The Scottish Greens are morphing into the Flat Earth Society

Politicians who have mindlessly promoted trans ideology have been sent into a panic by the Cass Review, which investigated NHS England’s gender-identity services for children and young people.

Now, Patrick Harvie, co-leader of the Scottish Greens and minister in the Scottish government, is attempting to save face by simply refusing to acknowledge the review’s conclusions. When confronted with the harms that so-called gender-affirming care has done to children, he has repeatedly buried his head in the sand.

This morning, on the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Harvie was asked five times if he accepted Cass’s findings. Each time, he refused to give a straight answer.

‘That report’, he said, ‘has been politicised and weaponised by those who are trying to attack and undermine transgender people’s very existence in our society’. He repeated variations on this statement multiple times, continuously dodging the questions put to him by presenter Nick Robinson.

In ⁦@BBCr4today⁩ ⁦@bbcnickrobinson⁩ asks the co-leader of the Scottish Green Party Patrick Harvie, MSP if he accepts the findings of the Cass review final report.
He asks him 5 times.
He doesn’t answer, 5 times. pic.twitter.com/EWqlc7ju7Q

— Nicky Clark (@MrsNickyClark) April 22, 2024

Harvie had already made his views on the report quite plain. Over the weekend, he dismissed calls for the findings of the Cass Review, which covered NHS England, to be implemented in Scotland. He was asked three times on BBC Scotland’s The Sunday Show if he believed the review was a ‘valid scientific document’. ‘I’ve seen far too many criticisms of it so far to be able to say that’, he said.

He seems to have been influenced by some of the misleading talking points parroted by trans activists on social media. According to Harvie, Cass ‘specifically excluded’ some ‘serious evidence’ from her review. Here he was repeating the myth that the review discarded any evidence that might have favoured the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, supposedly in order to reach a predetermined, ‘transphobic’ conclusion. In reality, the studies ‘excluded’ from Cass’s report were simply given less weight in her conclusions because they were of such low quality.

Harvie might as well just come out and say that he outright rejects the medical evidence gathered by one of the UK’s preeminent paediatricians. He clearly believes that practices in children’s healthcare should be determined by the whims of activists, rather than based on the best available science. After all, this is essentially what his fellow Greens MSP, Ross Greer, has said. Greer shared a post on X a few weeks ago that described the Cass Review as ‘a straight-up transphobic and conservative document’. Unfortunately for the Scottish Greens, calling evidence-based research ‘transphobic’ doesn’t make it any less factual.

Thankfully, NHS Scotland has now paused the prescription of puberty blockers at its own gender clinic, the Sandyford. It has also decided to stop giving out cross-sex hormones to under-18s. So at least the right people in Scotland are finally listening to the scientific evidence.

Still, it is deeply concerning that Harvie, a government minister, is outright denying scientific facts when they come into conflict with trans ideology – especially when children’s safety is at stake. The Scottish Greens are starting to sound like the Flat Earth Society.

Lauren Smith is a staff writer at spiked.