Reform UK’s spokesperson for education, skills and equalities, Suella Braverman, has accused the government of putting young children at risk by allowing them access to puberty blockers.
Speaking in a video statement, Braverman said: “No child is born in the wrong body. No child can change their sex or their gender.”
Braverman was responding to the government-funded NHS Pathways Trial, which will subject 200 healthy children - some as young as 10 years old - to puberty-suppressing drugs. Concerns have been raised that the drugs will damage bone density, impair cognitive ability and lead to infertility.
Braverman described the policy as “taxpayer-funded, state-sanctioned child abuse”.
She said the country should remember “the awful history” of the Tavistock Clinic, the former NHS gender identity service for children, which became the centre of a national scandal after it emerged that thousands of children were being subjected to irreversible treatments and placed on medical pathways to gender transition.
“I’ve met some of those young people now”, Braverman said, “who regret everything that happened to them”. She added that they believed they had been “poorly advised and poorly directed” by medical professionals.
Braverman also accused ministers of hypocrisy - while the government claims under-16s are too young to use YouTube, it is allowing pre-teens to take part in a trial involving puberty blockers.
She also criticised the Conservatives, arguing that the scandal “started and got worse” under the last Tory government.
“Only a Reform UK government will protect our children”, she said. “We will bring this practice to an end.”
Speaking in a video statement, Braverman said: “No child is born in the wrong body. No child can change their sex or their gender.”
Braverman was responding to the government-funded NHS Pathways Trial, which will subject 200 healthy children - some as young as 10 years old - to puberty-suppressing drugs. Concerns have been raised that the drugs will damage bone density, impair cognitive ability and lead to infertility.
Braverman described the policy as “taxpayer-funded, state-sanctioned child abuse”.
She said the country should remember “the awful history” of the Tavistock Clinic, the former NHS gender identity service for children, which became the centre of a national scandal after it emerged that thousands of children were being subjected to irreversible treatments and placed on medical pathways to gender transition.
“I’ve met some of those young people now”, Braverman said, “who regret everything that happened to them”. She added that they believed they had been “poorly advised and poorly directed” by medical professionals.
Braverman also accused ministers of hypocrisy - while the government claims under-16s are too young to use YouTube, it is allowing pre-teens to take part in a trial involving puberty blockers.
She also criticised the Conservatives, arguing that the scandal “started and got worse” under the last Tory government.
“Only a Reform UK government will protect our children”, she said. “We will bring this practice to an end.”
