Health secretary Wes Streeting has been criticised for apparently telling a member of the public to “get a grip”.
Streeting made the comments when responding to an Instagram post on Friday (21 March), which attacked the government’s recent policies affecting trans and disabled people.
Labour recently announced plans for restrictions on welfare, including the Personal Independence Payment, a benefit which supports disabled people.
A social media user replied to one of Streeting’s Instagram posts, accused the Ilford North MP of “attacking disabled people,” and criticising him for his decision in December to indefinitely extend a ban on puberty blockers.
“I will never vote Labour again because of you,” the person promised. “Shame on you, Wes.”
Streeting defended himself by saying the government was “opening new gender identity clinics to support trans people and putting an extra £86 million (more than $111 million) into the disabled facilities grants“, and told the member of the public to “get a grip”.
Six new regional gender centres for under-18s seeking gender-affirming care are set to be gradually rolled out by 2026, in response to recommendations made by the Cass Report and following the closure of the Tavistock and Portman’s gender clinic, in London.
The new regional hubs, which paediatric expert Dr Hilary Cass said would bring a more “holistic approach” to care for transgender youngsters, have been criticised by former Tavistock clinicians, who claimed the restructure so far had been “shoddy, disorganised [and] messy”.
The health secretary, who has made it clear that he no longer stands by his statement that “trans women are women”, said he was pleased with the progress in creating the hubs.
‘Extremely unprofessional’
His comment to the member of the public was branded “extremely unprofessional,” by many on Instagram with some saying the response was a disgrace.
“You serve the people, and you think this is an appropriate way to talk to them when they voice their very real concerns?” one user said. “You are pathetic.”
Another posted online: “You’ve made the lives of trans people, particularly trans kids, materially worse.”
The controversy comes after Streeting welcomed an independent review into how the UK collects data on gender, which called for a focus on “biological sex”.
The review, led by sociology professor and member of gender-critical group Sex Matters, Alice Sullivan, concluded that methods of recording gender in data sets could lead to what she described as a “widespread loss of data on sex,” and recommended a focus on “biological sex” that aims for a “50-50 sex ratio”.
Not-for-profit organisations and LGBTQ+ groups accused Sullivan of “bias” over her historically “gender-critical” views, and urged the government to reject the recommendations.
“To be functional, data used by government and organisations must reflect people’s lived realities,” a spokesperson for TransActual and the Feminist Gender Equality Network said. “This includes gender and, in some contexts such as in medicine, assigned sex at birth.”
However, Streeting said the review “underlines the importance of recording biological sex”.
PinkNews has reached out to Wes Streeting for comment.
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