Yesterday, Wes Streeting made the UK ban on puberty blockers for trans kids permanent. The ban does not apply to cisgender children; puberty blockers are apparently magic medicine that are uniquely dangerous to trans and gender non-conforming kids.

The decision was subject to a consultation, which – at the Government’s invitation – featured significant input from anti-trans, pro-conversion therapy organisations with no expertise in healthcare generally or trans healthcare specifically. And despite blatantly stacking the deck with those anti-trans groups, the consultation could still not produce evidence to justify the ban. It did, however, make it clear that the ban would have terrible effects on trans kids’ mental health. We’ve already seen more than a dozen children take their own lives as a result of the temporary ban.

Streeting simply ignored the evidence and imposed the ideologically motivated ban on the UK, including Scotland. Pressure from the UK government ensured a similar ban was passed in Northern Ireland with the support of Sinn Fein. There’s bleak humour in seeing UK Labour and Sinn Fein finding common ground in killing children.

I’ve long since given up on trying to get people to care about trans people. But an evangelical government minister banning medically necessary healthcare by prioritising the thinky thoughts of newspaper columnists and religious and social conservatives over evidence and international medical consensus is a terrifying precedent for everybody.