Parents have described the distress of being reported to police and social services after raising questions about their children’s wish to change sex.

The families say teachers and healthcare professionals alerted authorities over issues including their refusal to buy puberty blockers, attempts to limit internet use and continued use of names given to their children at birth.

In one account, parents said social services questioned them after they declined to purchase chest binders, garments intended to restrict breast growth. In another, a father said he was arrested after disputes with his vulnerable daughter.

The families, who have asked not to be identified because they fear further distress for their children, are being supported by the Bayswater Group, which campaigns on behalf of parents of transgender teenagers.

The group represents hundreds of families across the UK and estimates that more than one in ten members have been referred to social services. It says schools were responsible for roughly a third of those referrals.

Bayswater says it is aware of at least 17 cases in which social services, and sometimes police, interviewed families after complaints were made. The organisation believes the actual figure is considerably higher. It also warns that referrals could increase under Labour-supported proposals to prohibit efforts to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Under the draft Conversion Practices Bill, anyone convicted could face up to five years in prison.

The proposed legislation has drawn criticism from campaigners and MPs who fear parents, and possibly therapists, could face legal scrutiny if they are judged to be standing in the way of a child’s wish to transition.

One mother told The Mail on Sunday that a school referred her 14-year-old daughter to social services because the family continued to use her birth name at home. The referral was later closed without further action.

Another mother said social workers visited her home after she tried to stop her teenage daughter from undergoing irreversible surgery.

‘I questioned why a radical double mastectomy was being treated as an accepted option for confused adolescent girls with healthy breasts,’ she said. ‘But my concerns as a parent were portrayed as “aggressive”.’

‘A social worker came to our home soon afterwards, and I attempted to explain why I had challenged the treatment approach being considered for my daughter. The case was ultimately closed with no further action.’

‘I felt relieved, but the referral was profoundly upsetting. I felt accused of endangering my daughter when I believed I was trying to protect her.’

‘The allegation was false and disingenuous, and seemed intended to pressure me into complying.’ A third family said it was reported to both social services and police after refusing to buy puberty blockers for their daughter. The parents said they were accused of emotional abuse and feared she could be taken into care.

This newspaper also spoke to the father of a transgender son who said his local council accused him of homophobia and bullying after he tried to restrict the teenager’s internet access. The father said he had acted because the boy had allegedly been attempting to arrange meetings with older men online.

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Although the Mail on Sunday has spoken to several families who say they were affected, their anonymity means their accounts cannot be independently verified. The Bayswater Group has, however, received support from Conservative critics of the proposed legislation. Supporters of the Bill insist it would apply only to cases involving genuine abuse, while opponents fear the term could be interpreted too broadly.

Critics are also worried that the legislation could enable councils to seek Conversion Practice Protection Orders for people considered at risk, potentially allowing social services to intervene without a family court ruling. Some have compared the proposed powers to ‘sex-change ASBOs’, invoking the Anti-Social Behaviour Orders introduced in 1999 to tackle teenage offending.

Tory peer Baroness Cash told The Mail on Sunday that she considered the Bill both dangerous and impractical. ‘This is the long arm of the law extending into family life, private conversations between parents and children, and even discussions between children and therapists,’ she said.

‘The landmark Cass Review into gender identity services for children and young people made clear last year that most children who identify as transgender ultimately see their difficulties resolve.

‘But it is crucial that they have exploratory therapy. This ill-judged draft legislation puts even the therapists in danger. We know from the Bayswater Group that parents already face serious accusations if they disagree with their children or their children’s advisers. Now, we are asking therapists to risk their careers should a child take exception to what they have to say. It is completely unworkable.’

The Sex Matters charity – which campaigns for those who believe there are only two genders and that sex cannot be changed – says the new laws would be ‘an attack on ethical, loving parenting’ and could prevent children receiving the therapy they need.

They could also cause chaos in schools with teachers feeling unable to ban trans girls (born as boys) from female toilets for fear of legal sanction.

A Sex Matters report published last week concluded that the draft Bill would silence therapists, harm children, divide families and could ‘legislate some parents out of their children’s lives’.

‘This Bill would criminalise ordinary and therapeutic conversations in the name of preventing conversion,’ says the author, social scientist Matilda Gosling.

Dear Jana,

A friend of mine lost a significant amount of weight using a new peptide called retatrutide, or “reta”. After seeing how effective it had been for her, I decided to try it myself.

She introduced me to a man at her gym who sells it. I realise that sounds questionable, but I told myself that she was using it and appeared to be fine.

