𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

A Labour and Tory MP have united to make a fresh plea for the controversial puberty blocker trial to be stopped. Labour’s Jonathan Hinder and Conservative Rebecca Paul urged Health Secretary Wes Streeting to halt the “shameful experiment on children” by the NHS.

They warned of the damage the clinical trial could pose to youngsters and raised concerns over whether children can consent. The pair also insisted that the issue was “not about left or right” but “about right and wrong”.

Writing jointly in the Daily Express, they said: “Puberty can be a tough time for anyone. But what children need is support to accept their healthy bodies as they are, rather than being told their bodies are somehow ‘wrong’.

“Puberty blockers will put them on the path to sterilisation, lack of sexual function, and needing medical treatment for life.

“All before they are old enough to know what is happening to them. No child can consent to this.”

Mr Hinder and Ms Paul are among dozens of MPs who have signed a cross-party letter to the Health Secretary organised by independent MP Rosie Duffield.

They added: “We know the man or woman on the street does not support this, and we have now come together with other MPs across the political spectrum to get this immoral experiment stopped.

“From Rupert Lowe to Rosie Duffield, there is probably no other political issue that we would all agree on. This is not about left or right. It is about right and wrong.”

Around 226 children as young as 10 could be recruited as part of the study.

The trial follows a recommendation by the Cass Review into children’s gender care, which concluded that the quality of research claiming to show the benefits of puberty blockers for youngsters with gender dysphoria was “poor”.

Helen Joyce, director of advocacy at sex-based rights charity Sex Matters, said: “It is deeply immoral to experiment on hundreds more children when we haven’t yet gathered data on how those children who have already been given puberty blockers are doing in adulthood.

“The person with the power and the obligation to demand a rethink is Wes Streeting. Politicians are elected to represent voters, and ministers have ultimate responsibility for their portfolios. Streeting needs to show leadership, and call a halt to the trial.”

It comes as the Health Secretary admitted in an interview last month that he was “not comfortable” with the trial.

He later told MPs on the Health and Social Care Committee that he was “uncomfortable” both with the study but also with the current ban on puberty blockers, which was made permanent in December 2024.

Mr Streeting said: “All the way through, I’ve had to weigh up risk of harm to children and young people, which is why it’s not straightforward, why I’ve lent on clinical advice from people far more qualified than us to make these decisions.

“But this is not easy, and it is not a comfortable decision, and it’s one that I wrestle with on a daily basis.”

He said he had to “weigh up at all times whether withdrawing access to this drug, or enabling access to this drug, is likely to do more or less harm depending on the choice that I’ve made – and that’s the sort of consideration I’ve had to make”.

He said he had been “confronted with a whole group of young people and their parents who looked me in the eye and told me that I was doing real harm to them, to their lives, to their mental health and wellbeing” when the puberty blocker ban was made permanent.

He told MPs: “I’ve been challenged because I’ve said in both instances that I was uncomfortable about the ban, and I’m uncomfortable about the clinical trial, and both of those statements are true, and both of those statements are consistent.”

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch and Reform UK leader Nigel Farage have both demanded the trial is scrapped.