Meeting Streeting

carolinelitman
10 minutes ago
40 min read

I met with Wes Streeting, Secretary of State for Health and James Palmer, Director of Specialist Services for NHS England on 17^th March 2026.

It was with some distress that the moment I left the room my trauma-addled brain realized that in all that time I failed to mention Alice’s inquest and prevention of future death (PFD) report.

Wes agreed that I could send him the briefing notes I had made before the meeting in order to highlight anything else I had wanted to say but had missed out. He also said this wouldn’t be my only opportunity to air my views.

With that in mind I decided to summarise the conversations from our meeting into a report. which incorporates some of my personal briefing notes, plus additional material to respond more fully to some of the statements made in the meeting, by both Wes Streeting and James Palmer.

Whilst Wes expressed sympathy to me and Peter and admiration of my campaigning, expressing sympathy towards a bereaved mother is a baseline of common decency, but not a measure of political will. What I need is not sympathy but action, what matters is what he does next.

If he continues on his current path, doing nothing to reverse his policies that are harming young trans people, and, I believe, contributing to circumstances in which some of them – like my daughter – will not survive, his words of sympathy will have meant nothing.

As our meeting drew to a close he confirmed that which I already knew, I had not changed his mind with regard to the clinical care of trans young people.

Here's the full report including my fifty-five questions, as sent to the Secretary of State for Health. How many will he answer do you think?

Report on the meeting between Caroline and Peter Litman, supported by Ben Dew (Training & Education Manager and Parent & Carer Service Manager, Allsorts Youth Project Brighton) and Wes Streeting (Secretary of State for Health), James Palmer (DHSC Director for Gender Services and Jennifer Benjamin (DHSC Deputy Director for Gender Services) 17^th March 2026.

Also in attendance: Ben Elgar (Deputy Principal Private Secretary to the Secretary of State), Tom Gardner (DHSC staff)

1. Alice’s Inquest and PFD Report

My daughter Alice died by suicide on 26^th May 2022 aged twenty. On 5^th December 2023 the coroner issued a PFD report in respect of Alice’s death.

Alice’s is not the first PFD report on this matter and will not be the last. Reports from multiple inquests have explicitly identified lack of access to gender-affirming care as a modifiable factor in the deaths of trans young people. But the MATTERS OF CONCERN in Alice’s report remain largely unaddressed or are worse than when she died.

a) The knowledge and training for those in the mental health setting for managing and offering care to those in the transgender community.

The mental health trust did meet with us and implemented some basic generic mandatory training; the type delivered to any company giving a nod to EDI. This is not healthcare specific and will not protect trans youth from transphobic, biphobic or homophobic staff who don’t understand or accept trans identity.

b) The delays in access to gender-affirming care.

These are now worse. James Palmer admitted to a major problem with access with 44000 people waiting for adult gender services. He did not relate this to increased suicide rates. He spoke of the new services opening over the coming years. The growth in number of trans cases was predicted in research by GIRES from 2009 commissioned by the home office. [1] This expansion is too little too late for Alice and other young people caught up right now in the NHS’s failure to plan and expand in a timely fashion.

c) The lack of provision of mental health care for those waiting for gender affirming treatment.

Response is mixed. More mental health support on the waitlist is available, but it is like applying a tourniquet to a bleeding wound. It helps in the short term, but long term it can stop working or even harm. It gives a false sense that something is being done, but the underlying issue remains unaddressed.

d) The lack of clarity for clinicians who are in place to support young transgender individuals in Primary Care.

This is worse. Restructuring has caused confusion and put barriers in place.

e) The lack of clarity for clinicians who are in place to support young transgender individuals in the Mental Health Setting.

There is poor uptake of clinical training and a general lack of understanding of transition.

Your responsibility as Secretary of State for Health is to address these PFD reports. I heard nothing in the meeting to reassure me that the DHSC and NHS England are moving in the right direction to prevent future deaths.

Question

· 1.1 - NHS England’s response to the Regulation 28 report on Alice’s death committed to sharing NCMD suicide data with local CAMHS teams ahead of April 2024. Did that happen?

2. Where are we now? The situation in trans healthcare since Labour came to power.

· The introduction of a regulatory framework which blocks access to elements of trans health care means gender affirming care on the NHS is not available for trans youth.

· A puberty blocker ban has been made permanent across all healthcare settings.

· The process has started to formally remove NHS access to sex-hormones for u18 trans youth[2]. James Palmer confirmed in April 2025 that no new prescriptions of gender-affirming hormones had been issued to any minor in the full year since the Cass Report’s publication He described this as “prioritising holistic care.”

· GPs have been instructed not to support minors receiving gender-affirming care from non-NHS sources.

· The PATHWAYS trial into puberty blockers that the Health Secretary promised would be open access, when speaking in Parliament on 16^th December 2025, is now reduced to 226 patients. Restrictions and changes to the entry requirements potentially make the trial meaningless. Even Cass now wonders if your actions might be politically motivated.[3]

· Families are going to great lengths to pay for private care, including selling homes.

· Families are leaving the UK for countries that support inclusive gender-affirming care. In the US over 400,000 trans people have migrated between states. Within the UK we have nowhere safe to go.

· Families are scared to access basic GP care for fear they will be reported to social services for accessing private healthcare for their children. This fear is not unfounded, it is happening.

· Proposed new KCSIE guidance (not DHSC remit) will make schools fundamentally unsafe for trans children and increase mental health harms.

· Children, young people and families are living under incredible and increasing stress. I fear that suicide amongst trans youth and trans adults will only rise.

· Trans people want and are entitled to high quality care from their NHS. In arguing that young people's safety is at the heart of everything you do, whilst removing the safest route to the healthcare they need, you undermine your own position. You are forcing trans people elsewhere.

· Official waiting list figures of around five years for adult care are deplorable and are also likely to be serious underestimates of waits that can be decades long. [4]

· Fundamentally the extraordinarily long waitlists contribute to mental health decline.

How have we got here?

3. The Health Secretary’s thoughts on trans people

What I heard

You support trans people, you are an ally and you are upset that the LGBT community and allies question your motivations for banning puberty blockers because you see yourself as progressive on LGBT rights.

You see it as the governments duty to calm down the “toxic political arena around trans people”.

You repeatedly stated that you are “uncomfortable” about the decisions you’ve made.

You were at peculiar pains to insist your religious beliefs don’t influence you and you didn’t want me leaving the meeting thinking of you as a “right-wing, evangelical, god-botherer who has issues with trans people”. You were quite lighthearted, as if it was all some kind of joke, insisting your views couldn’t be more, “soggy, wet, liberal Anglican” and that you “absolutely accept trans people.”