Several months later, I have lost weight and feel more comfortable in my body than I have in years. But another change has been harder to ignore: I have almost no desire for my husband to touch me.

We have been married for 12 years and have always been affectionate and physically close. We were not having passionate sex every night, but I still wanted to rip his clothes off fairly often.

Now, when he kisses me, I find myself hoping it will not lead to anything more. I have even started going to bed before him and pretending to be asleep so I can avoid having to make an excuse.

Last week, he told me, “You seem happier with yourself, but less happy with me.” I wanted to reassure him, but I could not honestly say that he was imagining it.

He has not done anything wrong. Even cuddling on the sofa now feels like something I am doing simply to keep him happy. I cannot tell whether my sex drive has vanished or whether my feelings for him have changed.

I have been reading posts from other people who say they felt emotionally numb or lost interest in their partners after taking reta, and it has frightened me.

Have I fallen out of love with my husband, or could the substance I am taking be affecting my emotions? I wanted to lose weight, not my marriage.

Losing More Than Weight

Dear Losing More Than Weight,

I have taken Mounjaro myself. It is a different weight-loss medication, of course, but in broad terms, you could say the experiences have some similarities. In the early stages, my sex drive was certainly not at its peak.

For the first two days after an injection, I felt exhausted. My energy was low and getting undressed was hardly at the top of my list. On the other hand, seeing the number on the scales fall brought a kind of euphoria that, dare I say it, felt better than sex.

Fortunately, that sensation eventually faded for me. I cannot say with certainty whether time was responsible or whether the change happened because I stopped taking it.

So, before you start dividing up the furniture in your mind, give yourself some time to understand what is happening. The question I would ask is this: has everyone lost their appeal, or is it only your husband? If your favourite celebrity crush suddenly appeared and suggested you get together, would you still feel that familiar flutter?

If you still have sexy thoughts about other men but pull away when your husband leans in to kiss you, there may be more going on than a general loss of libido.

I would arrange an appointment with your doctor and be completely honest about what you have been taking. They have almost certainly heard similar concerns before. You need proper medical advice, not a reassuring answer from a gym supplier who is, of course, breaking the law by selling it to you. Get a clearer picture of the possible effects before deciding that your husband—or your marriage—is the problem.

And tell your husband what’s happening before he fills in the blanks himself. ‘I’ve noticed my desire has changed and it’s worrying me’ gives him a lot more to work with than your fake snores.

There’s also something kind of maddening about finally feeling good naked, only to discover you have very little interest in doing anything naked. You’re allowed to be disappointed by that, even if you’re thrilled with the weight loss. 

So speak to your doctor, assess whether you can still get horny in general and perhaps… try something prescribed by a doctor not a gym bro?

Thankfully, there are also weight-loss options out there that still let you be randy. All is not lost.

Dear Jana,

I’m 41 and dating with the hope of getting married. I’ve never been married or had children, and I’d love to meet a man around my age, or a little older, who hasn’t done either of those things.

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My friends keep telling me I’m ruling out good men for no reason. I’ve dated divorced dads before, and some of them were great. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that the wedding and the big decisions about family had already happened for them. I want to share those firsts with someone.

Recently I met a lovely divorced man with two children, and my friends are urging me to give him a chance. Part of me wants to. Another part worries I’d be talking myself out of something that matters to me because I’m afraid of running out of time.

Am I being too picky, or is this a fair thing to want?

Waiting for Our Firsts

Dear Waiting for Our Firsts,

First of all, I get it. Trust me, I get it. The little girl dreaming about her wedding thought it would come much earlier, to a tall, dark and handsome man who would be her knight in shining armour forever. Not divorced Barry with two kids.

But fairytales are sadly not real life, and upon reflection, I believe those stories gave us a distorted sense of reality.

But yes, there is something very sweet about imagining you and your fella both nervously standing at the altar for the first time, figuring out this whole marriage business together.

But girl, I’d be careful about assuming a man who’s done it before has nothing special left to experience with you. The vows he makes to you wouldn’t count for less because he once made promises to someone else. 

Sheesh, we’ve all got exes we’ve made plenty of promises to, until life proved otherwise. His just happened to be in a church.

I understand wanting to be someone’s first wife. But would you pass up the chance to be deeply loved by a wonderful man because someone else got there first? Sit with that for a second.

And a man who’s never married isn’t necessarily better prepared to be a husband. Personally, I can see the appeal of someone who’s already learnt a few lessons from a ‘starter marriage’ as I like to call them. 

