The Minister who introduced the Gender Recognition Bill in the House of Lords in 2003 made it clear that "a transsexual person would have protection under the Sex Discrimination Act [the predecessor to the Equality Act] as a person of the acquired sex or gender." This was reflected in the Explanatory Notes to the Gender Recognition Act when it was published.

I've been reflecting some more overnight on the For Some Women Scotland case. 🧵 In this piece, which I am proud of and I stand by every word, I make two serious criticisms of the procedure that the Supreme Court adopted. goodlawproject.org/the-supreme-co…

Good Law Project holds a copy of new NHS Guidance published yesterday and it is clear that Wes Streeting is continuing his war on trans people.

Remarkably the national health service is now directing GPs to cause harm to the community. 🧵 Background: the UK is a serious international outlier in how it approaches healthcare for young trans people. All over the world Governments are declining to follow the policy based evidence making of the Cass report. I believe we now have the most hostile regime anywhere.

Since putting up this crowdfunding page, the Daily Mail has sent us, through their lawyers (RPC), two defamation threats.

A few points about them. 🧵goodlawproject.org/crowdfunder/da… One or both were marked “private and confidential - not for publication”.

We have long (👇) deplored the practice of making threats which you say are confidential to try and stop your critics from telling the world you are trying to silence them. goodlawproject.org/they-want-to-s…

Cass Review.

New article in the New England Journal of Medicine, founded in 1812 and amongst the most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals. Its 2023 impact factor was 96.2, ranking it 2nd out of 168 journals in the category "Medicine, General & Internal". I will share some extracts from it but tl;dr it is highly critical. It "transgresses medical law, policy and practice... deviates from pharmaceutical regulatory standards in the UK. And if it had been published in the United States... it would have violated federal law."

Labour caving to some of the richest people in the country - whilst raising the tax burden on employing the low paid - has been described as the "lobbying coup of the decade."

But how bad is it? 🧵 Well, we know that Labour promised to raise £565m per annum from taxing private equity properly. But, after lobbying, agreed only to raise 14% of that or £80m.

Three reasons why inheritance tax on farmland is a good thing (beyond the obvious - that it will raise money). 🧵 First, farmland being subject to inheritance tax will reduce the value it has as a token to pass wealth down tax free between generations, so that farmland is cheaper and farming more profitable.

I see my tweets about the effects of Wes Streeting's ban on puberty blockers on younger trans people have been criticised by the DHSC’s adviser on suicides. 🧵 1. What is undoubtedly true is that Victoria Atkins was warned by her own civil servants about the ban on puberty blockers posing “a high risk of self-harm and suicide” and Wes Streeting followed his predecessor in ignoring that advice.

It is a bit odd that the Covid Corruption Commissioner is missing from the King's Speech.

This (from Rachel Reeves' speech) suggests the role would require legislation... /1 And the Speech introduces another Commissioner (which will require legislation). /2

Medically, not much will change. The NHS has not prescribed PBs for years. And now families will travel abroad to collect the drugs they know their children need. Streeting can make it less safe for everyone, and impose huge sacrifices on poorer families, but he cannot stop this. Politically, I can't recall ever feeling this depressed. When the Tories did this cruel ideological act there was hope, for they would soon be out. Now Streeting is doing worse and it feels like there is none. Personally I am finding it *very* hard to assimilate this.

I have some questions for @wesstreeting. 🧵

https://twitter.com/wesstreeting/status/1812435914473295927

First, have you investigated the explosion of deaths amongst those on the NHS waiting list since NHS England introduced a softer version of the ban?

https://x.com/JolyonMaugham/status/1803729360731406489

News on Victoria Atkins' emergency puberty blockers ban. Wes Streeting's position is that, subject to the outcome of the court proceedings and consultation, he will renew it and convert it into a permanent ban. I congratulate the women in Labour's team who have, at least so far, brought thoughtfulness and sensitivity to the 'debate' about trans women. My feelings about Wes Streeting are unprintable: these measures will kill trans children.

Don't forget: how they weaponised hate, what they've done to the National Health Service, how they raised your mortgage and how they trashed the economy. Don't forget: the money they stole under cover of Covid, the Parties they held while your parents were dying, the science they ignored, the bets they placed and the Veterans they dishonoured.

Over the weekend, and into Monday, we were communicating with the Department of Health as to why, it said, we should not publish our story. We asked for and obtained further details of those reasons. 🧵

https://twitter.com/JolyonMaugham/status/1808164923874148452

We took the view, having consulted with our specialist lawyers, that its reasons as then stated did not amount to a proper basis for us not to publish. Late last night, when it shared with us details of its proposed injunction application, it significantly refined its position.

If you wanted to use the pandemic as cover for passing money to your dodgy friends and donors who didn’t actually have anything to sell you would set up procurement exactly as the Conservative Party did in the pandemic.🧵 You would identify the PPE you wanted and then, instead of buying it from the Chinese manufacturer, you would buy it from a UK intermediary. And then choose who the intermediary was.

Every mother who has sent her children to bed hungry, or victim who has watched her rapist go untried, or domestic violence victim who cannot leave because there is no emergency shelter, or mum who can't work because of childcare costs, knows exactly which party hates women. And in a couple of days, when the polls with fieldwork after JK Rowling's attacks on Labour drop, we'll know her actual impact. And it will be, despite the best efforts of our noble fourth estate, exactly none.

On Wednesday evening I spoke to a prominent journalist about a mind-blowing PPE case that will soon emerge - it looks like a small group of senior civil servants created false evidence trails to try and cover up the fact that valuable PPE contracts were diverted to Tory VIPs. Our conversation followed a meeting we had with the lawyer - in a well known firm - acting in the case. The lawyer spoke of how it had taken him a long time to believe the evidence. He had it, but it cut so violently across his own understanding of what the State in England is.

I have now seen further evidence that, since the Bell decision in the High Court (1 December 2020), there has been a huge increase in deaths of young trans people on the NHS waiting list - and that NHS management has sought to suppress that evidence.

CW: Suicide 🧵 When the High Court handed down its decision in Bell, the NHS immediately pulled down the shutters on healthcare for young trans people.

But when the Court of Appeal overturned that decision - on multiple grounds - the NHS unaccountably left those shutters in place.

This is a thread for trans families struggling to negotiate the emergency regulations introduced by Victoria Atkins on what is and isn't lawful. It draws on formal written advice from a top, specialist KC. 🧵 When Ministers make the law they do so because Parliament has given them power to do so. The power to make these regulations (2024 No. 727) is in section 62 of the Medicines Act 1968.

Lots of trans people believe that puberty blockers are a sop to a world that sees trans-ness as less desirable than cis-ness. 🧵

https://twitter.com/JolyonMaugham/status/1796480807713870062

A society that embraced the state of being trans, runs the argument, would give cross-sex hormones to those of Gillick competence earlier: no other medical treatment imposes upon those able to make informed decisions an obligation to 'think' before making choices. Why this one?

Yesterday, in an act she describes as "bold" Victoria Atkins decided to ban puberty blockers, which give young people questioning their gender identity time to think before they take partially irreversible cross-sex hormones. 🧵 The case for puberty blockers is that, in a world (and a nation) that is increasingly transphobic, they prevent the irreversible development of physical characteristics associated with the sex you were 'assigned at birth', that mean you will always find it difficult to 'pass'.