Next month, children as young as 11 will start being recruited for a controversial puberty blockers trial, and a health minister who expressed concern about it has already been sidelined. Preet Kaur Gill, who was only appointed in May, had previously suggested that “credible safeguarding warnings” about the impact on children were being ignored.

To begin with, Gill’s portfolio included responsibility for the Pathways trial, which was on hold because of safety concerns. By the time it received the go-ahead from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) on 19 June, Health Secretary James Murray had stripped that responsibility from Gill. The Birmingham Edgbaston MP had been the minister responsible for health innovation and safety, but that section of her portfolio was reassigned to Gillian Merron, whose brief is women’s and mental health.

Gill’s boss has only been in his own job since May, when his predecessor Wes Streeting resigned during the turmoil surrounding Keir Starmer’s leadership. Murray swiftly backtracked on his previous insistence that “trans women are women”, but his past support for gender ideology was unwavering. It’s widely believed that Gill, who was previously a social worker specialising in child protection, was about to raise concerns about the Pathways trial at the beginning of last month.

That would have been awkward for Murray, who admitted in a Commons debate towards the end of last month that he felt “discomfort and unease” about the puberty blockers trial, but said it should go ahead anyway. Does anyone really believe he would have done that if the newly-elected MP for Makerfield, and Labour leader-in-waiting, opposed it?

Andy Burnham was one of 253 MPs who missed the vote on a Conservative motion to halt the trial. Faced with an opportunity to signal a change of direction away from the demands of trans activists — and to protect children from risky and unnecessary medical intervention — Burnham ducked it. Only three Labour MPs had the guts to vote against the trial, and no one should be in any doubt about the way the wind is blowing.

The potential risks of prescribing puberty blockers to children, including infertility and brittle bones, are well-known. If the object of the trial is to find hard evidence, it could be done by requiring gender clinics to share data about individuals already treated with the drugs as children, allowing a comparison with their adult NHS records. Back in February, before she became a health minister, Gill asked for data sharing to be mandated across NHS trusts and adult gender services, which would have rendered the Pathways trial unnecessary. (It may still be stopped by a pending High Court action.)

Let’s be clear about what is going on here. Burnham’s folksy self-promotion, including an invocation of the wisdom of his mum and dad in relation to the Supreme Court judgment on biological sex, has Labour MPs swooning. But the fact that critics of puberty blockers are being marginalised, combined with Burnham’s enthusiastic support for a disastrous ban on “conversion therapy”, tells a different story. The Left is in the grip of a rescue fantasy — and that never ends well.

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Joan Smith is a novelist and columnist. She was previously Chair of the Mayor of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls Board, and is on the advisory group for Sex Matters. Her book Unfortunately, She Was A Nymphomaniac: A New History of Rome’s Imperial Women was published in November 2024.

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