That doesn’t actually help anyone when you think about it
By ‘that’ I meant the MPs not being very probing for a Select Committee. The MPs are going to have to write a report with recommendations for action based on the evidence they get. It shouldn’t be just their re-hash of a set of unevidenced assertions.
So for example when witnesses say:
‘it’s a scandal that people are waiting years and years and years for trans health care’
Why don’t the MPs say:
‘OK sorry to hear about that, could you cite some evidence of how many people are affected and typically for how long they are waiting?
How does this break down by age, sex, geographical area?
Could you elaborate on what you mean by ‘trans health care’?
What are the specific services that trans people are waiting for and unable to access?
Is there sufficient mental and physical health support for people while waiting to access these services?
How are your groups helping to support and dissuade people from self medicating unsafely (off the internet) in this waiting stage or at any other time?
Does the availability (or not) of a GRC to trans individuals in the community affect their use of health care or other relevant services?
What research is your group undertaking to find out more about the physical and mental health and the social inclusion needs of the people that your group represents?
The balance of sexes of people seeking help for gender dysphoria and presenting to NHS services seems to be predominantly female at younger ages and male at older ages- how have you reflected this disparity in your lobbying for changes in policy?
How do the policies and availability treatments that you lobby for, reflect the difference in impact of these treatments on the female and male body over time, and reflect the potential difference in their impact on future social roles that are inextricably linked to biological sex?
(such as the probably loss of female-bodied potential to conceive and sustain a pregnancy or to even to safely retain internal female reproductive organs long term if the person takes takes cross-sex hormones over a long period of time.. but also possibly increased risks of cancers for both sexes.. and so on)
How do the policies that you lobby for take account of detransitioned people?
In your view how should the GRA reflect detransitioned people’s needs?
What is the evidence that the local non-specialist GP led service model that you are lobbying for, is better for patient care and outcomes than an specialised expert multidisciplinary team GIDS approach?
What level, for example, of research participation can we expect to see via a non specialist GP-led service vs the GIDS model?
Remind me, how long is the average GP appointment? (Answer: 9 minutes.
pharmaceutical-journal.com/article/news/uk-has-shortest-gp-consultations-in-europe-study-finds)
How does this compare to the GIDs model?
And so on....
What a missed opportunity to actually get to the detail of what could improve things for children, young people and adults who are distressed about gender issues - arguably a vulnerable group.
Some really important points could have been made to MPs, for example particularly about young people’s mental health needs. Absolutely objectively - whether in relation to gender distress or anything else- children and young people are sorely underserved. That is already well documented and could have informed a really strong future recommendation by the committee if it were backed up by evidence from witnesses. Gender critical witnesses will hopefully make that point but it would be stronger if all the professional groups with an interest in this had done so.