WES STREETING has refused to intervene in an NHS puberty blocker trial despite concerns about children’s safety.
The drugs were banned last year in the wake of the independent Cass Review, which found no evidence to support their use and warned they may also disrupt brain development.
But an NHS trial to examine the evidence around their use in children is awaiting the green light from the ethics regulator, which controversially approved a pilot into the drugs in 2011 but failed to ensure the results were shared.
Some 6,000 children are on the national gender clinic waiting list and could be eligible to receive the drugs if their clinical team and parents agree.
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SIR KEIR STARMER’S plans to reset relations with the European Union risk dealing a £1 billion blow to farmers, senior Tories have warned.
The Prime Minister has been urged not to throw British growers “under the bus” by agreeing to adopt overly restrictive EU red tape. Brussels is demanding the UK agrees to copy its agricultural rules in return for a deal that would reduce checks on food exports. But agreeing to the terms risks killing off a booming UK industry centred on developing new drought and pest-resistant crops, as a world leader in research on gene-edited fruit and vegetables.
The development, which is already worth £1 billion a year to the economy and has boosted harvests by 1 per cent, is only possible because of Brexit. Gene-edited crops are subject to a de facto ban in the EU, where they are subject to such stringent red tape that they are impossible to grow at scale. Britain would have to revert to effectively banning them if it were to sign up to mirroring Europe’s rules on agriculture.
Jerome Mayhew, the shadow business minister, said: “Attempts to get closer to the EU risk throwing our farmers and scientific communities under the bus ... The Labour-EU love-in must draw the line at watering down UK progress on precision breeding.”
A Defra spokesman said: “This Government recognises that food security is national security. That’s why we have laid legislation to enact the Precision Breeding Act for plants [to ensure] our agriculture sector will be at the forefront of innovation across the world.”
(both from articles in the Sunday Telegraph today which I find concern, now I’ve switched my allegiance back to Labour).
What do other Labour voters think about these two issues?
