Hundreds of thousands of pounds have been given by the Scottish government, the NHS and local councils to a charity which helps trans women – i.e. biological men – try to give human milk to their babies. As the Times reported this week, the charity provides a space for people ‘breastfeeding, chestfeeding or giving human milk to their baby in any amount… no matter what your feeding journey looks like.’ Its ‘Queer Milk’ initiative involves weekly sessions in Edinburgh which are apparently open to biological men that identify as women – people who are, of course, unable to lactate naturally.
Of all the charities it could be supporting, why has the state decided that it is outfits like this one that deserve taxpayer funding?
Supporters claim ‘chestfeeding’ is safe and can mirror the benefits of natural breastfeeding done by women, though there is scant evidence of this. And while I am unqualified to opine on the safety in medical terms of feeding babies hormone-induced secretions, we should surely be alive to the risks here that this may be more about gratifying adults’ perverse desires than the good of the children.
Susan Smith, a director of For Women Scotland, spoke for most sane people when she said: ‘Defenceless and innocent babies are not props to be used to affirm delusional men, and the fact that public money is being used to promote the notion that they are is nauseating.’
How has it come to this? Of course we know how deeply trans delusions have infiltrated the healthcare profession and bureaucracy. In 2024, the University of Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust, provoked outrage when it said that breast milk produced by transwomen was ‘comparable’ to milk produced by nursing mothers.
But of all the charities it could be supporting, why has the state decided that it is outfits like this one that deserve taxpayer funding? The charity behind the initiative, LGBT Health and Wellbeing, had a reported income of £1.15 million in 2024-25, of which only around £38,000 came from individual donations. The rest was provided by the likes of the Scottish government, NHS Lothian, Glasgow’s Health and Social and Social Care Partnership and the National Lottery Community Fund. The overwhelming majority of its funding went on salaries for its 26 or so staff.
And while the Scottish government says it did not provide funding for ‘lactation services’ the point is it gave public money to a charity engaged in what is, to put it extremely mildly, highly controversial practices.
Vast amounts of taxpayer money is being squandered on funding charities and arts initiatives that exist first and foremost to push their progressive causes. We have quietly built an NGO industrial complex in which taxpayers fund organisations that then lobby ministers and public bodies on their pet causes. A Cameron-era attempt to prevent taxpayer-funded grants being used to lobby government has done little to stop it.
We all know of Stonewall and the Runneymede Trust. But they are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to trans ideology and the peddlers of the theory of institutional racism, funded by a whole array of public bodies: the Arts Council, the National Lottery, local authority equality grants, universities, NHS grants and police funding. On and on it goes.
This stuff extends of course to the cultural sphere. A look at the latest list of grant funding by the Arts Council shows how rife it has become. There is, naturally, ‘Black History Month’ and the ‘Migration Matters Festival’. There was the £15,700 given to ‘The Queer Motherhood Project’, which explores the under-represented, lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ and queer mothers. Some £32,000 was given to ‘Climate Pride’ which bemoans that ‘climate activism is often explored within hetronormative worlds’ so is determined to explore ‘the impact of climate changes on queer communities’. Let us not forget the £47,820 given to ‘Azaadi… A Journey To Freedom’, an undertaking exploring themes of ‘identity, healing, and belonging’ which are – from my research – the three words most likely to have the Arts Council drooling at the mouth. That particular proposal was handily earmarked ‘Phase 1’ in its grant application, ensuring plenty more opportunities to have one’s snout in the trough. As for the £31,200 given to ‘Where Are the Trans Artists?’, well, I can’t say I was wondering the same.
This is a tiny sample of innumerable such projects, totalling tens of millions of pounds. We are justified in asking why the grant givers are so hellbent on rewarding these identity performances rather than concentrating on artistic merit. But we must also ask why the state now increasingly funds charities, organisations and individuals whose primary purpose seems to be not art or culture at all but social and political advocacy. Indeed, the Arts Council appears to go out of its way to find the most ideological initiatives it can, exerting a corrupting influence in even the most time-honoured organisations. As Cornelia van der Poll, Chairman of the campaign group Restore Trust, pointed out to me, the National Trust’s Colonial Countryside Project was partly paid for by the Arts Council.
Responding to a question in Parliament earlier this year on political impartiality in the arts, DCMS minister Ian Murray said ‘Arts Council England (ACE) makes decisions about which organisations and projects to fund independently of government and ministers, which means there is no question of any political involvement in arts funding decisions.’ But it is precisely that false assertion that has caused the problem. The long march through our institutions has been an intensely political act, enabled because we have maintained the fiction that independence from party politics insulates an organisation from political bias. We have seen the same in the civil service and BBC.
The principle at stake here is taxpayer neutrality. We can be a pluralistic society with free artistic expression without the state routinely – and very generously – financing organisations engaged in advancing contested ideological positions: on gender identity, race, climate or any other issue. This has been going on for far too long. It must end.
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