Cass Review

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

Monday 15th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dame Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

The report is very welcome, but it has been a long time coming. One issue I would like to put to my right hon. Friend is the whole failure of governance that it shows. In particular, NHS England’s specialist commissioning requires challenge. As she explained, what was initially commissioned as a treatment course for a small minority of people has been allowed to expand unchecked and without any consideration of the ethics of what was being done to children. What will she do to ensure that does not happen again? Secondly, the Tavistock clearly enjoyed the popularity brought by being at the front end of what was seen as a set of cutting-edge treatments. Frankly, the governors allowed that to get in the way of what they should have been doing: ensuring patient safety. What does she propose to do about that as well?

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank my hon. Friend, who in her parliamentary career has done so much to shine a light on this sort of behaviour. She has espoused worries, both publicly and privately, about the children and young people at the heart of this matter. Looking to the future, the Tavistock clinic has shut. As I said, it stopped admitting patients a year ago. The new services that are already in place—the two new hubs, with plans to expand further across the country—are about ensuring a multidisciplinary approach to young people, so that, with exactly the experiences Dr Cass sets outs so starkly in her report, children are treated as human beings and patients, not as siloed conditions. One of the main problems that emerged with the Tavistock behaviour and the way it took place is that gender questioning was siloed in a way that no other health or mental health condition was. We want to move back to a place where clinicians are no longer scared of looking after children and young people with these issues, and that they see it as part of their general practice and general work. That is how we are best going to address the very complex needs of many of these children and young people.