The Foreign Office (FCDO) gave hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money to an LGBT organisation whose founder opposes the findings of the Cass Review.
The department has handed £200,000 to the Ozanne Foundation to pay for a course for religious leaders to persuade them to protect LGBT+ people from harm in religious settings.
The foundation was set up by Jayne Ozanne, who has been critical of the Cass review.
The review, a landmark study published last month, looked into how children with gender issues had been let down by NHS treatment, concluding that much of the evidence for gender medicine was flimsy and that drugs such as puberty blockers should be used with extreme caution.
Ms Ozanne shared a tweet by Gender GP which supports the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones and has been placed on an NHS blacklist, saying any implementation of the review’s findings would cause children to “suffer and die”.
The tweet said: “We are totally shocked and appalled by the recommendations to NHS England made in the Cass Report and urge NHS England to take heed of international experts.
“We know that children and young people will suffer and die if these recommendations are implemented.”
Earlier this year NHS England issued an urgent warning, calling on GPs not to work with the discredited clinic, which is based in Singapore.
Ms Ozanne, an evangelical Anglican, previously believed that being Christian and gay were incompatible.
She sought out her own conversion therapy, including exorcism. Now she opposes conversion therapy.
Fake news
Asked on Times Radio about puberty blockers, she said: “This is only a contested issue because of fake news and fake articles by people who don’t like trans people and are trying to whip up a storm.”
Last year she criticised Rishi Sunak when he used last year’s Tory conference to say: “A man is a man and a woman is a woman, that’s just common sense.”
She tweeted: “I was utterly appalled by Rishi Sunak’s rant against trans people.
“It was an abuse of office, an abuse of power and an abuse of the trust so many have put in him. Trans people deserve our respect and affirmation – they suffer so much due to ignorance and hate.”
A total of £200,000 has already been granted by the FCDO to the Ozanne Foundation to fund an international gathering of religious leaders, research on the impact of conversion therapy in the Caribbean and “an African nation”, and a residential course for senior religious leaders.
Ozanne Foundation documents state that “the FCDO have agreed in principle to make a grant of £805,000 until March 2028” to pay for “a course for religious leaders under the auspices of the Global Interfaith Commission on LGBT+ Lives”.
Ms Ozanne had a meeting with the FCDO in March, and tweeted: “Really positive and informative meeting at the FCDO this afternoon about our exciting new project for the GlobalComLGBT… more anon.”
However, last night she told the Telegraph that this project had “moved on”, indicating that the money would not be spent.
Last night a spokesman for the FCDO said the funding would be kept under review.
“Our LGBT Rights Programme supports a number of projects that will contribute to a world in which people are free and safe to play a full and active part in society, without fear of violence discrimination or stigma, regardless of their sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or sex characteristics,” he said.