I asked, “do you think my daughter was a woman or a man in a dress?” You could not say Alice was a woman, only that you would have used her name and she/her pronouns.

I asked, “do you believe trans children exist, that they are consistent in their identity and that trans children become trans adults?” You replied, “yes, sometimes”.

I talked about a trans person I know who came out to her mother as a young child but was denied treatment until adulthood and the unnecessary harm that inflicted. You responded by speaking in admiration of someone who did receive puberty blockers in a timely fashion a “beautiful trans student who you would never be able to tell was born male”. “Who am I to dispute that?”

You applauded Time to Think by Hannah Barnes a gender-critical journalist who doesn’t acknowledge trans identities. In your brief analysis of her book, I heard an appreciation of her work with detransitioners.

My response

The Labour government is complicit in creating a ‘toxic’ political arena around trans people. It has perpetuated, indeed exacerbated, the anti-trans rhetoric favoured by your predecessors. You repeatedly accused trans people of using inflammatory language, then spoke of explosions and digging trenches yourself.

Cass has called trans campaigners ‘shroud wavers’, you called us ‘on-line actors’ on the floor of the House when announcing the puberty blocker ban. Hilary Cass calls doctors providing private care, in response to the lack of UK healthcare for trans youth, ‘charlatans.’ You dismiss private healthcare as unregulated. It goes on and on.

I was too gob-smacked to reply to your words about your faith directly in the meeting, so will respond here.

You have said openly, in an interview with Premier Christianity in 2023, “my faith made it difficult to accept my sexuality”.[5] In the same interview you discussed a previous interview on Talk Radio in 2022 where, when asked whether a woman could have a penis, you replied, “Men have penises, women have vaginas; here ends my biology lesson…this is the end of my leftie street cred, if I had any in the first place.” Trans people are not a joke.

It’s my considered opinion that your religious beliefs do influence you and it is trans people themselves that make you uncomfortable. This is more than opinion, your own words tell your truth, you do not recognise trans women as women and trans men as men.

You appear to place a high value on the ability to ‘pass’. This was both deeply concerning to me and revealing, it came across as: women are only women if they meet certain beauty standards. And yet you choose to restrict access to the care that would facilitate that which you appear to admire.

Many of those interviewed for, and praised in Time to Think, such as David Bell and Marcus and Sue Evans have well documented links to the anti-trans groups SEGM, Genspect, and the Clinical Advisory Network on Sex and Gender. Stella O’ Malley who wrote the books key review runs Genspect, a group which demands an immediate moratorium on gender affirming care for anyone under 25. Hannah Barnes has given speeches at SEGM conferences.

Questions

· 3.1 - What actions does the government plan to reduce the ‘toxic political arena’? Will the Health Secretary undertake to change the way he speaks about trans people? Will he start to call trans women, women and trans men, men and will he stop using the term ‘biological women’ when there is no definition of this phrase?

· 3.2 - Is the Health Secretary aware that his comments about men having penises and women having vaginas are: scientifically inaccurate, stigmatising to a protected minority and legally false, since they are contradicted by the Gender Recognition Act?

· 3.3 - Is the Health Secretary aware of the criticisms of Time to Think? If not, do these revelations change his perspective?

4. Doubt, detransition and regret

What I heard

You expressed acceptance that it was ok for people to question their gender, but you were concerned about a stark rise in the number of girls who are identifying as gender questioning or thinking they are male. You wondered if this rise might be down to sexism and the way girls feel about their future in our society.

You were concerned we weren’t asking enough questions, weren’t being curious about why people transition.

Your priority for gender care services is timely access to therapeutic care to support mental health, to get to the bottom of what young people are feeling.

You were shocked by the standard of care at the Tavistock as exposed by Time to Think and have met and sympathised with young people who were supported to transition but later regretted it.

You expressed sympathy for Alice’s death by suicide and for my family’s grief.

My response

You have fallen for anti-trans rhetoric about trans boys. The evidence shows trans boys tend to present earlier with more marked distress, which creates a skew in their presentation to CYP clinics, which is made up for in adult clinics where trans women predominate. [6]Census data shows the adult trans population to be approximately 0.1% of the population (this was my mistake and should have read 0.5-1%). CYP clinics and waitlist do not hold 0.1% of the child population. This suggests youth gender services are seeing fewer children than might be expected and the trans population, regardless of gender, is in fact going woefully under-treated.

Overall, I perceived that you are prone to doubting that trans people are who they say they are and your greatest fear is of young people transitioning and then regretting that choice. I believe this is a primary driver of your decision making.

Regret was my primary concern when Alice came out. I had fallen for gender-critical narratives parroted by our media. I feared she was doing something irreversible that she would later regret. In the end she did something far worse.

Whilst you expressed sympathy for Alice’s death by suicide it struck me that you are so afraid of regret and detransition that you are prepared to implement policies designed to mitigate against that risk, without fully owning that this course of action has risks of its own.

As the parent of a child who died by suicide, I found your apparent preoccupation with detransition hard to stomach. Keira Bell still has her life.

The Cass Review found very few cases of regret. Studies consistently show regret rates for gender transition are low compared to regret rates for other medical interventions, even after taking methodological flaws in the studies into account.

Arguing that medical transition shouldn’t be allowed in under eighteens, where identity may still be forming, is entirely undermined by the UKs continued failure to prohibit cosmetic genital surgery on intersex babies and children.

The World Health Organisation ICD-11 has recategorized gender incongruence so it’s no longer classified as a mental health condition. It’s concerning to me that you cite mental health care as your primary concern in trans people. Many trans people have robust mental health until they are repeatedly denied the gender affirming healthcare they need. It is this lack of care and transphobia in our society, that your party’s policies encourage, that are significant aetiological factors for poor mental health in trans people.

I’m led to conclude that you and many senior people involved in decisions about trans healthcare ultimately agree with Helen Joyce of Sex Matters and think transitioning is “a problem in a sane world”. All the steps taken since you came to power and the harms being inflicted upon trans people now as a result, point to an interpretation that you consider transition an unfavourable outcome.

Most detransitioners say they don’t detransition because they aren’t trans, but instead cite lack of access to hormones and reconstructive surgeries, difficult access to legal sex changes and overwhelming stigma as reasons for their decision. All of this has been exacerbated by this Labour government.

Questions / follow up

· 4.1a – Does the Health Secretary think maintaining a stable trans identity into adulthood is a bad outcome?

