Josh Newbury

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Mundell. At the outset, I want to acknowledge the strength of feeling on all sides of this debate, and our responsibility in this House to provide clarity that is grounded in evidence and centred on the wellbeing of the young people we are talking about. The petition calls for the cancellation of the planned clinical trial of puberty-suppressing hormones, describing them as unsafe and inconsistent with safeguarding. However, the reality is that Dr Cass was clear in her review that we are lacking evidence, and that one of the scenarios where she believed that puberty blockers should be prescribed for gender incongruence is a clinical trial. A trial is a response to uncertainty, focused on ensuring that clinical decisions are made on a foundation of robust evidence. I find it a little more than ironic that, when the Cass review was published, many of the voices now telling us that a trial should not go ahead were saying that the Cass review should be accepted and implemented in full. They have gone from saying, “We need the evidence,” to, “This trial should be stopped.” If someone can show me another way of properly gathering clinical evidence other than a full clinical trial, then I am all ears, but, in reality, we are talking about shutting down options for trans people. With waiting times for a first appointment for a gender identity service currently standing, in many cases, at more than five years, it is not as if there are copious alternatives out there for this group of young people. Many are waiting the entirety of their adolescence just to start treatment. Would we tolerate that for any other group of patients? I doubt it.