Wes Streeting going through recent calls to scrap puberty blockers trial because it emerges the outcomes might be based mostly on survey of youngsters’s happiness

The controversial trial of puberty blockers will be judged by how happy children given the drugs say they are, prompting fresh calls for it to be scrapped.

Details of the NHS-backed project – under which hundreds of under-16s will be given powerful drugs to stop them going through puberty – reveal that its ‘primary outcome measure’ will be a 10-question survey in which respondents are asked if they feel ‘fit and well’ or ‘sad’.

The results will also be based on questionnaires about gender identity which campaigners say are biased and contain activist language.

They will be asked if they agree with the statements that ‘puberty felt like a betrayal’ and ‘it would be better not to live, than to live as my assigned sex’, and will have to rate how much they dislike their body parts.

It comes after the Daily Mail revealed that the clinical trial is now facing a legal challenge led by concerned parents, as Health Secretary Wes Streeting comes under growing pressure from politicians on all sides to intervene.

Shadow Equalities Minister Claire Coutinho told this newspaper: ‘No child is born in the wrong body and no child should be pumped full of drugs and pushed onto a pathway that leads to infertility and sexual dysfunction – yet that is exactly what is about to happen.

‘What’s worse is that the Streeting Trial will not be measured in any meaningful scientific way. Instead, children as young as eight, some with autism or ADHD, will be asked vague, leading questions that seem designed to generate the answers the Government wants.

‘This state-sanctioned chemical castration of children cannot be allowed to continue. The Government must abandon the Streeting Trial.’

Health Secretary Wes Streeting, pictured in Downing Street, is under mounting pressure to scrap the NHS-funded clinical trial of puberty blockers

Protestors took to the streets in July 2024 to call for an end to the ban on puberty blockers

Baroness Cash, a former commissioner at the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said: ‘The surveys don’t bear scrutiny. They are full of trans activist language and seek children’s subjective views.’

And Stephanie Davies-Arai, founder of Transgender Trend, added: ‘The questionnaires are pure ideology. The questions further indoctrinate children into nonsensical ideas they’ve learned online or in schools: that “gender identity” is objective reality and biological sex is a subjective idea you can reject. The opposite is true.’

The clinical trial is part of a wider £10.7million project known as PATHWAYS to be run by King’s College London which hopes to establish ‘how the NHS can best support children and young people attending gender services‘.

It will see 226 children, some as young as 10 or 11, given puberty blockers for two years in the hope of establishing their ‘short/medium-term benefits and risks’ for those with ‘gender incongruence’.

The drugs have been banned as a treatment for gender-questioning children since the landmark Cass review found there was little evidence to show they are safe or effective.

The trial protocol states: ‘This will take a comprehensive approach to domains of possible benefit and risk, including quality of life, mental health, gender identity/dysphoria and body satisfaction, impact on cognition and brain development and physical effects including bone mineral density.’

However, it adds that the ‘primary outcome measure’ will be a questionnaire called KIDSCREEN-10, in which young people are asked 10 basic questions about how they have felt in the past week including ‘have you felt fit and well’ and ‘have you spent time with your friends’.

Secondary outcomes include measuring the participants’ height, weight and bone mineral density – but also a series of surveys on ‘gender-related distress’.

One of these, known as Parental Attitudes of Gender Expansiveness Scale for Youth, asks children if they agree with the statements that ‘my parents advocate for my rights as a gender-expansive/trans child’ and ‘my parents are supportive of my gender transition’.

Another, called Utrecht Gender Dysphoria Scale – Gender Spectrum, asks them if they agree with statements including ‘I feel unhappy when someone misgenders me’ and ‘my life would be meaningless if I would have to live as my assigned sex’.

And in the Body Image Scale – Gender Spectrum they will be asked to ‘rate their feelings towards each body part’ and ‘whether they would want to change each body part if it was possible through medical or surgical treatment’.