· 4.1b - If his answer is no, why is he doing everything he can, in his capacity as Secretary of State for Health to prevent transition on the NHS and via private means?

· 4.1c – if his answer is yes, why is he not recusing himself from playing any role in decisions about trans healthcare?

· 4.2 - What evidence is the Health Secretary using to inform his concerns about regret beyond reading Time to Think?

· 4.3 - What steps has the Heath Secretary taken to ensure that the stories he has listened to are genuine, and not being amplified by special interest groups with an anti-trans agenda?

· 4.4 - Is the Health Secretary aware that many detransitioners (like ex-gays in the early 2000s) are the subject of right-wing influence campaigns[7]?

· 4.5 - Is the Health Secretary aware that many detransitioners cite the very conditions Labour has created: lack of access to gender affirming care and legal recognition and increase stigma, especially parental pressure, as reasons for their detransition[8][9]?

5. Who you are listening to and who you aren’t.

What I heard

You admire the gender-critical writer Hannah Barnes.

You mentioned how gender-critical campaign groups like Sex Matters now disagree with you and want the PB trial stopped.

You assured me you do listen to trans voices.

James Palmer expressed confidence in Professor Simon Wessley, chair of the CYP Gender Dysphoria Research Oversight Board

You asked about my early concerns about Alice’s transition and my path to changing my mind.

The Cass report is the definitive guide to trans healthcare and you are committed to implementing its recommendations.

My response

The media, the judiciary, the civil service and government is awash with cis people acting against the interests of trans people. Kemi Badenoch as Women and Equalities minister boasted, in a tweet famous amongst trans people, that the reason the UK had managed to enforce a puberty blocker ban was because the Conservatives had deliberately placed gender-critical people in positions of power in equalities and health, it was “when the ministers changed that everything changed”. As one trans acquaintance said to me at the time - you couldn’t torture a confession like that out of most people.

I told you, you are centring the wrong voices. Sex Matters are all over the DHSC. They purport to be women’s rights campaigners but singularly campaign against trans people including promoting conversion practices. They do not recognise trans existence and frame trans people as mentally ill. It is not for people who explicitly state that trans people should not exist, to be having any input into their healthcare decisions. It’s absurd.

You seemed quite put out that they are now opposing you on the puberty blocker trial. I warned you that this is what they do, they move the goalposts, they will never stop.

A recent petition, ‘Cancel the clinical trial into puberty blockers & safeguard vulnerable children’ has over 146,000 signatures. Impressive until you consider it was promoted on X to over 250 million people.[10] Trans people don’t have the influence or the reach but tens of thousands of trans people can organise within days of the Supreme Court ruling to march on parliament whilst gender-critical protests garner attendance of dozens or a few hundred.

Elon Musk and J.K. Rowling are not gender experts, yet their malign influence on the trans community is undeniable. Rowling’s millions funds the gender-critical fight in the courts. Gender-critical activists are always on the lookout for a victim, searching for a doctor to sue, a school to harass, a girl guide leader or a young trans brownie to intimidate.

NHS doctor Beth Upton has been hauled through the courts and subjected to trial by media for merely existing. She has left the country to start a new life and gender-critical activists continue to harass her and set the Australian press on to her. They are vindictive bullies. Your governments approach to trans people plus a complete failure to regulate the media has led us here.

I told an anecdote about Maya Forstater attending the Transmission gig at Wembley, to illustrate gender-critical methods. She wasn’t there for the music, dancing and joy, but to stir up trouble. Her attendance exposes her; trans people aren’t the threat she claims.

I told how Helen Joyce gave an interview where she scoffed, “One woman told me she was disciplined at work for misgendering a corpse”. When I saw this broadcast, I wept. Ever since Forstater won her case and gender-critical beliefs became protected and ‘worthy of respect in a democratic society’ they began to outrank the protected characteristic of gender reassignment and the modifying sentence in the ruling ‘this does not mean you can misgender with impunity’ has been erased. In thinking the right to voice gender-critical beliefs is more important than being compassionate to the bereaved or respectful of the dead, even if that’s your literal job, Joyce revealed herself to be utterly devoid of empathy. This is the very first reassurance Peter sought from the undertaker when he rang to arrange for Alice’s body to be collected from Brighton, that her gender would be respected. It was and we were grateful.

I told these stories because they are important, they reveal a contempt for trans people.

Dr Barratt at Alice’s inquest said: “I can’t think of any other condition (other than perhaps termination of pregnancy) where random people who themselves aren’t patients, neither are they professionals, feel they have an absolute right to have a view on what should be provided to people who aren’t them, not even people they know, individuals with no connection at all having a view, and that view apparently, seemingly, shaping services”.

The 2010 NHS white paper, Liberating the NHS - No decision about me, without me, [11]emphasises involving patients and carers in medical decision as a central NHS principle. But for years now, the government and many public authorities have listened less and less to trans people, their families and experts in gender care and more and more to people who are not patients, not families and not experts and should not have a voice.

Two judges in independent remarks have said that neither Helen Joyce [12] nor Maya Forstater[13] have any expertise on trans healthcare and their evidence should not be heard or not be taken into account.

Government consultations are carried out to appear as if you are listening but you aren’t. 51 organisations responded to the consultation on the puberty blocker ban, the BMA, RCGP and RCPsych all opposed a ban. So did the new CYP gender service (North-west). In total more than twice as many respondents opposed the ban than supported it (59% v 27%). One of the few organisations to support the ban was the government. This is not a neutral position. I believe the consultation on sex-hormones for 16- and 17-year-olds will inevitably go the same way.

Abigail Thorn a trans actor has briefed the Green party on trans healthcare. She’s offered to brief you. Given the Green party’s recent electoral wins, whilst explicitly supporting trans rights, this seems like an offer you shouldn’t refuse.

Gender-critical people can be very plausible. Gordon Guyatt – the eminent physician who coined the term evidence-based medicine admits he fell for their guiles. He cancelled a research agreement with SEGM in 2024 stating that “when the agreement started in 2021, the organization appeared to us, as non-trans, cis-gender researchers to be legitimately evidence-based. We will no longer accept funding from SEGM.” He went on to criticise the cherry-picking of the evidence in trans healthcare.[14]

Everyone involved in decision making for trans healthcare is cis gender. At worse you are deliberately cherry-picking and manufacturing evidence to meet a political goal. At best you fail to understand the needs of trans people and the reality of their existence and you do not realise that many of those advising you do not support trans people one jot. They have you duped, just as they duped Professor Guyatt.

