Kemi Badenoch, the MP who came fourth in the Conservative leadership election, has written a blistering comment piece in the Sunday Times blaming activist civil servants and cowardly ministers for the failure within Government to do something about the irreversible medical harm being done troubled adolescents by the Tavistock. She describes how officials in the Government Equalities Office tried to block her meeting with critics of the NHS clinic, including the LGB Alliance. Here’s how it begins:
Government ministers have difficult decisions to make, often between options where the best course of action is unclear. Some decisions, however, are simple. They are about right and wrong. Last week’s decision to shut the Tavistock clinic is one such example.
When I became equalities minister in early 2020, the NHS gender identity service (GIDS) for young people was presented to me by government officials as a positive medical provision to support children. I was assured that was there “nothing to see here”, if anything, the Tavistock was getting unfair press. This was despite whistleblowers like Dr David Bell already raising concerns about practices at the clinic.
Children and their welfare should be a priority of any government. After receiving correspondence on the matter I decided to listen to every perspective on the issue of those experiencing gender distress to prepare future policy. I noticed officials seemed to be consulting the same people and previous ministers had created an LGBT advisory panel that was clearly suffering from groupthink.
I insisted on meeting campaigners on both sides of the debate: not just Stonewall but, to the horror of some officials, the LGB Alliance. I met clinicians and, most importantly, I asked to meet young people who had used the Tavistock’s services.
One such young person was Keira Bell. To my surprise, I was advised strongly and repeatedly by civil servants in the department that it would be “inappropriate” to speak to her. I overruled the advice. Along with other advisers across government I met Keira and listened to what she had to say. Her testimony was harrowing and brought many on the Zoom call to tears. Keira described how, after being put on puberty blockers at the age of 16, she was given testosterone shots at 17, before her breasts were cut off at 20. Worse was the casual indifference she described from the GIDS service to her continued post-surgery wellbeing.
There are two types of ministers — those who assume that officials know best and follow their advice unquestioningly, becoming spokespeople rather than decision-makers — and those who don’t.
The government machine wants to be comfortable and consensual and campaigners and activists know how to take advantage of this. A minister asking tricky questions can be stopped in their tracks by accusations of stoking “culture wars”. Minutes of private meetings with whistleblowers and concerned citizens can be selectively leaked or become the subject of numerous innocent-looking freedom of information requests, designed to identify targets for harassment on social media, as I discovered in one unfortunate case.
Whitehall has solutions for ministers wishing to dodge difficult decisions: issue another call for evidence for information you already have; publish a consultation that is captured by campaigners or form a new working group of “stakeholders”. However, the work of government is all about making difficult decisions, even if it makes us unpopular.
I write not to take credit for this result — my part in it was very minor — but to give an insight into the numerous obstacles that slow down even the most determined minister from finding out the truth and making the right decisions.
A courageous and important piece by Kemi. Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: The Mail On Sunday has an interview with Keira Bell, the young woman who blew the whistle on the Tavistock and helped persuade Kemi it should be shut down.
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Confirms what we knew already. The Civil Service runs the country how it sees fit, and the Government is just window dressing.
I’m sure the Civil Service tries to run it as it see fit, or some of them at least, but we’ve had TWELVE years of Conservative governments. What have those governments done to push back?
I fear you’re hoping rather too much that a Minister and their team can cut though the work of thousands of CS determined to stymie progress. As we have seen with the Home Office and Rwanda, if by good fortune, something does get done, the Unions are there to pick up the tab for the court cases to stop it happening. Its the deep state at work…
I’m not hoping for anything, or expecting anything – just pointing out that voting Conservative doesn’t appear to have conservative results, IMO because the senior leadership of the Tory party and a substantial number of MPs are metropolitan left wing big state “liberals” who are out of touch with or despise their core supporters.
