Streeting urges Badenoch to maintain cross-party consensus on gender identity services

The health secretary, Wes Streeting, has called on the Conservatives to maintain the cross-party consensus on gender identity services built before the last election in a letter to Kemi Badenoch.

Streeting wrote to the opposition leader on Friday urging her to “take the heat and the ideology” out of debate amid controversy over a puberty blocker trial for children.

Both parties committed to implementing the recommendations of a report by the leading paediatrician Hilary Cass focused on gender identity services for under 18s in England, published in April 2024 when the Conservatives were in government. Cass recommended a puberty blocker trial as part of a wider research program and supported a more “holistic” approach to care.

Badenoch and the shadow health secretary, Stuart Andrew, wrote to Streeting on 25 November, however, saying they were concerned NHS England was supporting a clinical trial involving drugs that halted natural puberty.

Cass found “remarkably weak” evidence the drugs were effective in treating gender-related distress, adding that ther was no good evidence on long-term outcomes.

She has said a trial is the only way forward in the attempt to understand if there are beneficial effects. The government has as banned the treatment for