What I told Parliamentarians about Puberty Blockers
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Below is the transcript of a recent speech I delivered in the Houses of Parliament to parliamentarians from across the political spectrum. I was invited to talk about my concerns with the puberty blockers trial signed off by the UK government.
“As one of the people bringing a judicial review against the UK government to block the monstrous puberty blockers trial, I thought it would be useful to set out my primary concerns.
Over recent days, we have seen significant movement in this space. We witnessed Northern Ireland suspend their involvement in the trial and then, significantly, it was announced that the entire trial was to be ‘paused’ to consider ‘new safety concerns’. In truth, there is nothing new about these - they have been well-known for sometime now.
The starting point for me is that discomfort in one’s sexed-body, particularly during puberty, is completely natural, and we should not be attempting to pathologise this. For those whose distress becomes so severe, the ‘treatment’ is explorative therapy and the natural passage of time – not irreversible and extremely harmful medicalisation.
Just a few weeks ago, I launched a petition calling on the UK government to cancel the puberty blockers trial. It reached over 137,000 signatures after just 72 hours, making it one of fastest growing petitions of all time. It demonstrates the strength of feeling that exists across the United Kingdom.
The parliamentary debate is scheduled for 9th March. Last week, the government responded by doubling down and saying that they are pressing forward with the trial regardless of the public outcry. It has now been revealed that only 90 minutes of a possible 3 hours has been allotted, and the MP chosen to lead the debate is Jamie Stone. He is a LibDem MP who previously stated ‘I am a trans rights activist’ and who took to social media to emphasise that the petition doesn’t align with his views. I have met with Jamie and raised my concerns about the debate being conducted in a fair and impartial manner, and he appeared to take those concerns on board. So, let’s see what happens on the date.
The unfortunate truth is that Wes Streeting is talking out of both sides of his mouth. At an ‘LGBT+’ event in September 2025, he told the audience that banning puberty blockers in the first place made him ‘very uncomfortable’. Then, in December 2025 , on LBC, he told listeners that trialling puberty blockers made him ‘very uncomfortable’. Which is it Wes?
The UK government acknowledged an unacceptable safety risk when banning puberty blockers in first place. From the off, this is the crucial point – we already know from past studies that puberty blockers cause harm to brain development, bone growth, sexual functioning, and place children on a slippery slope towards infertility (because most children who start puberty blockers go straight onto cross-sex hormones).
Time and time again, we hear from Wes Streeting – we’re having the trial because Dr Cass recommended it. He is passing the buck.
Now, the Cass Review was extremely important. It shone a spotlight on just what had gone on in the Tavistock and cemented the complete lack of evidence for the benefits of ‘medical transitioning’.
However, I and others increasingly concerned by narrative put out by medical professionals, including Cass. She says we should trial puberty blockers to stop them being purchased through the black market. We don’t do this for heroin, or indeed other harmful and illicit substances, do we?
Most concerning is a statement from Cass that, although there is no evidence that puberty blockers work, people ‘believe passionately’ that they do. This is the antithesis of medical ethics. There are people who genuinely believe that baking soda cures cancer. There won’t be a government trial of that anytime soon.
The legal challenge I am bringing alongside Keira Bell and Bayswater Support Group is that the trial is both unlawful and irrational.
There has been a conspiracy of silence from the outset. A complete lack of transparency and a refusal to engage with us and disclose documents and protocols around the trial and the ethical assessment, justified in part on basis of ‘commercial considerations’. Given we are talking about the welfare of some of our most vulnerable children – surely commerce should not win out over public transparency?
There is a lack of proper rigour. There is no control group. In fact, it’s impossible to have a control group given the nature of puberty blockers. The follow up period is only 2 years, whereas the harm may last or not be apparent until years, maybe decades later.
Using children as guinea pigs should be an absolute last resort. Ethical practice for clinical trials requires you to test out the least invasive and risky options first. There should have been a standalone trial on the benefits of psychotherapy. Furthermore, there should have been further exploration of animal trials before moving on to our children.
Given that many thousands of children were already put on puberty blockers in the UK at the Tavistock, there is an ethical imperative to engage in data-linking to find out what happened to those children. It is simply not good enough for the government to say ‘oh, we don’t have that data, so let’s wrangle up another few hundred children’
Finally, there has to be some evidence of a concrete benefit in the first place in order to conduct a clinical trial, whereas here there is none whatsoever.
The twisted irony is that the government is considering banning zero-percentage alcohol drinks but is about to allow hundreds of children to ingest puberty blockers, putting them on a pathway towards bodily mutilation and sterilisation.
I would now like to share with you some observations in this space from my clinical work, as I work with children who believe themselves to be ‘trans’ and want to go on puberty blockers.
