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Jo Maugham QC Profile picture
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9 Oct, 4 tweets, 2 min read
If you might allow me the analogy, having two year waiting lists before you can be assessed to see whether you should be prescribed puberty blockers is like having five month waiting lists for an abortion. It's effectively a denial of treatment.
The consequence of denying safe, properly regulated access to puberty blockers is the same as the consequence of denying safe, properly regulated access to abortion. It drives those who need that care to riskier providers and massively increases the dangers to them.
And every attempt to remove a provider from the field - @TaviAndPort and now @GenderGP - makes life more dangerous for those who need that care. It will cause - directly and indirectly - massive harm to children.
The Commissioning Agreement between NHS England and the provider (GIDS) says that "new clients will be seen within 18 weeks from the date the referral is being received" (paragraph 3.4.1) but the reality renders this a bad - indeed an unlawful - joke. dropbox.com/s/pifer7w609z1…

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More from @JolyonMaugham

Jo Maugham QC Profile picture
8 Oct
The effect of making it impossible for transgender kids to access regulated wrap-around healthcare in the UK was to drive them and their families to piece together bits and pieces of healthcare from across jurisdictions and administer it with the help of YouTube videos...
... this is plainly more dangerous for those kids and their families.

But for the hobbyists who treat the bodies of transgender kids as a battleground for their political beliefs - who think they know better than actual experts - this is not enough. They are now working to...
... disrupt that patchwork (which for many in the UK includes @GenderGP) of care.

The inevitable result of this is that transgender children and their families will access treatment (readily available throughout the liberal world with the exception of the UK) via the dark web...
Read 6 tweets
Jo Maugham QC Profile picture
6 Oct
History tells us that denying safe, properly regulated access to abortion causes women to seek out dangerous unregulated access. In the UK we effectively deny safe, properly regulated access to reversible puberty blockers. So children seek out other access which is less safe.
And it's not only that trans children's access to reversible puberty blockers carries unnecessary risk. It's also that their difficulties in accessing blockers drive some to move more quickly to Stage III (after therapy and blockers) of partially irreversible cross-sex hormones.
If you don't have reversible 'blockers' during puberty the shape and form of your body changes in ways that are both highly distressing to you and physically irreversible. So the families of trans children I speak to don't feel they have a choice about taking reversible blockers.
Read 5 tweets
Jo Maugham QC Profile picture
5 Oct
The case against the Tavistock, seeking (in effect) to deny trans kids in the UK treatment that is available throughout the rest of the developed world, will hear no submissions from trans kids. They, and charities representing them, asked to be heard but were denied all voice.
Several organisations who seek to deny them treatment will be heard. And professionals who treat them will be too. But it is profoundly shocking - redolent of men in The Handmaid's Tale deciding on women's futures - that those most affected should be shut out.
This perpetuates the increasing pattern in the UK and its transphobic media (including the Guardian and BBC) of talking about, over and at trans children, of highlighting the views of those who deny their reality, but never listening to them.

I feel deeply ashamed of my country.
Read 4 tweets
Jo Maugham QC Profile picture
28 Sep
Weird how an obviously ridiculous notion takes hold. No one encourages children into a cycle of psychological treatment then drugs and then surgery. Who chooses that for a child? I guess the myth is just easier to grapple with than the reality.
It's true there is a real increase in transgender children, which we should try to understand. And that the evidence is clear that telling those kids their feelings are wrong harms their mental health. But no parent or teacher spontaneously pushes children to change gender.
In the UK - an international outlier because we've given over health policy in the sphere to the equivalent of anti-vaxers - trans kids wait years to access even the psychological evaluation which is itself a precondition to accessing (reversible) puberty blockers.
Read 7 tweets
Jo Maugham QC Profile picture
26 Sep
Stacking key broadcasting posts - posts running organisations with a clear and important statutory/Charter mandate to secure independence - with your ideological allies to further tilt the playing field in your favour is a very Britain Trump sort of a move.
(Yes, @GoodLawProject has approached leading Counsel to see if those embedded legal obligations to ensure independence might yet disrupt Johnson's plans.)
(We're able to perform that function of trying to act as a legal watchdog, where no one else can or will, thanks to your ongoing financial support for which we are hugely grateful.)
Read 4 tweets
Jo Maugham QC Profile picture
26 Sep
A firm specialising in vitamin boosts that hired Boris Johnson's half-brother hoping he can "open doors" is holding talks with Government about Covid testing, which we know (only because of leaks) Govt plans to spend over £100bn on. mirror.co.uk/news/politics/…
We at @GoodLawProject have four judicial reviews afoot against inexplicable procurement decisions Government has made and is about to launch a further three, including one against the £100bn+ Moonshot programme. Those judicial reviews share some alarming features.
Government has failed to put any of the contracts out to open tender so we can check on how it is spending public money. It has, contrary to its own guidance, refused to publish the contracts and, contrary to the law, details of the contracts.
Read 10 tweets

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