High Court makes 'substantial' ruling on puberty blockers ban in wake of Sandyford Scotland pause
A ban on puberty blockers introduced by the Conservative government with emergency legislation was lawful, the High Court has ruled.
Campaign group TransActual, and a young person who cannot be named, made a bid to challenge the decision of now-shadow health secretary Victoria Atkins to impose a so-called “banning order” on puberty blockers, which suppress the natural production of sex hormones to delay puberty.
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Hide AdAt a hearing on July 12, the High Court in London heard the secondary legislation prevents the prescription of the medication from European or private prescribers and restricts NHS provision to within clinical trials.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and the Department of Health in Northern Ireland defended the claim and said the case should be dismissed.
The court ruling comes after the Scottish Government in April welcomed a pause on the prescription of puberty blockers for children who identify as transgender in Scotland.
The Sandyford Clinic in Glasgow, which offers gender services, said at the time that new patients aged under 18 would no longer receive hormone treatments.
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Hide AdIn a ruling on Monday, Mrs Justice Lang dismissed the challenges, which had argued the ban was unlawful.
She said: “This decision required a complex and multi-factored predictive assessment, involving the application of clinical judgment and the weighing of competing risks and dangers, with which the court should be slow to interfere.”
Although the emergency ban was implemented by the previous Conservative government, the court previously heard that it might be made permanent by new Labour ministers.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting later said he was “treading cautiously” in his decision amid “lots of fear and anxiety”. The MP for Ilford North has faced criticism from within his own party for the decision, with members of Labour’s LGBT wing writing to him earlier this month with “concerns” about an indefinite ban.
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Hide AdIn her 62-page ruling, Mrs Justice Lang referred to the Cass Review, commissioned by NHS England and published in April, which concluded that gender care is currently an area of “remarkably weak evidence” and young people have been caught up in a “stormy social discourse”.
The judge said: “In my judgment, the Cass Review’s findings about the very substantial risks and very narrow benefits associated with the use of puberty blockers, and the recommendation that in future the NHS prescribing of puberty blockers to children and young people should only take place in a clinical trial, and not routinely, amounted to powerful scientific evidence in support of restrictions on the supply of puberty blockers on the grounds that they were potentially harmful.
“Although the Cass Review did not state in terms that puberty blockers cause ‘a serious danger to health’, that was not the question that the Cass Review was asked to consider. That was a matter for the defendants to determine on all the evidence before them. It would have been premature to do so before the final report had been published.”
Following the High Court ruling, Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting said: “I welcome the court’s decision today. Children’s healthcare must be evidence-led.
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Hide Ad“Dr Cass’s review found there was insufficient evidence that puberty blockers are safe and effective for children with gender dysphoria and gender incongruence. We must therefore act cautiously and with care when it comes to this vulnerable group of young people.
“I am working with NHS England to improve children’s gender identity services, and to setting up a clinical trial to establish the evidence on puberty blockers. I want trans people in our country to feel safe, accepted, and able to live with freedom and dignity.”
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