Divorce can be a bloody expensive education, and someone who’s taken an honest look at where they went wrong may be keen to do things differently.

So rather than a Peter Pan who never grew up (I mean, never got married) I’d be focusing on a guy who has perhaps learnt a thing or two. An untouched wedding registry tells you very little about how someone behaves when life gets difficult.

The only exclusion being, any divorcee who ends every story with his ex-wife being ‘a psycho’. Red flag. Avoid.

This might be a tough question to answer, but I’d ponder whether you want a particular future, or just a particular backstory?

Wanting a man who’s excited about marriage and shares your hopes for a family is a mighty fine standard. But yes, I’ve got to side with your friends on this one, wanting him to have arrived at 41 without ever having either is a tad wishful thinking.

You’re entitled to it, but you need to decide how much it matters if someone otherwise wonderful comes along.

Plus, not to state the obvious, but in our 40s, plenty of men have already been snapped up. The dating pool is smaller, so why shrink it further?

Now, the children deserve separate consideration. I was having this chat with a friend recently and admitted that a man with grown-up kids could suit me beautifully. I don’t want children of my own, so being with someone who’s already had that chapter could work well for me. There would still be family commitments, of course, but I wouldn’t necessarily be signing up for the day-to-day job of raising young children. Chef’s kiss.

That’s an option?

But your situation may be different. If you want children of your own, you need to know whether he genuinely wants to do that again. That matters way more than whether he’s done it before.

Dating a dad also means entering a life with existing responsibilities, and his children will sometimes need him when you’d like him to yourself. If that’s a life you don’t want, be honest. You won’t do anyone a favour by pretending you’re comfortable with it and quietly resenting it later.

Ultimately, you’re the one who has to fancy him, so put your friends’ opinions aside and ask yourself whether you’d like to see him again. If you’re looking forward to his messages and curious to know more about him, go for another dinner. You can take your time getting to know him and see how you feel as things develop.

Keep your standards for how you’re loved high. You might find that a man with a different past from the one you imagined wants exactly the same future as you.

Scottish television presenter Natalie Pike has revealed how she turned detective to identify and help convict her stalker during a terrifying eight-month ordeal.

The 43-year-old former model secured a conviction against a man who had secretly followed her, contacted people close to her and appeared at her workplace.

Ms Pike, who was born in Edinburgh and works for the BBC and Manchester City’s television channel, began investigating the harassment herself. She now hopes speaking publicly about her experience will support other stalking victims.

The presenter, who covered Scotland’s World Cup campaign in Boston this summer, said the ordeal began to escalate in February this year when two men parked outside her local hair salon in a van. They told staff they knew she was a customer and demanded to know where she lived.

The alarming visit led to a series of frantic phone calls from her hairdresser to Ms Pike and her son’s school.

Ms Pike started looking into the men’s identities and found a string of increasingly sinister Instagram messages in a previously hidden folder. They had been sent by a man she did not follow or recognise and dated back 18 months.

“They began in the usual way: ‘Happy Birthday’, ‘You’re beautiful’, that kind of thing,” she said. “Then they started deteriorating. So I took a screenshot of this person’s profile, sent it to my hairdresser and she instantly confirmed it was the same man she had seen.”

A week later, on February 21, Ms Pike was working on a pitchside broadcast at Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium when she spotted a man standing near the barriers and staring at her. She recognised him as the person from Instagram who had appeared at her hairdresser’s salon.

The encounter triggered a panic attack, and she immediately contacted the police.

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“I ran up to the public address announcer’s room, and I had my first experience of a panic attack,” she said.

“I stood in the corner, burst out crying and just couldn’t catch my breath. Police took it seriously and, using the stadium CCTV, they were able to pinpoint him.”

She described watching footage of the man approaching her as “harrowing”. “He never took his eyes off me. He came in at the back of the stand and then, over a 20-minute period, moved down and stopped several times until he was about a metre away from me,” she said.

Ms Pike praised the police for responding immediately, saying officers “took it seriously” from the outset. The man was arrested the following morning, and police took her statement.

She later learned that the man had been messaging her best friend and other acquaintances. His phone also contained photographs of himself sitting at a pub near her home, as well as images of her ex-husband’s car.

Telling her family brought further distress. Ms Pike’s mother, who has stage 4 bowel cancer, collapsed after hearing what had happened.

“I scrambled an ambulance and she ended up in hospital for five weeks,” Ms Pike said. “The stalking came on top of an incredibly difficult year for my family, magnifying the pressure and anxiety.”

