The Labour MP has a long history of spouting abject nonsense about gender.

Dawn Butler is an inspiration to political hopefuls everywhere. If someone as limited in intelligence and lacking in integrity as the Labour MP for Brent can make it into the UK parliament, then surely anyone can.

Her characteristically poor judgement and shabby opportunism were on display once again earlier this week, during a House of Commons debate on the Cass Review into the NHS’s treatment of gender-confused kids. After Conservative health secretary Victoria Atkins had painstakingly outlined the details of a grisly medical experiment inflicted on vulnerable children, Butler asked what she believed to be the burning question of the moment. ‘Around 100 studies have not been included in the Cass report, and we need to know why’, she declared.

Here, Butler was mindlessly parroting a piece of disinformation that has done the rounds on trans-activist Twitter. It was designed to rubbish Dr Hilary Cass’s findings by claiming she had ignored all but a tiny handful of medical studies when drawing up her landmark report. BBC Radio 4’s More or Less has traced the rumour back to trans activists who either misunderstood or, more likely, deliberately misrepresented a press release shared by the British Medical Journal on social media. Cass herself has explained that her team of researchers appraised every single paper on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. Results were then taken and synthesised from high- and medium-quality studies, which amounted to 60 out of 103 available papers. Still, Butler appears to have more faith in anonymous online rumour-mongers than in the findings of a meticulous, 388-page systematic review by one of the world’s preeminent paediatricians.