Scots NHS may remove barriers to irreversible trans surgery

Proposal to fast-track gender reassignment ‘very troubling indeed’, says Tavistock whistleblower

SCOTLAND’S health service is planning to fast-track irreversible surgeries for transgender patients, documents seen by The Daily Telegraph reveal.

An NHS Scotland report, suggesting new transgender treatment rules, calls for “barriers” to gender reassignment surgery to be removed and proposes radical measures to make the operations more widely available.

These include allowing GPS, not specialists, to send patients for procedures and that a “single opinion” is enough to refer for surgery in most cases.

Trans patients can “benefit” from operations including mastectomies, breast implants and genital reassignment, as well as hormone treatments, even if they do not have “distress” about their gender identity, it is claimed.

The proposed rules say that a patient’s background or mental health need not be examined in detail before they are referred for the procedures.

The report goes on to call for an “affirming” model of non-surgical care to still be delivered to children, despite an expert review for NHS England, conducted by the paediatrician Hilary Cass, that raises concerns at this approach.

NHS Scotland is to send the plans to Nicola Sturgeon and her ministers for approval “imminently”.

The recommendations draw heavily on approaches advocated by the controversial World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) and suggests other surgical procedures backed by the group could become available on the Scottish NHS in future.

Among the procedures advocated by WPATH – which trans activists claim is an international authority on trans health while opponents describe it as an extreme lobby group – are castrations for people who identify as eunuchs.

Gender-critical activists said the unpublished document backed up fears that transgender healthcare policies in Scotland were being influenced by extremist ideology, with potentially devastating consequences for patients.

David Bell, a consultant psychiatrist and Tavistock Clinic whistleblower, said that it was “very troubling indeed” to see the Scottish NHS treat WPATH as an “authority” on matters of trans health, something he said was a “complete fiction”.

A spokesman for NHS National Services Scotland said it would be submitting its final recommendations to SNP ministers for a new transgender treatment protocol “shortly”.