While waiting for the court proceedings to finish, Ms Pike was invited by the Scottish FA to travel to Boston. She said the assignment gave her valuable breathing space during the ordeal.

In a social media post yesterday, the broadcaster thanked her parents, friends and Manchester City for their support. She also said she had received counselling and specialist help from anti-stalking charity the Suzy Lamplugh Trust.

Encouraging others to contact the charity, she said: ‘I want anyone who is experience stalking to know that support is available. I know the statistics can make frightening reading, but please don’t let that stop you from reporting what is happening and asking for help. Please reach out to them.’

Her stalker pleaded guilty to stalking involving serious alarm or distress, and was given an 18-month custodial sentence, suspended for 12 months. He was also handed a restraining order banning him from contacting her.

The Albanese government cannot talk its way out of this. Australians understand that excessive government spending is adding to demand and helping fuel inflation, yet ministers continue to avoid acknowledging their share of the responsibility.

Commonwealth spending accounted for 26.9 per cent of GDP last financial year—its largest share in four decades outside the pandemic. Against that backdrop, the government’s claims of fiscal restraint are difficult to accept.

Ministers can deny the criticism, attack economists who question their explanations and blame everyone from Donald Trump to Scott Morrison. None of those tactics reduces demand in the economy or pays a cent of the additional interest now facing mortgage holders.

High inflation cannot be explained away, and excessive public spending does not become harmless simply because the government insists that it is.

Finance Minister Katy Gallagher attempted precisely that defence, declaring that “the challenges that we’re having now in relation to inflation are not caused by government spending”.

That is a remarkably convenient position for the minister responsible for managing expenditure: the spending, in her account, bears no responsibility for its consequences.

It is also plainly wrong, as Reserve Bank Governor Michele Bullock made clear at her media conference on Wednesday. The finance minister, who does not hold an economics qualification, is either mistaken about the issue or deliberately misleading the public.

Neither explanation reflects well on the government.

Bullock said inflation had been “driven by domestic capacity pressures”. The shock from the Middle East came on top of an existing problem. The Reserve Bank had begun raising interest rates before the conflict started, demonstrating that domestic pressures were already contributing. Using the Iran conflict as a shield is therefore not sufficient.

Bullock also confirmed that both public and private demand contribute to aggregate demand. That means government spending is part of the inflation equation, and Labor cannot simply shift the blame to households and businesses.

Governments compete with households and businesses for labour, materials and services. When demand outstrips the economy’s capacity to supply them, public spending intensifies the pressure. The economic impact does not vanish because ministers approve of how the money is being used.

Recognising Canberra’s responsibility does not require anyone to dismiss the effects of war or higher oil prices. The government cannot control events in the Middle East. It can, however, control its own budget—or at least it should be able to.

Labor has increasingly treated election promises as temporary commitments: assurances made to secure votes, then abandoned once the election is over and political pressure has eased.

Before the 2022 election, voters were told that the legislated stage-three income tax cuts would remain. They were later rewritten. The government also insisted there were no plans to change superannuation, before introducing higher taxes on large balances. Its promised $275 annual cut to electricity bills never materialised.

Ahead of the 2025 election, Labor ruled out changes to negative gearing and capital gains taxes. After the votes were counted, those assurances were discarded as well.

Whether they are described as lies or broken promises, the pattern is clear: Team Albo reassures voters before polling day, then expects them to accept the reversal afterwards and hopes the public will forget before the next election.

Some of these policy changes may be defensible on their merits. But that does not make the original promises accurate, nor does it excuse Labor for breaking them.

Especially without first giving voters a chance to judge them for the shift.

The government now faces a problem that can’t be overcome by spin, explaining why yesterday’s solemn assurance no longer applies.

Fiscal policy (government spending) should help monetary policy (the setting of interest rates) bring demand into line with supply. That means deferring lower-priority spending, cutting waste and funding essential commitments by making savings elsewhere.

You can’t tell me a 40-year (non-pandemic) high in government spending is showing fiscal restraint! Australian governments have become addicted to spending and, having become addicted, they don’t have the courage to enter rehab and do something about it.

Labor is approaching four and a half years in office. By the time the next election is due it will be six years. The previous government’s failures, as real as they were, can’t be an excuse for this government also failing this far into their tenure.

Labor’s excuses are freely delivered. Living with the consequences of those excuses is getting brutally expensive for voters.

When will this government finally start taking responsibility?