Kemi: Top Whitehall officials tried to stop me talking to gender clinic whistleblowers
KEMI Badenoch has claimed civil servants obstructed her attempts to speak to whistleblowers and child patients at gender identity clinic The Tavistock Centre.
The former equalities minister also insisted officials undermined her enquiries with leaks.
The NHS announced on Thursday it would shut The Tavistock Centre in north-west London after a review found it was not safe for youngsters.
The decision was in response to the interim Cass Review, which warned that medics had felt “under pressure to adopt an unquestioning affirmative approach” to gender identity.
Paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass also raised concerns about the use of puberty-blocking drugs.
But Ms Badenoch, a rising star within the Tory Party, said Whitehall “group-think” stopped action from being taken earlier.
She said the row over the NHS centre showed the need for “strengthening a civil service that is terrified of controversy”. Ms Badenoch reportedly said that when she was appointed to the equalities brief in 2020, the NHS Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust was “presented to me by government officials as a positive medical provision to support children”.
She added: “I was assured there was ‘nothing to see here’. If anything, the Tavistock was getting unfair bad press.This was despite whistleblowers, like Dr David Bell, raising concerns.”
Civil servants in Ms Badenoch’s department allegedly suggested it was “inappropriate” for her to speak to Keira Bell, a former patient who took The Tavistock Centre to court in 2020 and won her case against GIDS to stop children with gender dysphoria being prescribed the drugs.
The former minister added: “I overruled the formal advice.”
Ms Badenoch said that when she began looking at the clinic she was alarmed that “officials seemed to be consulting the same people and previous ministers had created an LGBT advisory panel that was clearly suffering from group-think”.
She said there was a “small minority of activist officials” and accused some permanent secretaries of being “too scared to challenge their staff”.
Investigators for Dr Cass are seeking to contact 9,000 people treated there as children, among them an estimated 1,000 referred for puberty blockers. Patients will be asked about their treatment and seek their consent to examine medical records – with the law amended to allow her to do so.
A group, representing about 500 parents with children treated at The Tavistock Centre, said that it is compiling a list of doctors for referral to the General Medical Council over alleged malpractice. Psychotherapist Stella O’Malley set up Genspect, an international alliance that advocates a different model from “the current ‘affirmative’ approach”.
She said parents plan to write to the Met Police asking for an investigation into how some cases were handled.
Criticisms of the clinic – to be replaced by regional centres – include that it rushed teenagers into taking puberty-blocking drugs. Dr Cass has attacked its lack of record keeping.
Whitehall officials were approached last night for comment.
AVIRULENT form of doctrinaire madness has swept through public life, destroying childhood innocence, obliterating women’s rights and undermining biological science.
The rapid advance of the transgender ideology is hailed by supporters as a triumph for tolerance but it is nothing of the sort. On the contrary, this creed resembles a dangerous cult whose warped values have been imposed on our society by a regiment of zealots using the weapons of mass intimidation and indoctrination.
But at last the forces of sanity are striking back. In recent days, the march of the extremists has been checked by a number of welcome blows.
The most important was last week’s decision by the NHS to shut the controversial Gender Identity Service at the Tavistock Clinic after an investigation by renowned paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass into claims it rushed children into life-changing treatment because of its unquestioning attachment to the fashionable trans dogma.
These accusations came from both whistleblowing staff and ex-patients alarmed at how the clinic encouraged young people, in distress about their gender identity, to go down an experimental medical pathway without proper exploration of underlying psychological issues.
ONE shocking case was that of Keira Bell, who subsequently sued the clinic, after being given puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and a double-mastectomy as part of her transition to becoming a man, a process she bitterly regrets and has tried to reverse.
Her case encapsulates the grotesque inversion of morality at the heart of the trans agenda, where bodily mutilation and the use of heavy duty drugs is celebrated as a form of individual liberation and institutional compassion. In this climate of submission to the cruel new religion, the clinic’s caseload soared from 138 referrals in 2010/11 to 5,000-plus last year.
Fortunately, the Cass review upheld deep concerns about its methods and it will no longer be able to scar more lives.
There have been other strikes against extremism, such as an industrial tribunal awarding £22,000 damages to barrister Allison Bailey, following a campaign of victimisation by her employer Garden Court Chambers because of her criticisms of the trans lobby.
Ironically, Garden Court boasts of its commitment to human rights, yet its worship of the trans gospel meant it discriminated against a black campaigner for women’s equality.
Another positive move was the decision of several sporting bodies to ban trans women from female competition due to their physical advantages. The acceptance of masculine players, no matter how far they have transition, would make a mockery of women’s sport, at a time it is enjoying new heights of popularity, as highlighted by the women’s Euros.
But despite the fightback, transgenderism still retains a stranglehold on our culture. The NHS desexes its language, using terms such as “pregnant people” in place of “expectant mothers”. Civil servants eagerly reveal their pronouns to show their membership of the cult.
Men who self-identify as women are allowed in femaleonly changing rooms, refuges, hospital wards and even prisons.And in schools, children are seen as fodder for trans brainwashing, as revealed by the growing use of drag queens to read stories or give dance instruction to primary pupils.
In a graphic indicator of this determination to corrupt even the youngest, Stonewall –
Britain’s most vociferous trans organisation – posted last week, “children as young as two can recognise their trans identity”.
This kind of perverted lunacy can be found in politics, where cowardly Labour and Lib Dem frontbenchers can no longer answer the straightforward question “What is a woman?”.
LAST year, senior Labour MP Dawn Butler even said “a child is born without sex” – a bizarre denial of scientific reality.
There is nothing progressive about this movement. In fact, it is utterly reactionary, the concept of gender reduced to an emotive, often misogynistic collection of outdated stereotypes of masculinity and femininity.
Like witch-hunters of the past rooting out heretics, the activists are not interested in debate, only in silencing opponents.
So distorted is the macho ethos of this totalitarian world, that lesbians are often labelled bigots because they don’t want to date self-identifying trans women with male organs.
This insanity must stop, otherwise much of society’s progress towards emancipation will be undone. Fortunately, a stand for civilisation has been made.
‘Like witch-hunters, trans activists are only interested in silencing opponents’