And it’s not just you and Prof. Guyatt. James Palmer, in admiring Simon Wessley’s strong research credentials appears equally susceptible. A chair who led the discredited PACE trial into ME treatment, with a track record of attributing unexplained medical conditions in women and girls to psychosomatic or 'social contagion' origins, is a serious concern when overseeing research into gender dysphoria — where social contagion narratives are already being used to discredit trans youth. [15] The concerns about Wessley are substantial and documented by Trans Safety Network[16]

My story

I had concerns Alice had been groomed, she spent a lot of time online. My profession’s history of pathologizing difference at first led me away from Alice not towards her. I hit menopause and an anger against patriarchy rose up inside me just as the media ramped up its campaign of negative stories about trans people in the press. It was a perfect storm. I think menopause and anger at the patriarchy might explain a lot of gender-critical behaviour. Trans people are an easier target than cis men. The tragedy is, that for all their apparent success, gender-critical woman are pawns to the patriarchy and ultimately acting against the interests of all women.

I soon learnt this and learnt not to be afraid. I saw I’d fallen for media scaremongering. And most importantly, I saw how socially transitioning eased so much distress for Alice. I didn’t need my boy child back; I had my happy child back. Until she was assaulted once, then once more.

Most trans people are born to cis parents. The idea that we’re all actively’ transing’ our kids is false. Most affirmative parents’ stories begin like mine, with doubts and worry - but most, like me, come round. We work quietly out of sight to support our children, who often ask us not to speak publicly. Alice’s death has freed me of that responsibility but it shouldn’t take a death to bring us to your door.

TransParent Action is a parent campaign group created to share positive stories from supportive families. In five months, we’ve collected 746 ( now 797) UK parent signatories to our TransParent Pledge[17]. Unlike Bayswater parents with 650+ parents established in 2019 we centre our child’s needs over our own.

Questions/follow up

· 5.1 - Is the Health Secretary aware of Badenoch’s tweet? Has he considered its claims?

· 5.2 - Exactly how many meetings have been held with anti-trans campaigners, versus meetings that include trans people? What trans organisations has the Health Secretary met with and what anti-trans organisations and in what numbers/ratios?

· 5.3 - Given the Health Secretary met with Bayswater support group when will he meet with TransParent Action?

· 5.4 - Is the Health Secretary aware of the investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism which appeared to show Bayswater members engaging in child abuse? Why did his department twice consult Bayswater on proposals for children's healthcare after that report was published?

· 5.5 - What conflict-of-interest declarations were required for members of the CYP Gender Dysphoria Research Oversight Board, and who scrutinised them?

· 5.6 - Why does NHS England’s internal strategy recommend engagement with Bayswater and SEGM — a group the Southern Poverty Law Centre designates as a hate group — while treating WPATH (world professional association for transgender health) as merely something to be ‘aware of’?

· 5.7 - Would the Health Secretary like me to introduce him to Abigail Thorn?

6. The Evidence – The Cass Review and the evidence you ignore

What I heard

There is insufficient evidence for the use of puberty blockers and hormone therapy for children and young people.

Cass is all the evidence you need. Cass is eminent in her field.

My response

Cass is a high-ranking paediatrician with an interest in neurodiversity. Prior to accepting to undertake her report into transgender healthcare services she had no experience in transgender healthcare.

Cass and her Review of services has been elevated to a status is does not deserve. She repeats the talking points and discredited ideas of conversion therapists. She engaged with a teacher dismissed from his employment for his transphobic views. Her claims about the long-term neurological effects of puberty blockers were based on one study done on 15 mice of one sex who weren't even given blockers. Its final conclusions contradict and, in some cases, seriously misrepresent its own systematic reviews. I could go on and on. It did not recommend a ban on puberty blockers. It is being misused by your government. What followed was a political choice, not a clinical one.

Joss Reimer head of Canadian public health and ex-chair of the Canadian Medical Association recently said: “When a government bans specific treatments, it interferes with a doctor's ability to empower patients to choose the best care possible”.[18]

Even Enoch Powell back in 1961 when he was Conservative health secretary and facing criticisms about the oral contraceptive pill, asserted that medical decisions were always for the doctor and patient to decide.

The government should not be intervening in trans healthcare at all. Transition is a person’s choice not a political policy.

It is beyond frustrating that Cass remains the final word on gender affirming care for young people when methodological critiques of it are published in multiple peer-reviewed journals and new international evidence contradicts the report’s findings.[19][20][21][22] (Small selection linked).

I drew your attention to the University of Utah systematic review. [23]

It is everything that Cass is not:

· It used a pre-registered protocol which it did not deviate from.

· It has been subject to independent peer review.

· It didn’t impose unexplained quality thresholds to dismiss most evidence. It reviewed it all.

· It examined hundreds of clinical studies with data from over 28000 minors.

It drew these conclusions:

Key findings pp. 90-91

“The conventional wisdom among non-experts has long been that there are limited data on the use of GAHT in pediatric patients with GD. However, results from our exhaustive literature searches have led us to the opposite conclusion.”
“The evidence supports that the treatments are effective in terms of mental health, psychosocial outcomes…The evidence also supports that the treatments are safe in terms of changes to bone density, cardiovascular risk factors, metabolic changes, and cancer.”
“Virtually no regret associated with receiving the treatments, even in the very small percentages of patients who ultimately discontinued them. Reasons for discontinuing GAHT are varied, but changed minds about gender identities is only a very minor proportion overall.”
“Policies to prevent access to and use of GAHT for treatment of GD in pediatric patients cannot be justified based on the quantity or quality of medical science findings or concerns about potential regret in the future”

This is an extremely high-quality robust peer reviewed analysis which emphatically shows support of gender affirming care for minors. But it is not enough for you.

It notably asserts that those referred for gender affirming care under eighteen have lower suicide risk that those referred as adults.

Cass disregarded most of the evidence in support of gender affirming care on the basis that the research was weak. This is recognized to be a poor research approach. A lot of paediatric care has weak evidence. The recent review of HRT for U18s has similarly disregarded 97% of the evidence.[24][25]

The government is demanding a level of evidence for trans healthcare that many, if not most other healthcare - from knee surgery to weight loss drugs – do not meet. Transgender healthcare is being subjected to a more extreme level of scrutiny than any other medical intervention.

The NHS has prescribed weight-loss jabs to approximately 400 under-18s, some as young as nine.

SSRIs are often prescribed to trans youth whose mental health is deteriorating whilst they await gender affirming care. These drugs can cause long term sexual dysfunction and there are concerns about bone density and cognitive development for children put on these drugs.