Yeah, I’d agree with that. Add in the influence of supranational forces like the WEF and UN and Agenda 2030, and thats pretty much it
Indeed
There’s a general trend “leftward” it seems to me, but it is being hugely accelerated by the kind of organisations you mention and many sheeple are only going to notice when it’s too late
So it appears that Children and their welfare should be a priority of any government.
ive not seen much of that over last two years.
throw childrens future health on the scrap heap for the sake of liberal ideology. We are at the mercy of the f ING dogooders
There is a fine line between FGM and gender reassignment surgery.
No line.. just the same brutal attack on an innocent.
All this does is confirm what we already know: the Civil Service is institutionally left-wing, suffers from group-think, works to block Minister’s policies it doesn’t support and therefore needs a complete clear out.
The problem we have is that the CONs won’t do it.
We have another problem. What do we do with the brainwashed tens of thousands when we’ve got rid of them.? Inflict them on private companies..? Or will they just find gainful employment from the public purse, buggering up something else. This may take two generations to fix, if we can fix it at all.
Remind me. Communism in the Soviet Union lasted how long, and there’s still a sizeable rump who look at the time with romantic eyes and a sense of nostalgia.
There are already plenty of senior and middle managers in the private sector who are pursuing the woke agenda with equal vigour.
That is for their employers to accept or otherwise. Consumers have the choice to use or not their products and services. And there is mounting evidence of “Go woke, go broke”
However, we have no choice in our dealings with slither serpents.
As always, those who benefit most from the exercise of power want it to continue. Quelle surprise.
They could become our WEF quota of “useless eaters” They could then be shipped off into the glorious future designed for such a class of humanity and save us the rest of us a lot of heartache.
Boris and Carrie Johnson should hang their heads in shame.
“Yes Minister” portrayed what we all suspected was the case in government in the 1970’s and 1980’s that the government was run for the benefit of the civil servants. The show was good for some rueful laughs but the case of Keira Bell demonstrates it’s not funny anymore..
On trans issues, critical race theory, net zero, trade policy, inflation, government spending, the operations of the NHS and education blobs, it is clear that the civil service has now become the enemy of the people.
Kemi said she couldn’t have done it without the backing, support etc of Liz Truss, Matt Hancock, Sahid Javid etc. Very diplomatic with an eye to the future…
Sir Humphrey rules!!!
Here lies the fundamental problem with the British Civil Service: it’s an entrenched organisation where failure is rewarded with a move to a different department and is easily infiltrated by the far left through the fast stream system.
It’s ludicrous that an incoming government is appointed Civil Service secretaries and the like by the Civil Service itself. Why shouldn’t an incoming government appoint its own people? An outgoing Labour government’s Civil Service should be cleared out and replaced by a Tory one when the Tories get into power. The Government should appoint its own heads of department and hire its own people to run each streamlined division. That way, a government’s agenda can be pursued and that government is responsible for the success or failure of its manifesto.
The British Civil Service is plainly inefficient and corrupt. Prior to March 2020, a friend who worked in the Home Office told me that on an average day at least one third of staff is always absent due to leave, ‘sickness’ and ‘duvet days’ and more are offline while ‘working from home’.
Plainly, the Civil Service needs reform: how many taxes exist that purely fund the department that oversees that particular tax, for example?
The far left, postmodern, groupthink is deeply worrying. Postmodernism denies objective reality: if the people running the Civil Service are living in a subjective, imagined world and pretending that that world exists, no wonder we’ve had things like lockdowns and climate mania when the empirical evidence denies their world view. No wonder Civil Servants allowed the butchery of children to take place in the Tavistock Clinic when they won’t say what a woman is anymore.
There are two sexes: male and female. There are three genders – masculine, feminine and neuter (he, she and it) – in language. Everything else is the deranged, reality-denying rantings of delusional, far left academics.
The views espoused by those climbing the career Tory party ladder have no bearing whatsoever on the views and actions taken when high office is achieved. Boris Johnson is perfect example of the latest person to play to the centre Right party faithful and head off in the opposite direction when party leader