Rosie Duffield

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Mundell. First, I should acknowledge that, having been steeped in this issue for many years, I know James Esses, the therapist who organised this petition. He, the formidable Keira Bell and the Bayswater Support Group have managed to halt this trial, so no children are to be recruited until the High Court makes its decision, until at least July. It is clear that we are talking about an extremely vulnerable cohort of children. Recently, James told MPs and peers that, first and foremost, most of his patients—almost all of them, in fact—are autistic. As recognised by the Cass review, children or adolescents on the autism spectrum experience difficulties with social belonging and can be particularly sensitive to seeking affirmation from others. James explained to us that many of his patients rely on rigid and regressive stereotypes, including the trope that a preference for activities or even friendships associated with the opposite sex must mean that they actually are that sex. That is the basic foundation for the so-called gender critical movement: a rejection of labelling, and the pigeonholing or aggressive stereotyping of what constitutes boy or girl behaviours, clothes preferences or activities. For over 20 years, medical professionals voicing their sound judgment and concern about ethics and child safeguarding at the Tavistock were ignored, their concerns buried and they themselves punished, sidelined and vilified for challenging an entirely ideological project. It is thanks to medical professionals such as Sue and Marcus Evans, Dr David Taylor, Dr David Bell and Sonia Appleby, to name just a few brave medics, and the committed reporting of journalists such as Hannah Barnes and Julie Bindel that we are having this debate today. In all the years I have been actively campaigning against the impossible notion that anyone is born in the wrong body, I have been labelled far-right, bigoted, transphobic and all kinds of other ridiculous slurs that would be unparliamentary to repeat here. We must stop this trial because of the incredibly vulnerable cohort of children as young as 12 who cannot possibly give consent.