Wes Streeting is right to ban puberty blockers

It looks like the UK Labour government is actually going to do something sensible. Last week, health secretary Wes Streeting announced plans to extend the UK’s existing ban on puberty blockers, which was put in place by the Conservatives.

Earlier this year, in the aftermath of Dr Hilary Cass’s report into NHS gender-identity services, NHS England banned the prescribing of puberty blockers outside of clinical trials. Evidence from the Cass Review, among other sources, had undeniably shown that ‘pausing’ a child’s puberty was potentially harmful. NHS Scotland soon followed suit.

In April, then Conservative health secretary Victoria Atkins announced that the ban would be extended to private clinics. Otherwise, children would still be able to access puberty blockers, particularly via questionable online practices like GenderGP.

This ban was set to expire in September, but Labour is now aiming to make it permanent. Streeting says his intention is to ‘always put the safety of our children first’, stressing that ‘our approach will continue to be informed by Dr Cass’s review, which found there was insufficient evidence to show puberty blockers were safe for under-18s’.

This is eminently sensible. Plenty of evidence shows that these drugs are not safe for children. The WPATH files, leaked earlier this year, demonstrated that puberty blockers have potential long-term side-effects including infertility, inability to orgasm and even some types of cancers. The Cass Review then stressed that, due to a lack of good-quality, long-term studies, the science surrounding puberty blockers is murky at best. Many mental, physical and psychosexual effects remain unknown. ‘For most young people’, Dr Cass concluded, ‘a medical pathway will not be the best way to manage their gender-related distress’.

As a result, the government – first under the Conservatives and now under Labour – has stepped in to prevent children from being prescribed dangerous drugs. And yet, naturally, all the usual suspects have been incensed by this attempt to keep kids safe.

The ban is being challenged in the High Court by none other than the Good Law Project, led by Jolyon Maugham, and a trans-activist group called TransActual. Speaking to the court last Friday, Maugham said the original ban was not lawful in the first place, because Atkins had supposedly overruled officials and acted on her ‘personal views’. Perhaps Maugham believes it was merely a coincidence that Atkins’s ‘personal views’ happened to be backed up by the incredibly thorough research of Dr Cass.

Maugham has had stronger things to say about Streeting. This renewed ban would ‘kill trans children’, he wrote on X last week. ‘My feelings about Wes Streeting are unprintable.’

Susie Green, former chief executive of disgraced trans charity Mermaids, has been even more hysterical. Streeting has ‘blood on his hands’, she says. ‘I am so angry and desperately sad right now. How dare Wes Streeting put so many trans kids at risk by continuing this murderous ban.’

Trans broadcaster India Willoughby has also chimed in with similarly overblown outrage. Streeting will ‘kill hundreds of young people’, he writes, calling the new health secretary a ‘monster’.

These feverish accusations all stem from the myth that children who identify as trans are more likely to commit suicide if they do not get access to so-called gender-affirming care. But the Cass Report disproved this, finding that there is no evidence to support the claim that ‘trans kids’ are at a higher risk of suicide if not prescribed puberty blockers. One study elsewhere even found that in some cases it actually increases incidents of self-harm and suicidal ideation.

When trans activists are not foaming at the mouth and blaming Streeting for murdering children, they are accusing him of being a self-hating gay. Thomas Willett, executive director of LGBT rights group Equality Amplified, writes on X: ‘It’s important to remember that Wes Streeting, a gay man, is attacking the healthcare of the very group of people who fought for the rights he enjoys today.’

Zack Polanski, deputy leader of the Green Party, has accused Streeting of ‘selling out our LGBTQIA+ communities’ with the ban and ‘continuing the right-wing attacks on trans people’. As it turns out, Polanski used to dabble in hypnotherapy that purported to be able to increase a woman’s breast size. So it’s safe to say he’s not exactly a trusted source on what is or isn’t scientifically sound.

These attacks on Streeting are all nonsensical. For starters, the notion that trans people were at the forefront of the fight for gay rights is a myth, which has been debunked by Fred Sargeant, a leading light of the gay-rights movement and a veteran of the Stonewall riots.

What’s more, Streeting will, by continuing this ban, protect a good many gay kids. We know that the vast majority of children who identify as trans grow up to be same-sex attracted. Often gender-confused children are struggling with their sexuality – a source of distress which is usually alleviated by puberty. A ban on puberty blockers, then, is precisely in the interests of struggling gay youth. The alternative is to push them down a medical pathway – to ‘fix’ them and turn them into heterosexuals. Which hardly sounds progressive.

A ban on puberty blockers will not ‘kill’ gender-confused children. It is not an attempt by Labour or Wes Streeting to victimise kids. It is an attempt to keep them out of harm’s way. The trans activists attacking Labour care more about clinging to their own fanatical ideology than they do the safety of vulnerable young people.

Lauren Smith is a staff writer at spiked.