Streeting ‘defends’ previous Government ban on puberty blockers

Wes Streeting is ‘defending’ the previous Conservative Government’s ban on private prescribing of puberty blockers. 

The emergency ban, brought in by former health secretary Victoria Atkins in May, is currently being challenged at the High Court by transgender rights activists.

But the new Government is defending the decision and is understood to be planning on making the ban permanent.

This weekend, health secretary Wes Streeting took to X to ‘explain why this decision was taken’, arguing that children’s healthcare ‘must always be led by evidence’.

The emergency ban on private prescribing, due to last until 3 September, was implemented following publication of the landmark Cass Review, which concluded that children and young people seeking NHS care for gender-related distress have been let down by the ‘remarkably weak evidence base’. 

Before this, NHS England had banned routine prescription of puberty blockers on the NHS for children with gender dysphoria, after a working group found there is not sufficient evidence to support their ‘safety or clinical effectiveness’. 

Mr Streeting wrote on X: ‘Cass Review found there is not enough evidence about the long-term impact of puberty blockers for gender incongruence to know whether they are safe or not, nor which children might benefit from them.

‘The evidence should have been established before they were ever prescribed.’

He said that following the NHSE decision to stop routine prescription of puberty blockers for gender dysphoria, a clinical trial is being established to ‘provide the evidence we need’. 

‘The former health secretary issued an emergency order to extend the restriction on prescription to the private sector, which I am defending,’ he added. 

Mr Streeting said he is ‘determined to improve the quality of, and access to, care for trans people’ and that he is ‘treading cautiously’ because the risk to children is not yet known. 

In a further statement, he said that the ban ‘brings the private sector in line with the NHS’.

The emergency ban applies to all UK private prescribers – as well as prescribers registered in the European Economic Area (EEA) or Switzerland – and it prevents prescriptions to new patients under 18, but allows continued access for patients who were already being treated before implementation.

Under the regulations, puberty blockers are defined as ‘gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogues’, which are medicines consisting of buserelin, gonadorelin, goserelin, leuprorelin acetate, naferelin or triptorelin.

The Good Law Project, a non-profit legal organisation, is supporting the trans rights organisation TransActual and a young trans person to challenge the ban at the High Court.

Legal manager at Good Law Project, Bekah Sparrow, said it is ‘difficult to see this ban as anything but an ideological piece of legislation’.

‘The Government has cut off another route for trans youth to access treatment, while no timely alternative is available on the NHS – in the face of evidence that this could have a grave and direct impact on young people’s health,’ she added. 

TransActual has argued that the previous Conservative Government made the ban ‘unlawfully’ by misusing the ‘emergency process’, and that Ms Atkins ‘acted on the basis of her personal views about the conclusions of the Cass Review’.

The Cass Review also concluded that no clinician should be expected to prescribe outside their competence and that GPs should not be expected to enter into a shared-care arrangement with a private provider, ‘particularly if that private provider is acting outside NHS guidance’. 

In May, reports suggested that Labour is considering making GPs gatekeepers of the certificates which legally recognise a gender change.