Firstly, almost all are autistic. Children on the autistic spectrum often experience difficulties with social belonging and may be particularly sensitive to seeking affirmation and acceptance from others. Common features of autism include more literal styles of thinking, cognitive rigidity, difficulties in identifying and articulating internal emotional states, and a tendency to place high trust in authority figures. This can increase vulnerability in certain clinical contexts.
Many of the children I work with have experienced trauma, including sexual trauma and severe bullying, and I have found that such experiences can lead to profound discomfort with and alienation from the body and a desire to escape one’s sexed identity that has become associated with harm or vulnerability. In particular, for young girls, it is well established that such experiences can lead to a rejection of the body and a sense of disconnection from it.
Almost all have question marks around same-sex attraction. There are well-known studies demonstrating that many children will end up simply coming out as gay or lesbian later if they’re left alone and don’t transition. In therapy, I frequently see sexuality and ‘gender identity’ becoming conflated. Often, feelings about sexual orientation appear first, followed soon after by a ‘trans’ identification, raising questions about whether ‘gender dysphoria’ is being used to make sense of confusing or unsettling feelings about attraction.
I have real concerns regarding informed consent. These children are so desperate to get puberty blockers that they will say or do anything to get them. Some have admitted to playing up to this. Many parents have also spent years being told their children will kill themselves if they do not allow them puberty blockers.
There are also serious concerns about children’s capacity to understand and weigh risks, especially those with autism. Many children I encounter have firmly established beliefs that puberty blockers are harmless, fully reversible, and without long-term consequence. These beliefs are often acquired through social media, activist organisations, or trusted authority figures. By way of example, I have encountered girls who have stated that, should they decide to one day have their healthy breasts removed, and later regret it, they can simply get breast implants instead. This naïve thinking and failure to consider long-term consequences is typical of even older children, let alone children as young as those who will be taking part in the puberty blocker trial. These assumptions are frequently entrenched. Where a child’s primary objective is to obtain puberty blockers, there is little incentive or psychological capacity to engage meaningfully with information about risk.
The reasons given by children I work with for wanting to transition often reflect developmental immaturity and tend to fall into two categories, neither of which reflect reality. The first is oversimplified and naïve thinking (typical of a child). Some children describe wanting to be the opposite sex because they dislike body hair or other pubertal changes, without considering non-medical ways of addressing those concerns.
Other children rely on rigid, regressive stereotypes, concluding that preferences for activities or friendships associated with the opposite sex mean they must actually be that sex. These simplistic beliefs are being treated as grounds for medical intervention.
In my opinion, puberty blockers are no different to self-harm because the desire for them arises out of extreme discomfort and unhappiness in oneself and one’s body. In every other area of mental health practice, comparable distress would be approached through careful psychological assessment and therapeutic exploration, not through irreversible medical intervention on an otherwise healthy body. In this respect, the provision of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to vulnerable children represent a striking outlier within medicine.
The suppression of puberty separates children from their peers at a critical stage of social and emotional development. While their contemporaries undergo normal physical and psychological maturation, children prescribed puberty blockers are held back from these developmental milestones, leaving them visibly out of step. This enforced divergence can intensify feelings of difference and social isolation.
The role of medicine is to treat pathology—mental or physical—not to alter healthy bodies to resolve psychological distress rooted in identity conflict. Nor is puberty a disease to be treated. Puberty is a normal developmental process that can be uncomfortable, confusing, sometimes distressing, but this is part of growing up.
In fact, studies on children’s brains have shown that if a child begins to ‘live’ as the other sex for a period of time, it can actually cause changes to their brain, making it far less likely that they will become comfortable with their biological sex. This undermines the claim that puberty blockers are merely a ‘pause’.
By contrast, research indicates that over 80 percent of children who experience cross-sex identification will eventually reconcile with their biological sex if puberty is allowed to proceed. Puberty blockers interrupt this natural developmental process and rob children of the opportunity to thrive and become comfortable with who they really are.
A central concern of mine is the way in which these interventions encourage children to reject reality. Human beings thrive when they embrace reality, not in embracing delusion. One simply cannot change sex. When a child is led to believe that their healthy body is wrong and must be altered or suppressed, this creates a deeply harmful internal narrative. In every other area of mental health practice, when a person holds beliefs that are disconnected from reality, clinicians work to help them gently re-engage with reality.
Finally, I want to say this. In my clinical practice I do not assess a child’s holistic and psychological wellness based on their feelings alone. For example, a child with an eating disorder may claim to feel better when they are at their absolute skinniest. However, that does not mean that they are ‘well’ or that this is in their best interests - in fact, quite the opposite. So, children may report as feeling happier on puberty blockers, and frequently do, but that does not mean it is not causing them serious harm.
Let us not be written into history as the country that knowingly harmed vulnerable children.”