Chamber and committees

The minister has just set out that the CMO will seek to provide a written statement to the Parliament on the progress that is being made, but I ask the Government to consider that it might be advisable for the CMO to appear in Parliament to aid that scrutiny.

Good morning, Dr Cass. I want to pick up on a couple of areas that have already been discussed. The first is about the cohort of patients. The data shows a huge and quick increase in birth-registered females, the majority of whom are same-sex attracted. That is a very different cohort from the one that was considered in the earlier studies. Also, the new cohort’s presentation is much more complex. You have suggested that care should routinely include, for instance, screening for neurodevelopmental conditions. Will you tell us a little bit more about the change in the cohort, the extent to which treatments had been based on the previous one, and the potential risks around that?

Thank you. I have a question on detransitioners, if I may.

Having raised the need for urgent action, I welcome the news that Petroineos has invested in and restarted the hydrocracker and that the site is turning a profit. The save Grangemouth campaign, which is headed by my Westminster colleague Kenny MacAskill, aligns itself with the results of a recent survey by Unite the union, which strongly indicates that there has been a collective failure by both Governments to support Grangemouth. What substantive commitment will the Government now make to ensure a long-term sustainable future for this core asset for Scotland’s energy industry, so that there is no cliff edge for both workers and Scotland’s energy security?

To ask the Scottish Government whether it still plans to deliver the shared policy programme contained within the Bute house agreement, in light of reports that many of its policies have been discarded. (S6O-03371)

What is the point of the current First Minister dramatically chucking the Greens out of the front door only for the next one to sneak them in round the back?

Given the importance of this issue, the public would have rightly expected the First Minister or the Cabinet Secretary for NHS Recovery, Health and Social Care to have made the statement.

On 28 March, I asked the health secretary to pause the prescribing of puberty blockers in Scotland. Now, it seems that he was unaware that clinicians at the Sandyford clinic had made the decision to stop doing so in mid-March.

When will the Government schedule a full debate on the comprehensive findings of the Cass report and its many implications for health, education and law in Scotland? From listening to the minister today, it seems as though the Government has not read or absorbed Cass’s conclusions. Is the Government really saying that it does not accept the report’s recommendations in full?

To ask the Scottish Government how many children aged 16 and under have been prescribed puberty suppressing hormones through NHS Scotland since 2014. (S6O-03286)

Following medical evidence reviews, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, France and England now sharply restrict or prohibit the use of puberty blockers for gender dysphoria. There is weak to no proof that they help, but there is much evidence of serious side effects. Puberty blockers prevent bone density development, they render children infertile and they can cause damage to the heart and severe depression. Class action lawsuits involving thousands of patients who have been damaged by puberty blockers are now under way in the US courts. What will it take for this Government to step in and protect Scotland’s children from this unethical experiment?

The Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice has described the amendment bill as simply a small technical fix to the statute book, but I completely disagree with that analysis. The bill is the Scottish Government’s very public acceptance, however grudgingly given, that its policy that trans women are women has been thoroughly defeated in Scotland’s highest court. Through a late change in the wording of the law and without any equality impact assessment, the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018 defined women entirely on the basis of self-identification. It was, we were assured, a one-time-only redefinition that would have no meaning outside the act.

However, as women’s rights campaigners predicted, that new definition was soon used as proof that self-ID was now the law in Scotland and could not be argued against. For Women Scotland, some of whom are with us in the public gallery today, brought a judicial review on that new definition of women, and the inner house of the Court of Session ruled on 18 February 2022 that it was unlawful. The short bill that we are discussing today removes that definition from the legislation. Whether the new definition will have to be changed again—in support of For Women Scotland’s belief, and mine, that, for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010, women should be defined entirely on the basis of biological sex—will now be decided at the Supreme Court.

What is already clear today is that the Scottish Government’s policy that all men who identify as women should be treated as women is, in fact, unlawful. In fact, self-ID has no legal standing. Trans women are not women under Scots law, so it is wholly wrong for any organisation or MSP to still rely on a definition that has now been ruled unlawful and, as can be seen today, has been accepted as such by the Scottish Government. At the very least, the Scottish Government should make sure that it does not fund organisations that are advising it incorrectly and that all processes and policies are being updated to ensure that this does not happen again. I would welcome a statement from the Government on that, especially as the Government is saying that it will introduce a bill on conversion therapy this year.

I am also wondering, as others in the chamber might be, when the Scottish Government will advise its MSPs what the law is saying in this regard. This debacle, after all, was the start of a whole suite of legislation, together with the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 and the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill, that is based, as far as I can see, on the demands of lobby groups that the Government is funding. It is entirely symptomatic of the failings of a Government that is pursuing legislation costing hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money that does not reflect the view of the public. I am sure that that money would be much better spent elsewhere. All of that has undermined trust—fatally, I think—in the Scottish Government. Most disturbingly for me as an independence supporter, it has also undermined trust in the Scottish Parliament as an institution.