Lottie Moore

Who’s running the show on trans and gender? Elected ministers? Or an activist civil service? A publication put out by the Department for Education (DfE) – Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) – suggests it may be the latter. Schools and colleges rely on this document to keep children safe. But, while the 2023 version contains a few updates, there are none regarding the safeguarding issue everyone has been talking about: children who want to change their gender. So why has the department chosen to turn a blind eye to the concerned parents, teachers and schools desperate for guidance?  Education Secretary Gillian Keegan must answer some difficult questions. Why did she sign off on this guidance? What was in the submission presented to her?

Advertising and promoting conversion ‘therapy’ to under 18s could soon be banned if a group of MPs get their way. Alicia Kearns, the Tory MP and leader of the Foreign Affairs committee, has laid an amendment to the Online Safety Bill which says ‘content which advertises or promotes the practice of so-called conversion practices of LGBTQ+ individuals must be considered as harmful'.  This amendment will have consequences that go far beyond its noble aim, with serious and dangerous results What’s wrong with that? On the surface, the amendment sounds both innocuous and sensible. Of course, we would hope and expect that all MPs would be against persecution.