Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the written statement on 26 February 2026 titled Data Linkage Study, whether he plans to complete the data linkage study before the Pathways puberty blockers trial commences.

The data linkage study is an important commitment within a wider national gender research programme, which is being jointly delivered by NHS England and the National Institute for Health and Care Research.

The data linkage study is observational in nature, linking and analysing existing, routinely collected healthcare data for adults who, as children, were referred into the former Gender Identity Development Service, previously operated by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. It is important to highlight that as the study is not designed as a comparative clinical trial, it will not provide direct evidence on the cause or effect of any individual treatment approach, nor provide evidence relating to any treatment’s safety or efficacy. Its findings will relate to a former, decommissioned model of NHS care and to a previous cohort of children and young people with gender incongruence.

The PATHWAYS suite of studies, including the currently paused clinical trial, and the data linkage study, have very different designs and will generate different types of new evidence. They remain separate elements of the wider national gender research programme, and their delivery timelines are not co-dependent.