Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has demanded an immediate halt to publicly funded puberty blocker trials.
The National Health Service (NHS) Pathways trial is set to begin in the new year. It involves prescribing so-called puberty-blocking drugs to more than 200 children under 16 for two years. Children will be selected on the grounds that they are “gender-questioning”—for something Farage calls “state-sponsored child abuse.”
Farage and four fellow Reform MPs wrote to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, urging the experiment be scrapped due to concerns over potential long-term harm. In a letter, the MPs stated
This trial will expose already vulnerable children to life-changing and irreversible consequences, the full extent of which is unknown. Children will be given powerful puberty-blocking drugs, despite the absence of robust evidence on long-term physical, psychological, sexual and reproductive outcomes. Using children as experimental subjects in this way is ethically indefensible. The Pathways trial represents state-sponsored child abuse, dressed up as research, and is wholly incompatible with the NHS duty to safeguard children and do no harm.
Farage warned that if Reform UK wins the next election, his government would scrap the Pathways scheme entirely. His intervention comes after Health Secretary Wes Streeting admitted he was “deeply uncomfortable” with the experiment, which was recommended by the 2024 Cass Review of transgender services for children.
Legal letters were also submitted to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, the Health Research Authority, the Health Secretary, and NHS England. Campaigners, including Keira Bell—who ‘detransitioned’ after using puberty blockers as a teenager—claim the trial poses risks to fertility and could be unlawful due to its limited demonstrated benefits.
