that broader group of young people back into the NHS who do not need medical treatment but need holistic wraparound care?