Questions/follow up

· 6.1 - Can the Health Secretary point to the specific recommendation in the Cass Report that recommend the indefinite ban on puberty blockers and the de facto halt of hormone treatment?

· 6.2 – Given everything that has come to light since December 2024 does the Health Secretary still assert that the evidence from Cass is robust enough to support the ban on puberty blockers and the direction of travel for trans health care?

· 6.3 - When will the government have enough evidence?

· 6.4 - Why does the DHSC hold gender care to a standard of complexity and evidence it applies to no other condition?

· 6.5 - Please show me the high-quality long-term studies on the use of weight loss injections in u18’s. Particularly ones that prove they are safe for young people’s bone-density, sexual function, and cognitive development, issues that the government is so concerned about for trans youth?

· 6.6 - Please show me the high-quality long-term studies on the use of SSRIs in u18’s, particularly ones that prove they are safe for young people’s bone-density, sexual function, and cognitive development, issues that the government is so concerned about for trans youth?

7. Beyond Cass – safety concerns, the puberty blocker ban and PATHWAYS (puberty blocker) trial, the risks you ignore.

What I heard

You repeatedly asserted that your main concern is the safety of children and young people and that there is insufficient evidence as to the safety of puberty blockers and hormone therapy for children and young people, citing Cass as the definitive evidence behind your decision to withdraw treatment.

Puberty blockers are safe for cis children with precocious puberty because it is an entirely different indication and used for a shorter period.

There is more to gender affirming care than medication.

You acknowledge there are risks from removing access to medication for trans youth.

You’ve undertaken no research to understand the risks of removing trans healthcare.

You signpost children who are waiting for gender affirming care, and those under threat of having their medication removed, to mental health services and suicide prevention hotlines.

Cass has supported all your decisions.

Doctors aren’t knocking on your door begging you to let them prescribe.

James Palmer hinted that if the NHS PATHWAYS trial showed a benefit, then this would mean puberty blockers could be licensed and this would transform trans healthcare.

My response

There is evidence (see before). You choose to ignore it.

I agree there is more to gender affirming care than medication, there’s voice coaching, laser hair removal and sometimes surgery but I don’t think that’s what you meant.

You couldn’t meet me halfway and agree that medication is part of the package and should be available. You are set on NHS CYP approach. As far as I can see all that’s on offer is gender exploratory therapy.

Your actions in response to concerns about the risk and safety to trans children and young people from puberty blockers, and now sex-hormones, only apply in one direction.

You seem to only care about the risks to trans children from medication given to help them transition.

You do not seem to care about the risks to trans children of denying them the medication they need to transition, or the risks from taking it away if their treatment has already started.

Looking at the precocious puberty argument. The indication to start treatment is when puberty starts before the age of eight in girls and ten in boys. [26] There are cases of puberty starting in infants. [27] The treatment stops around the age of physiological puberty and bone maturation, twelve to thirteen in girls and thirteen to fourteen in boys. So cis children with precocious puberty might, in extreme cases, be on puberty blockers for twelve years. Puberty blockers are started later in trans children.

Whilst there are legitimate concerns to any child of being on puberty blockers for too long and effectively being left without a puberty, NHS England’s own policies exacerbate the risk in trans children by refusing to prescribe sex hormones to facilitate a different puberty to under sixteens in all circumstances. This problem will only worsen if this ban of sex hormones is extended to 17- and 18-year-olds.

If trans children were allowed puberty blockers, they should be on them for less time than cis children, the opposite of the claims made in the meeting.

Am I right in understanding that what worries you is this; if trans youth receive puberty blockers they are left without sex hormones at a later age than children with precocious puberty? Is this the problem?

This is NHS inflicted iatrogenic harm and nothing to do with the effects of the drugs per se, but all about how they are being used in trans people. It is the refusal to reintroduce sex hormones to facilitate the puberty the child needs, in a timely manner, that is the issue.

Aside from precocious puberty, blockers are also used in older, intersex children. They are prescribed to pause an unexpected puberty to reduce the mental distress this can cause. This scenario closely mimics the experience of some trans children experiencing an unwelcome puberty in terms of the age of treatment and duration of treatment. You did not engage with this comment.

March 2026 [cl1] NHS England sent GPs updated guidance [28] telling them they must not enter shared care agreements for children receiving private care, (when private care is all they have). If GPs comply and stay quiet this doesn’t mean they agree. This is a fallacious reason to imply your policies are acceptable. GPs are human, prone to wanting to stay out of trouble, not be sued, keep their jobs and pensions, not be plastered over the pages of the Daily Mail. James Palmer himself highlighted the personal risk they bear as prescribers. Those who are bolder and continue to prescribe and monitor against your directive are hardly going to shout about it to you. And yes, some are transphobes and applaud your decisions.

At Alice’s inquest Dr Barratt said gender care was no more complex than managing diabetes and a confident GP could learn to treat a trans patient in a few hours at one of his training sessions. But here we are with their hands tied.

Under 18s have the agency to transition, whether or not they do so under medical supervision or not. Those young people who are obtaining hormones both privately and outside healthcare settings are now unmonitored and unprotected, on government advice. This is unconscionable. It’s a safeguarding failure, not a safeguarding intervention. You have a duty to minimise harm by providing, not removing, care.

The Cass Review’s position on hormones was caution and clinical oversight for 16–17-year-olds, not prohibition. The Cass Review's own systematic review found consistently positive outcomes for trans youth prescribed hormones. The final conclusions of the report directly contradict this evidence and no explanation is provided for why this is.

Cass has recently said that some of your decisions might be politically motivated. You seemed quite taken a back. You cast doubts on the veracity of any quote. I said I would find it for you.

It was in response to the announcement that you were pausing the PATHWAYS trial and changing its parameters (Increasing the age requirement to 14 plus)

She was quoted in the Observer [29] on 22nd February 2026, as saying the changes to the trial were “completely bizarre” and “there are no new research findings and the MHRA hasn’t presented any new evidence. It feels to me like they are responding to political pressure rather than science”. A week after our meeting on 23^rd March 2026 the Puberty Blockers Clinical Trial was debated in Westminster Hall. Part of the quote was used by Labour party backbencher, Emily Darlington and entered into Hansard.

Questions and follow up

· 7.1 - Why does the Health Secretary need new evidence on the safety of a medication to reinstate its use after he banned it, but he didn’t require any evidence on the risks of withdrawing it before doing exactly that?

· 7.2 - Is James Palmer looking to a future where puberty blockers could be prescribed in primary care without referral to specialist services?

