GPs have been warned not to work with a discredited transgender clinic after the NHS issued an urgent safety alert.
Doctors have been told that they should not prescribe puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones on the advice of Gender GP as it does “not provide physiological or psychological support” to patients.
The alert, issued by the NHS body responsible for commissioning in south-east London, has led to calls for GPs across the health service to be barred from working with the controversial online clinic.
Campaigners and doctors called on the Government to tighten restrictions to stop private clinics prescribing puberty blockers on Wednesday despite evidence that they could be causing harm.
NHS England last year banned the use of the drugs outside of clinical trials after the independent case review raised concerns about the long-term impact on children’s health.
Gender GP, which is registered in Singapore and is therefore not regulated in the UK, says on its website that some NHS doctors are “very happy” to follow their care plans but “it is a bit of a postcode lottery sadly”.
It tells prospective patients the service can issue a private prescription through “a number of online pharmacies” if a person is unable to get the drugs that it prescribes on the health service.
In 2022, Gender GP claimed that there were around 800 under 18s in the UK on their books and Dr Helen Webberley, who started the clinic, has prescribed testosterone to children as young as 12.
‘Offshore organisation’
Its website provides a price list for private prescriptions of cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers, which it advises will cost around £270 for a three-month supply.
In the “urgent safety alert” believed to have been issued last month and seen by The Telegraph, GPs in south east London were told that they “should not engage with Gender GP as advised by NHSE”.
It continues: “Gender GP is an offshore organisation registered in Singapore run mainly by psychiatrists.
“The company is not registered within the UK nor is it an NHS Commissioned and regulated service. Gender GP do not provide physiological or psychological support or follow up of patients.”
GPs “are strongly encouraged not to initiate prescribing and/or engage with Gender GP” on treatments for children or adults and are warned that they will not be paid for work that they do with them.
The alert concludes: “GPs are encouraged to use their clinical judgement for patients referred by Gender GP, with the guidance to refer patients requesting treatment to a commissioned NHS Provider…
“You are urged to continue to be vigilant of requests for gender affirming medications from Gender GP and advised to send in a QA should such a request be received so that we are able to track and scale the number of requests being made.”
It is unclear if any other local NHS commissioning groups have issued alerts but The Telegraph understands that Gender GP has not been named in any warnings from NHS England.
In the interim service specification for treatment of transgender children, published last year, it said that “young people and their families are strongly discouraged from sourcing puberty suppressing or gender affirming hormones from unregulated sources or from on-line providers that are not regulated by UK regulatory bodies”.
Gender GP says on its website that whilst it “hope[s]” that young people are supported by a guardian, it will work with those who do not have parental consent.
It say that it takes “the same stance as the NHS when it comes to treating younger people” and children under 16 can consent to their treatment if they are deemed capable of making the decision.
‘Abdication of responsibility’
The site does not mention a High Court ruling which said that this concept, known as Gillick competence, was unlikely to apply to transgender treatment which led to a tightening of NHS prescribing rules in 2020.
The clinic was moved out of the UK in 2019 after Dr Webberley was found by a tribunal to have committed serious misconduct in her treatment of children, a judgment that was later overturned by the High Court. She was separately fined by magistrates for running an unlicensed transgender clinic from her home in Wales.
Dr Louise Irvine, a GP and co-chairman of the Clinical Advisory Network on Sex and Gender, called for tighter rules on unregulated private providers as the current system is an “abdication of responsibility” from the Government.
“There is no evidence of the benefit of puberty blockers but there is evidence of probable harm,” she said.
“If the service specification for the NHS is that it is safe, good practice not to provide puberty blockers outside of clinical trials but people can still get them privately, then all you are doing is allowing them to bypass those conditions that you have put in place. If something is not safe for the NHS, then it is not safe for private providers.
“It is the job of the Government to ensure safety and they have an overarching duty of care to young people.”
Her comments were echoed by Stephanie Davies-Arai, the founder of Transgender Trend which campaigns for evidence-based healthcare.
“NHS doctors should not be working with private providers who are not following the service specification,” she said. “I do not even understand how it is possible for these unregulated private providers to prescribe drugs in the UK. The regulations need to be tightened as it is unsafe for patients.”
Gender GP said: “Gender-affirming care saves lives and absolutely needs to be accessible for trans people of all ages.”
