Health Secretary vows to stop private providers prescribing puberty blockers

Private providers will be stopped from prescribing children puberty blockers, the government has insisted.

Speaking in the House of Commons, Health Secretary Victoria Atkins was giving a statement following the publication of the Cass Report into the gender identity services for children.

The Report was highly critical of the practice of giving experimental puberty blockers to children, despite a lack of evidence over its safety and the short-medium-long term consequences.

In her statement, Atkins warned that 'fashionable cultural values have overtaken evidence, safety and biological reality' and that this must now stop.

She said the exponential rise in children presenting with gender incongruence and dysphoria was driven by a 'myth'.

Atkins went on to says she would work closely with NHS England to 'root out the ideology that has caused so much unnecessary harm.'

In response, the Labour shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, called the pattern of pushing all children with gender distress onto a medical pathway a 'scandal'.

He went on to say that:

In Scotland, the SNP Government is coming under pressure to act by closing Scotland's 'tartan Tavistock' gender clinic.

One factor behind the increase in children - especially girls - presenting with gender incongruence and gender dysphoria is the availability of online pornography and especially violent, degrading porn.

Under the Online Safety Act, all online porn will be placed behind age verification, with the scheme being developed ahead of implementation.

CARE played a pivotal role in securing robust age checks for all online porn as part of that legislation. The Cass Report is just further evidence as to why this policy change is so needed.