· 7.3 - Is the PATHWAYS trial, a single study limited to 226 participants going to be the definitive study that settles the matter?

· 7.4 - Why are no trans people involved in the design or study of the trial?

· 7.5 – Why is the Health Secretary ignoring the UTAH study and multiple other international studies?

· 7.6 - Would you please confirm or correct my interpretation of NHS use of puberty blockers for intersex children?

· 7.7 - Is the Health Secretary aware of the literature dating back to at least 2013 highlighting discrimination by GPs against trans people as significant barriers to healthcare? The Women and Equalities Select Committee was made aware of this in 2016.

· 7.8 - How does the Department define withdrawing monitoring of children’s healthcare as consistent with its safeguarding obligations?

· 7.9 - Does the Health Secretary think trans people feel more or less safe under the Labour government?

8. Mental health in the trans community

What I heard

You are concerned about the mental health of trans people.

You are putting more and more resources into supporting children and young people on the waitlist.

You want children to have the time and space to explore and get to the bottom of their thoughts and feelings, their issues.

My response

The lived experience within the trans community and from parents of trans children is this: the puberty blocker ban, general lack of access to gender affirming care across all age groups and rising transphobia within our society, including in a school setting, has increased mental health problems.

An increase in mental health problems leads to an increase in suicidal ideation. Increased thoughts of suicide lead to increase suicide attempts. An increase in attempts leads to increased completed suicides.

You don’t have to be a psychiatrist or even a doctor to understand this basic chain of events.

Everybody involved in your decision making must know and understand that lack of access to gender affirming care damages the mental health of trans children and young people, and in some cases damages it so badly it is not recoverable. This is happening on your watch.

Your policy choices are causing serious harm to a whole generation of trans children. You cannot pretend you don’t know. When you write to families and young people to tell them you’re removing their trans healthcare you signpost them to mental health crisis lines and suicide charities.

In treating trans people differently to other groups, you are subjecting them to trauma that may last a lifetime. Young people are particularly vulnerable. It’s not just about medication and it’s not just about suicide. Suicide is the tip of the iceberg. It’s about a whole group of people being told they are less than and other, that they do not know themselves, that they are unreliable and not to be trusted, that they are unworthy of medical care, that they must wait and wait and wait. And that while they wait, and even after, that they can’t take a pee or join clubs or play a sport.

Ben Dew spoke eloquently of his work with Brighton Allsorts Youth Project where he’s been in post for fifteen years. He’s seen the mental health of young trans people in his city decline. He assesses the people in front of him, not academic papers. Trans people put their poor mental health down to lack of access to healthcare. Ben is afraid of what’s coming.

Meanwhile NHS England searches for another cause, from Covid to mobile phones, to adverse events in childhood.

Being trans could be considered an adverse event of childhood given the trauma trans children experience growing up in a cis dominated world that fails to recognise them. Yet the narrative that it is supportive parents who abuse, a narrative validated by Cass, takes hold and grows.

I talked at length about shame, Alice’s and mine and asked you not to give trans people shame that is not theirs to carry.

Questions/ Follow up

· 8.1 - Do we really just have to wait and see if Ben is right, if the trans community is right?

· 8.2 - Do we just have to wait for the suicide rates to be high enough?

9. Suicide rates in the trans community

This part of the meeting caused me considerable distress. The trans community is very concerned about an upturn in the rate of suicide amongst trans children and young people, in trans people of all ages, that began under the previous administration and is set to continue under yours unless you change tack.

What I heard

Both you and James Palmer repeatedly contested that government policy enacted by NHS England has caused a rise in suicide rates in trans children and young people.

James Palmer called the 450% rise in suicide rates in trans people under the ages of 18 in 2021-2022, the year my daughter died, ‘just a blip’. He handed me a paper to support his claims. He repeatedly stated the best outcome for him would be for me to go back to the trans community and tell them they are wrong about increased suicide rates. He laid the blame for any increased suicide rates at the hands of the trans community, in their daring to speak out and repeatedly told me to review WHO guidelines on speaking about suicide.

Whilst some acknowledgement was given to the high rates of suicide in the trans population compared to the general population little thought was given to this, over and above it being a worry.

My response

I found James Palmer patronising and largely bereft of empathy. In a meeting made at my request to talk about the suicide of my daughter and fears for other young lives, his priority was to dispute any upward trend in suicide rates and use me to spread this message.

I told James Palmer I felt criticised. He rebutted, “no, no, not you.” I was appalled. He tried to drive a wedge between me and the trans community and separate me off from those I was there to support. I am not his puppet cis ally and I will not be telling the trans community to stop speaking out. Not least because the paper he handed me as evidence, had ‘this preprint reports new research that has not been certified by peer review and should not be used to guide clinical practice’ typed in bold across the front page.

It’s disgraceful that the trans community and allies are told repeatedly that the sample size is too small to make our claims of rising suicide rates and we are being irresponsible, but when the government is in possession of new research that supports their story the same sample size is suddenly good enough and you are not being irresponsible at all.

It is the government’s responsibility to share what information they have with the community in a transparent, clear and calm way. I didn’t understand James Palmer’s reasoning that it would be better if I did it. Presumably he understands he doesn’t have the trust of the trans community. It is not my job to restore that trust but his.

Trans people are continuing to make FOIs and investigate trans deaths to establish data, that your own department fails to find or refuses to acknowledge in a transparent way. That the community must continue to search for the truth, does not speak to the dignity and respect you espouse.

Questions/follow up

· 9.1 - Please confirm that James Palmer has been made aware of my comments. I hope he might refrain from speaking like this to another bereaved mother.

· 9.2 - Is James Palmer aware that the WHO, who issued the guidelines about discussing suicide (that he seems certain I haven’t read and don’t understand), also issued guidelines recommending the depathologisation of trans healthcare? Has he read and understood them?

· 9.3 - It is the DHSC and NHS England’s responsibility to share the evidence you have on trans suicide rates in a transparent and responsible way. I would like an apology for being asked to share evidence of an unsatisfactory quality as if it is proof.

· 9.4 - If you are as sympathetic to trans suicide rates as you claim you should be commissioning research into the huge disparity between trans suicide rates compared to the general population. What are your plans to commission research in this area?

10.Cass’s shroud waver remark.

What I heard

You could not speak for Cass but you were certain that her remark was not intended for me. You would speak to her about it.

