Thank The Lord (or our Editor) for the article by Allison Pearson in last Wednesday' s Telegraph: "When will the madness end in this brave new transgender world?"

When indeed. Not, I suspect, until we move on from blaming just the baleful influence of the social media or the equality industry.

Allison Pearson wrote: "All this fuss, even though such people make up only the teeniest sliver of our population. There are more Britons who keep guinea pigs than who identify as transgender."

I am not so sure as she is about that. I do not think there are too many guinea pig keepers at Westminster, but I am aware of a growing number of those claiming to be transgender, and I am concerned at the pressures being put on young school children to doubt whether they are girls, boys or of some indeterminate sex.

In our human species there have long been born a few individuals neither fully male nor female, but it was until recently a very few indeed. I cannot recollect any such individuals among my fellow pupils at school, nor in my intake for National Service in 1949, nor so far as I know among my children's generation at school.

Evolutionary change seldom comes so suddenly or across such a wide front, so I think it is time we had some research into the extent of the phenomenon both in time and geographical reach. I do not know if the populations of third world or of urban or of rural societies are more or less affected.