BACKBENCH BUSINESS

Debate between Tim Loughton and Miriam Cates

Thursday 30th June 2022 Westminster Hall

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I have heard evidence from the Bayswater Support Group as well. Parents who had questioned children who came home from school after the school had supported their wanting to transition were contacted by social services because that could be construed in some way as harm towards the child, which is frightening given that they still have parental responsibility.

My hon. Friend mentioned physical aspects. Is there not also a mental health aspect? Teenagers and young children have so much to cope with these days—much more so than when we were going through puberty and growing up. They have all the pressures of social media. Almost to be forced to question their sex—if they do not, there is something wrong with them—puts extraordinary pressures on children, adding to all that they have to go through as teenagers already.

[Miriam Cates]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It does nothing but add to the anxiety and difficulty that many teenagers already face. That is why it is more important than ever that parents and schools tell children the truth about sex and relationships and gender.

When we think about the vulnerability of children with autism or same-sex attracted children to some of these ideas, we can look at resources from the Chameleon sex education group, which tells Tom’s testimony. Tom, a female, says:

“I guess I always felt different. Even on my first day of school I remember not feeling like other kids...I didn’t realise at the time it was because of my gender identity.”

When autistic and vulnerable children who are already struggling to fit in and feel accepted are presented with an explanation for their difficulties, it is not surprising that they are attracted to it.

Katie Alcock, senior lecturer in developmental psychology at the University of Lancaster, told me that children with autism right through the primary and secondary years struggle with the idea that other people think differently to them, and that something can have an underlying essence that is different to its reality. So teaching autistic children that their feelings of awkwardness might stem from being born in the wrong body is a failure of safeguarding.

In fact, children who tell a teacher at school that they are suffering from gender distress are then often excluded from normal safeguarding procedures. Instead of involving parents and considering wider causes for what the child is feeling and the best course of action, some schools actively hide the information from parents, secretly changing a child’s name and pronouns in school, but using birth names and pronouns in communications with parents.

One parent of a 15-year-old with a diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome said she discovered that without her knowledge, her daughter’s school had started the process of socially transitioning her child, and has continued to do so despite the mother’s objections. Another mother said:

“It’s all happened very quickly and very unexpectedly after teaching at school during year seven and eight. As far as I can understand the children were encouraged to question the boundaries of their sexual identity as well as their gender identity. Her friendship group of eight girls all adopted some form of LGBTQ identity—either sexual identity or gender identity. My daughter’s mental health has deteriorated so quickly, to the point of self harm and some of the blame is put on me for not being encouraging enough of my daughter’s desire to flatten her breasts and for puberty blockers.”

As my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) said, some parents have been referred to social services when they have questioned the wisdom of treating their son as a girl or their daughter as a boy.

Socially transitioning a child—changing their name and pronouns, and treating them in public as a member of the opposite sex—is not a neutral act. In her interim report on gender services for children, paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass remarks that although social transition

“may not be thought of as an intervention or treatment,”

it is

“an active intervention because it may have significant effects on a child or young person’s psychological functioning.”

The majority of adolescents who suffer from gender dysphoria grow out of it, but instead of safeguarding vulnerable children, schools are actively leading children down a path of transition. If a child presented with anorexia and a teacher’s response was to hide that from parents, celebrate the body dysmorphia and encourage the child to stop eating, that would be a gross safeguarding failure. For a non-medical professional to make a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, exclude the child’s parents and encourage the child to transition is just such a failure.

In some schools, children are not only taught about the concept of gender theory but signposted to information about physical interventions. Last year, sixth-formers at a grammar school sent a newsletter to girls as young as 11, detailing how to bind their breasts to “look more masculine” and outlining how surgery can remove tissue if it hurts too much. Also, schools have played a major role in referrals to gender identity clinics, where children are sometimes set on a path to medical and surgical transition.

I was really pleased to see the Health Secretary announce today that he is commissioning a more robust study of whether treatment at such clinics improves children’s lives or leads to later problems or regret, because schools may think that they are being kind, but the consequences of full transition—permanent infertility, loss of sexual function and lifelong health problems—are devastating, as has become clear following the case of Keira Bell.

Anyone hearing for the first time what is going on in schools might reasonably ask, “How can this be allowed?” The answer is that it is not allowed. DFE guidance tells schools:

“Resources used in teaching about this topic must always be age-appropriate and evidence-based. Materials which suggest that non-conformity to gender stereotypes should be seen as synonymous with having a different gender identity should not be used and you should not work with external agencies or organisations that produce such material.”

However, many teachers just do not have the time to look into the background of every group that provides sex education resources, and when faced with teaching such difficult and sensitive topics, they understandably reach for ready-made materials, without investigating their source.

Furthermore, those teachers who are aware of the harms are sometimes afraid to share their concerns. A lot of teachers have written to me about this situation, with one writing:

“I left my job in a Primary School after we were asked to be complicit in the ‘social transitioning’ of a 7 year old boy. This was after Gendered Intelligence came into the school and delivered training.”

Relationship and sex education in this country has become a wild west. Anyone can set themselves up as a sex education provider and offer resources and advice to schools. Imagine if someone with no qualifications could set themselves up as a geography resource provider, insert their own political beliefs on to a map of the world—perhaps they would put Ukraine inside the Russian border—and then sell those materials for use in schools. I do not believe that some of these sex education groups should have any place in our educational system.

Indeed, the guidance says that schools should exercise extreme caution when working with external agencies:

“Schools should not under any circumstances work with external agencies that take or promote extreme political positions or use materials produced by such agencies.”

Yet all the organisations that I have mentioned today, and many others, fall foul of the guidance. What is more, the Government are actually funding some of these organisations with taxpayers’ money. For example, The Proud Trust received money from the tampon tax, and EqualiTeach and Diversity Role Models have received money from the DFE as part of anti-bullying schemes. We have created the perfect conditions for a safeguarding disaster, whereby anyone can set up as an RSE provider and be given access to children, either through lesson materials or through direct access to classrooms.

Yet parents—those who love a child most and who are most invested in their welfare—are being cut out. In many cases, parents are refused access to the teaching materials being used by their children in school. This was highlighted by the case of Clare Page, which was reported at the weekend. She complained about sex education lessons that were being taught in her child’s school by an organisation called the School of Sexuality Education. Until this year, that organisation’s website linked to a commercial website that promoted pornography. Mrs Page’s daughter’s school refused to allow the family to have a copy of the material provided in lessons, saying it was commercially sensitive.

Schools are in loco parentis. Their authority to teach children comes not from the state and not from the teaching unions, but from parents. Parents should have full access to the RSE materials being used by their children. We have created this safeguarding disaster and we will have to find the courage to deal with it for the sake of our children.