“If we want to stop going backwards on LGBTQIA rights, we need to tear our eyes away from the show and focus on what really matters”
BY NANCY KELLEY, IMAGE BY GETTY IMAGES
The end of a political era is always full of theatre – whether it’s the high drama of Margaret Thatcher’s resignation after a vicious Tory leadership war, or the crass humour of Liam Byrne’s letter to his successor, a letter that came to define the end of the Blair era: ‘’Dear Chief Secretary, I’m afraid to tell you there’s no money left.”
We are at the end of a political era now, and right in the middle of the show: a miserable, rain-soaked Rishi Sunak announcing the dissolution of parliament, Conservative MPs stepping back like a toppling line of dominoes, Labour ruthlessly squeezing their own left wing. Political fandom is in full swing – this is must-watch stuff.
But offstage and away from the lights the Conservative government has signed off with a policy assault on the human rights of trans people that risks damaging a whole generation of trans youth.
Two months ago, the government closed off access to puberty blockers on the NHS, setting a policy that means trans children will only get access to gender-affirming healthcare if they agree to participate in a research trial that doesn’t yet exist. Now, in the dying hours of the Sunak government Victoria Atkins has laid a temporary emergency order banning private healthcare providers from issuing new prescriptions for puberty blockers.
Labour’s Wes Streeting, likely to be the next Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, has been clear he supports restricting access to puberty blockers on the NHS and almost instantly indicated he supported the new order ending access via private healthcare providers, meaning Labour is likely to make the arrangement permanent when it comes up for renewal in three months’ time. The net result will be that accessing puberty blockers legally will become almost impossible for trans children in the UK, and families supporting their teenagers to access care abroad will be at risk of referral to Social Services or even prosecution.
In education, two policy consultations are grinding through the government machinery that could lead to a rerun of Section 28, a policy that blighted the lives of a whole generation of LGBTQIA people by prohibiting local authorities and schools from “the promotion of homosexuality”. Draft school’s guidance for “gender questioning children”, seeks to make it almost impossible for trans children to socially transition at school, stopping them from using the name and pronoun they choose, and accessing facilities where they feel comfortable and safe. The same draft guidance protects the rights of students and staff to directly express trans-hostile views: a license to bully and exclude.
Draft guidance on sex and relationships education seeks to ban all discussion of what it calls “gender ideology” in RSE lessons, meaning that like LGBQ+ children and young people of the late 80s and 90s, trans children and young people would not have the chance to learn about their own community as part of the curriculum. In fact, in its dying days, the Sunak government has even issued draft changes to statutory safeguarding guidance Keeping Children Safe In Education in an attempt to bake in these trans-hostile changes before the consultation even closes.
All of this will land in the in tray of the next Secretary of State for Education, likely to be Labour’s Bridget Phillipson. She will need to decide whether to support a new Section 28 or to stand up for the rights of trans children to attend school in safety and be able to learn. This will not be a straightforward decision, despite the fact that it absolutely should be for anyone who wants trans children to have happy childhoods.
Some of this last-minute dash to squeeze every bit of hope, support and care out of trans children’s lives is the work of politicians acting on conviction. They genuinely believe the misinformation driving our anti-trans moral panic – that being trans is a social contagion and protecting children means isolating them from contact with trans healthcare, trans people, and even information about trans lives. But much of it is the morally repugnant theatre of the culture wars, with the Conservative party banging a drum they believe motivates part of their core vote and setting a bear trap for Labour.
Because just a few months into the new Parliament, the incoming government (almost certainly a Labour one) will have to decide whether to extend the order banning private prescriptions of puberty blockers. It will have to decide whether to discard the unnecessary and harmful revision to guidance on relationships and sex education. It will have to decide whether to proceed with the school’s policy that mandates exclusion and enables bullying. For it to make the right choices – choices that respect the rights of trans children –it will have to stop sitting on the fence, stop trying to sound “centrist” and start thinking about what these policies do to the lives of a tiny and vulnerable population of children. This would require a fundamental change in approach.
All of this will happen off stage, while we are all still focusing on another theatrical end of a political era. If we want to stop going backwards on LGBTQIA rights, we need to tear our eyes away from the show and focus on what really matters.
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