Nigel Farage has demanded the immediate halt of the NHS puberty blocker trials, describing them as ‘state-sponsored child abuse’.
The Reform UK leader and his four fellow MPs wrote to the Prime Minister saying the experiment should be scrapped because of concerns about the long-term harm to children.
He said if his party won the next election, it would stop the controversial Pathways trial to study the effect of banned puberty-blocking drugs on more than 200 gender-questioning children.
Mr Farage’s intervention comes after Health Secretary Wes Streeting – who gave the go-ahead to the experiment – admitted he was ‘deeply uncomfortable’ with it.
Critics have launched a legal bid to have it banned by the courts, describing it as ‘state-sanctioned chemical castration’.
The five Reform MPs said in their letter to the PM: ‘This trial will expose already vulnerable children to life-changing and irreversible consequences, the full extent of which is unknown.
‘Children will be given powerful puberty blocking drugs, despite the absence of robust evidence on long-term physical, psychological, sexual and reproductive outcomes. Using children as experimental subjects in this way is ethically indefensible. The Pathways trial represents state-sponsored child abuse, dressed up as research, and is wholly incompatible with the NHS duty to safeguard children and do no harm.
‘Allowing this trial to proceed will place children at foreseeable risk while offering no credible justification that any potential benefit outweighs the harm.’
Nigel Farage has demanded the immediate halt of the NHS puberty blocker trials, describing them as ‘state-sponsored child abuse’
Mr Farage’s intervention comes after Health Secretary Wes Streeting – who gave the go-ahead to the experiment – admitted he was ‘deeply uncomfortable’ with it
The Pathways trial is due to begin in the new year on the recommendation of the 2024 Cass Review of transgender services for children. The report paved the way for puberty blockers to be banned in light of the lack of evidence the drugs were safe or effective.
The Pathways experiment is part of a wider £10.7million government-funded programme in which 226 children aged under 16 who have been diagnosed with ‘gender incongruence’ will be prescribed puberty blockers for two years.
Last week, Mr Streeting told LBC: ‘I’m not comfortable, candidly, about it. There’s something about the opposition to this. Medication that delays or indeed stops a natural part of our human development, which is puberty, I am deeply uncomfortable with.
‘The clinical advice is to go ahead with the trial, and those who advocate this medication, and lots of other countries are using medication in these cases, suggest that for trans people, this is a better course of treatment than leaving them without and with all of the distress and harm that that could be.’ His extraordinary admission has led to further pressure on the Government to abandon the trial. Tory equalities spokesman Claire Coutinho described it as ‘grotesque’.
The Department of Health said: ‘This trial will help provide the evidence that is currently lacking. Its approval came only after extremely rigorous safety checks and with multiple safeguards in place to protect young people’s wellbeing – including clinical and parental approval.’
