NI Health Minister orders review of controversial GenderGP clinic

The Minister of Health for Northern Ireland has committed to investigating controversial trans-affirming clinic GenderGP.

Mike Nesbitt said he would instruct the medicines regulatory group to review the content of the online clinic, after MLA Doug Beattie raised concerns about it enabling minors without a prescription to access potentially harmful drugs.

Founded by disgraced medic Dr Helen Webberley, the private clinic, which is now based in Singapore to evade UK rules, provides information to children on how to obtain puberty blockers, despite a UK-wide ban on prescribing the experimental drugs to under-18s.

Unsafe medication

Nesbitt said: “It was essential to secure the indefinite ban on the supply and sale of puberty blockers to under-18s. That ban was based on expert advice, which very clearly cited the insufficient evidence of the safety and effectiveness of those puberty blockers.

“I would be concerned by any efforts to bypass that ban by using alternative medical drugs, especially those that are based on very little medical foundation.”

The Minister of Health stated: “There is absolutely no safety regime that we can put in place in order to guarantee the safety of those medications.”

Nesbitt explained that the medicines regulatory group “works with partners across government and policing in order to combat the unlawful trade in medicines”, and said: “I will ask that the content of GenderGP is reviewed with immediate effect.”

‘Reckless’

Last year, LGBT group The Rainbow Project came under fire for signposting to GenderGP on its website.

A Freedom of Information request submitted by The Institute revealed that The Rainbow Project was consulted over plans to revive Northern Ireland’s transgender clinic.

Northern Ireland Policy Officer James Kennedy told the Belfast News Letter: “It is outrageous that controversial lobby groups have been embedded in designing a new gender identity clinic for adults and children. This is not just inappropriate — it’s reckless, dangerous, and directly contradicts the expert warnings of the Cass Review.”