My response

You seemed unable to appreciate how her comment landed with me. I agree, I doubt she had me in mind when she said it, but if not me, who? In coming to her defence in this way you imply it’s ok for her to bad mouth trans people, even though they and I are saying the same thing. It’s one of many ways in which you hold trans people to a different standard. Trans people have lost loved ones to suicide, but it is as if their feelings do not matter as much as mine do in relation to Cass’s words.

Questions/Follow up

· 10.1 – Has the Health Secretary spoken to Hilary Cass with regard to her shroud waver remarks. If she regrets her words she needs to regret them publicly with regard to the whole community, not just me.

Our loved ones are dying at excessive rates and we will figuratively, if not literally, wave our shrouds.

11.The Appleby Report

We know Alice wasn’t counted for the report. Who else is missing?

Based on all the information in the public domain Appleby’s review should more accurately have concluded:

· I saw no significant change suicide rates in data from the Tavistock, however there were problems with data quality so my analysis should be approached with caution.

· NCMD data showed a marked rise in deaths by suicide amongst trans children and young people.

· This rise was concurrent with removal of access to gender affirming healthcare for under 18s.

Questions

· 11.1 - Did Appleby advise the Health Secretary of the 2021–22 NCMD figures at the time he delivered his review (that the Health Secretary later relied on in parliament to downplay any risk from the puberty blocker ban)?

· 11.2 - If yes, why did the Health Secretary fail to acknowledge that rise in his parliamentary statement?

· 11.3 - if not — given Appleby’s gender-critical associations on social media — he needs to be asked, why he hid it from the review and from the DHSC who commissioned the review?

· 11.4 - Will you make a statement to the House about how you are looking into the data on suicide rates since NHS England stopped treating trans young people and that the answer is not as settled as you previously believed?

Dr Barratt said at Alice’s inquest, “Statistically, the thing that most lowers the risk of completed suicide is actual treatment.” By treatment he meant gender affirming care.

12.How do the Health Secretary and the Head of NHS England CYP Gender Services understand gender affirming care for u18’s to look like in the NHS in April 2026?

What I heard

I heard lots of woolly language that all had the same sentiment at its heart.

Children and young people need support, time to think, to question and explore, opportunities to talk and reflect about who they are and where they want to land. They need mental health care.

James Palmer said the new CYP gender services are not practising conversion therapy and are getting good feedback.

My response

The approach to trans healthcare that you both espoused was the dominant approach for trans youth care for most of the 20th Century. It resulted in profound harm and was widely discredited by the early 2000s. We are now going in reverse.

The Equality and Health Inequalities Impact Assessment (EHIA) statement on the effects of withdrawing medical treatment says: ‘young people who hold an expectation of securing an NHS prescription for MAF (masculinising and feminising) hormones will continue to have access to other forms of specialist clinical support through the NHS’.

This will be in line with The NHS England interim service specification for gender incongruence (June 2023) which describes a ‘multi-disciplinary approach to care that focuses on psychosocial and psychological approaches, and psychoeducation and aims to reduce distress and promote wellbeing and functioning. NHS England would discourage all individuals from sourcing MAF hormones outside of NHS policy’.

I support psychotherapy and multidisciplinary approaches. But NHS England’s long game of repeated assessment and talking therapy which withholds medication and discourages sourcing it elsewhere is not truly multidisciplinary. Using terms like holistic feels deliberate, it sounds caring and most people don’t examine the detail. It is not holistic, it appears to have desistance as a desired outcome.

This is NOT what gender affirming care looks like. The CYP gender services are not gender services. They are holding cells. NHS settings and KCSIE guidance discourage social transition. It sounds to me like trans children are being subjected to conversion practices.

The Memorandum of Understanding of Conversion Practices, [30]which NHS England has signed up to, describes ’conversion therapy’ as ‘an umbrella term for a therapeutic approach, or any model or individual viewpoint that demonstrates an assumption that any sexual orientation or gender identity is inherently preferable to any other, and which attempts to bring about a change of sexual orientation or gender identity, or seeks to suppress an individual’s expression of sexual orientation or gender identity on that basis… and sometimes may be covertly practised under the guise of mainstream practice without being named.

Current youth gender services deny a medical route to all children. It denies puberty blockers and sex-hormones to those that do need them, in order to protect those who might not need a medical route from ever having access to that path.

In this way we see clearly how the health outcomes of cis children are prioritised over the health outcomes of trans children.

Closeted children, like Alice, are at particular risk from your holistic services. Those who only come out when their dysphoria becomes overwhelming, often at the onset of puberty are, frankly, something of a medical emergency. These children do not have time for the years and years of assessment that you hope will filter out the ‘confused and abused’.

It doesn’t matter how much you invest, how many new clinics you open if all you offer is gender exploratory therapy or ‘Cass informed therapy’, the new kid on the psychotherapy block, which is conversion therapy wrapped up like a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

NHS gender services for children and young people prevent trans kids from transitioning and expressing their gender. This meets the criteria for the definition of conversion therapy his own organisation has signed up to.

“Good feedback" was consistently used as a justification to support the abuse of trans (and indeed gay) patients at clinics throughout the 20th Century.

Questions/follow up

· 12.1 - Will the service user feedback from CYP gender service be independently scrutinised?

· 12.2 – How is NHS England controlling for factors like parental bias, self-selection among the cohort, and the pressure of power dynamics when assessing this feedback?

· 12.3 – What is the evidence that ‘Cass informed therapy’ is effective for managing gender dysphoria in those children who experience it?

· 12.4 - Can James Palmer explain in what way NHS CYP gender services do not meet the Memorandum of Understanding of Conversion Practices definition of conversion practices?

13.Adult Gender Affirming Care

I told you trans adults are worried you are coming after their trans healthcare.

What I heard

You weren’t coming after anyone’s healthcare.

You couldn’t envisage circumstances in which that would happen.

James Palmer said investment in gender care is second to none in terms of healthcare at the moment.

My response

This isn’t true, you came after trans healthcare for under eighteens and removed it. I asked again and got your second answer which is concerning and leaves space for ‘circumstances’ to come to light.

In December 2025 it was announced that the Research Oversight Board's remit was to be expanded to adult patients. [31] And in March 2026 a review into the evidence of HRT in trans adults was announced[32]. No board members have experience working with adult transgender people. Will this review into adult gender services be the thing that changes the circumstances, so that you do intervene in adult trans health care? We will have to wait and see.

We didn’t discuss the Levy Review of adult gender clinics. It found serious problems with service quality and waiting times and made recommendations for improved, properly funded services.

