Consultant psychiatrist Dr David Bell, who served as a staff governor at the NHS Tavistock Trust, wrote an internal report back in 2018, raising the concerns brought to him by colleagues about the way the Gender Identity Development Service was treating patients. He faced disciplinary action. But after 24 years working with the Tavistock, Dr Bell, a former President of the British Psychoanalytic Society, has recently retired, and in his first television interview since then, he explained to Cathy Newman of Channel 4 News his concerns for non-gender conforming lesbian women.
“A particularly large number of them, young girls, could be helped to become non-gender conforming lesbian women,” Dr Bell told the Channel 4 presenter.
“So the repositioning of these girls as only having a gender problem, it acts to prevent them developing in a normal way and being able to develop their own, if you like, nonconforming gender identity, and their own sexuality. This is a form of conversion therapy for young people who are gay or lesbian. It suppresses their sexual identity,” said Dr Bell.
“So the repositioning of these girls as only having a gender problem, it acts to prevent them developing in a normal way and being able to develop their own, if you like, non conforming gender identity, and their own sexuality. This is a form of conversion therapy for young people who are gay or lesbian. It suppresses their sexual identity,”
Cathy Newman then asked Dr Bell whether trans people watching would think that he was questioning their very identity in a way that they would find deeply hurtful. “Do you worry that you might be on the wrong side of history here?” she asked.
Dr Bell said: “I think one has to just pull back a little bit and recognise that this is a very highly politicised area and leaders of movements with a very powerful ideological commitment have managed to capture policy both medically, professionally, in the media and in government – with no evidence base.
“It’s a purely highly politicised movement which has had these consequences. So all that I am saying, and many people are saying, is that they need to wait, there needs to be a thoughtful engagement with them as opposed to motoring them through to treatment pathways which have irreversible consequences for their bodies. So we’re talking about not doing harm to children,” said Dr Bell.
