Puberty Blockers Clinical Trial

Gregory Stafford Excerpts

Monday 23rd March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Gregory Stafford (Farnham and Bordon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. My constituents have a clear expectation that we proceed with caution when it comes to children’s healthcare, but there is a fundamental contradiction at the heart of this trial: the Government have already restricted these drugs due to what they described as an “unacceptable safety risk”, but those same drugs are now being made available through a clinical trial.

We must also look squarely at the evidence. There is no robust proof that puberty blockers deliver the benefits often claimed. In fact, the evidence suggests that, for many children, gender-related distress resolves naturally through puberty. The risks, however, are very real—to bone density, brain development and fertility. There are also serious ethical concerns. We are talking about administering powerful drugs to young children with no reliable way to predict who will benefit. This is not a targeted intervention; it is a gamble with children’s futures.

The design of the trial only adds to those concerns. It compares immediate treatment with delayed treatment, rather than examining long-term outcomes, and relies heavily on subjective measures rather than clinical evidence. It risks answering the wrong questions while exposing children to the well-rehearsed risks. Even more concerning is the sequencing—clearly, we should understand past outcomes first, and yet the trial presses ahead before we do.

The process itself also gives us pause. The trial received ethical approval and £10.7 million of public funding, and yet within months it has been paused following intervention by the regulator over concerns about safety and design. If a trial collapses under scrutiny before it begins, that tells us it is not ready and raises a serious question about why it was pushed forward in the first place.

I urge the Minister to explain why, given the known risks, the trial should proceed at all. When the evidence is weak, the risks are real and the patients are children, pressing ahead is not leadership, but recklessness.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gregory Stafford]

Will the Minister give way?

[Karin Smyth]

I am not going to give way; I am going to get through these points.

The safety and wellbeing of children and young people have always been the driving consideration in every decision we have made regarding this trial, and always will be. That is why the trial sponsor has paused recruiting until these issues can be resolved. There have been calls today to cancel the pause, to continue with the pause and to cancel the trial, but the position is that the trial is paused until the issues are resolved, because we will not compromise an inch on safety. The trial will proceed only if the regulatory approval is reconfirmed. We will provide an update on the outcome of those discussions as soon as we can.