Whilst Levy had a narrow scope and didn’t address many problems inherent in gender clinic design: gatekeeping, pathologisation, and blatant discrimination from clinicians, - which harms patients and wastes clinical time, he did recommend the introduction of an enhanced local GP service and mandatory training — something my family argued for after Alice's inquest in 2023 and as implemented in the Welsh model for adult services — which would take pressure off centralised clinics and reduce the growing number of GPs refusing to treat trans people. This positive direction of travel on supporting gender transition is inconvenient for a government committed to restriction.

I remind you Dr Barratt said gender care was no more complex than managing diabetes and a confident GP could learn to treat a trans patient in a few hours at one of his training sessions.

He said it was ludicrous gender care was in specialist commissioning when it’s as frequent as cleft lip.

Questions/follow up

· 13.1 - What funding is earmarked for gender services and how does this equate to funding for other conditions?

· 13.2 - What specific Levy recommendations has the Department committed to implementing, and on what timeline?

· 13.3 - Why does gender affirming care remain under specialist commissioning?

14.Single-sex spaces and trans rights

What I heard

Towards the end of the meeting the conversation drifted into single sex spaces. You have a responsibility to “biological women” especially those who have been victims of sexual violence.

You opined about excluding trans women from female hospital wards.

When challenged you said you understood trans women were far more likely to be victims.

My response

Stop framing trans women as predatory cis men.

Not In Our Name (NION) Women is a collective of cis women with over 102 000 signatures, who state: ‘we reject the weaponisation of our identities to justify discrimination against trans people and want government and other bodies to focus on the real threats:

One woman is killed by a man every three days in the UK (Femicide Census, 2023)
1.7 million women were impacted by domestic violence in 2023 (ONS, 2023)
98% of perpetrators of sexual offences are men (Cambridge Rape Crisis Centre, 2023)’

The conflict of trans rights versus women’s rights is a Trojan horse used by the far-right to bring in more discrimination against LGB people and all women: same-sex marriage, abortion rights, divorce rights, employment rights and so on. Most women can see this.

The government must understand trans rights don’t conflict with women’s rights. If Labour’s choices about trans people started as a brutal vote winning strategy, thinking you would win the votes of women and keep power, you must surely now see you were wrong…but I’m not sure it is just that.

Since our meeting you’ve appeared on LBC pursuing your argument for trans segregation in the NHS. It’s offensive to me. We know from FOI requests made by TransLucent[33] [34] that over several years just one complaint was made about a trans woman on a hospital ward. It was not upheld. Meanwhile thousands of sexual assaults, including hundreds of rapes, are carried out by cis men - patients, staff and visitors - in hospital settings every year. We glean this information from police records because NHS records aren’t good enough. [35]

Let’s think about this whilst we hold in mind that the NHS did nothing to help Alice stay safe. Alice was never a predator only a victim of abuse, abuse that your framing encourages.

Let’s think about this while we remember Joelle Plowright, a young trans woman who died of an aggressive but highly treatable cancer, because transphobia left her undiagnosed and languishing untreated in a side room for too long.

Her mother, like the mothers of Leia Sampson-Grimbly, Zach Klemment and Corei Hall, is now a friend.

Zack’s mother, Orla, is the mother I mentioned who also tried to find out from the Tavistock if her child’s death was included in the Appleby report. I had already spent months trying to find out this information about Alice, so I was grateful to be able to tell her exactly what she needed to do. Unfortunately, the Tavistock gave her the run around too. The method I’d eventually succeeded with (a subject access request) was not good enough when it came to her turn.

Questions/follow up

· 14.1 - I would be grateful if the Health Secretary would provide me with a definition for the ‘biological women’ he kept referring to.

· 14.2 - I would be grateful if the Health Secretary would follow up with the Tavistock, as promised, as to how they respond to bereaved parents who want to find out information held about their dead child, so we no longer have to press, pursue and argue, whilst we are ignored, dismissed and gaslit.

· 14.3 - Can the Health Secretary please tell staff at all CYP and adult gender clinics that it would be polite to acknowledge correspondence from anyone who emails, as I did, to inform them of a death on the waitlist?

15.NHS misogyny and transphobia

The one promise you gave me was to read Her Name Is Alice. It can say far more than I was able to convey in our meeting and this report. I heard how impressed you were by A Time to Think. I hope my memoir has also left an impression. I do want to hear your thoughts.

As mother to Alice, I was forced to examine my biases around trans existence. Hannah Barnes has never had to do that; few gender-critical people have. Those parents who remain gender-critical after a child comes out are often estranged from their trans children. Is that what healthy parenting looks like? I don’t think so.

I confronted and acknowledged some of my transphobic views. It is hard to type these words, but it is necessary. Like you, I didn’t think I was transphobic, I called trans women she/ her, trans men he/him, but I held some views that I now consider to be transphobic in other people, so I must acknowledge that I was, however briefly. Now I am not, I am an ally.

You think of yourself as an ally too. Perhaps my memoir and these words will help you reflect on this uncomfortable but necessary truth, you are not.

Whilst Alice was alive the NHS saw me as a difficult mother. Now she is dead I think the government sees me as, ‘the wrong kind of mother to the wrong kind of child’. It’s galling to see other bereaved parents’ campaigns bringing positive policy change. Keir Starmer’s admiration for ‘3 dads walking’ particularly sticks in the throat. Their campaigning has brought about welcome suicide prevention guidance for schools, but this same guidance includes recommendations that harm the mental health of young trans people in education and elevate their suicide risk.

15.1 - You acknowledged that the NHS has a problem with misogyny. You didn’t acknowledge that it has a problem with transphobia. I think it does. Do you?

[1] https://itgl.lu/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/GenderVarianceUK-report.pdf

[2] https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/draft-ehia-maf-hormones-for-consultation-1.pdf

[3] https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/pausing-puberty-blockers-trial-is-bizarre-says-cass

[4][4] https://datastudio.google.com/reporting/7a80f3a0-3ae8-4eb1-8bf3-1af671779e4d/page/ARUvE?ref=wearequeeraf.com

[5] https://www.premierchristianity.com/interviews/wes-streeting-mp-my-faith-made-it-very-difficult-to-accept-my-sexuality/15973.article

[6] https://theconversation.com/critics-claim-gender-clinics-are-seeing-an-excess-of-trans-boys-but-new-data-suggest-otherwise-257817

[7] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/26895269.2025.2447963

[8] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8213007/

[9] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10265220/

[10] https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/751839

[11]https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/216980/Liberating-the-NHS-No-decision-about-me-without-me-Government-response.pdf

[12] https://purposedrivenlawyers.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Tickle-v-Giggle-Judgment.pdf