Kemi Badenoch demands end of puberty blocker trial and claims ‘no child is born in the wrong body’

The recently launched trial into the benefits of puberty blockers for youngsters must be stopped “before more damage is done to children”, Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has said.

Badenoch, who became the Tories’ leader a little more than a year ago, has a history of opposing LGBTQ+ rights and now, in a letter written to health secretary Wes Streeting, she said: “No child is born in the wrong body.”

The letter is also signed by shadow health secretary Stuart Andrew.

During the last Conservative government, Badenoch served as Women and Equalities Minister – becoming known as the inequalities minister – while Andrew was a parliamentary under-secretary of state for equalities.

In the letter, leader of the opposition Badenoch said she and Andrew were “very concerned” about the NHS Pathways trial, being led by researchers from King’s College London, which will study the effectiveness of puberty blockers, by focusing on the physical, social and emotional wellbeing of 220 youngsters over a two-year period.

The £10 million ($13.1 million) trial was commissioned in the wake of the Cass Report and the government’s ban on puberty blockers for trans youngsters in the UK.

No child is born in the wrong body.

I cannot believe we are back to square one, with NHS England backing an experimental trial of puberty blockers on healthy, vulnerable children, ignoring the damage already done.

The No1 rule of medicine is "do no harm".

This is activist… pic.twitter.com/WXDNs9fNgQ

— Kemi Badenoch (@KemiBadenoch) November 25, 2025

The report, a 400-page review into the provision of healthcare for transgender youngsters in England, was published in April 2024 and made upwards of 32 recommendations to restructure the way in which they received care.

A number of recommendations, including the separation of pathways for pre-pubescent children and teenagers, calling for “extreme caution” when it came to the use of puberty blockers, and creating a follow-through service for those aged between 17 and 25, have been subject to scrutiny by charities, not-for-profit groups and the British Medical Association.

The most notable result of the report was the Conservative government’s decision to put a ban on private prescriptions for puberty blockers for transgender youngsters, which was continued by Labour following their landslide general election victory in July.

Puberty blockers are a type of medicine which prevents changes that happen during puberty, such as breast or hair growth.

“This trial is borne of the discredited, yet still seemingly entrenched, belief in some quarters that a child can be ‘born in the wrong body’ or go through the ‘wrong’ puberty, and that a normal puberty can be ‘paused’ without causing irreparable harm to children,” the two Tories wrote. “We reject this premise entirely.”

Describing the trial as a “new experiment on a fresh group of physically healthy children”, they went on to tell Streeting: “You are no longer head of education for Stonewall, you are the Health Secretary. That change of job title should come with a change of judgment.

“Your job is to promote the health of the nation, not indulge an ideology that has permanently damaged so many children.

“This trial continues the shameful habit of treating normal childhood challenges as illness, or that psychological conditions are signs to young people that their healthy bodies are somehow wrong and must be corrected with drugs or surgery.

“The number-one rule of medicine is simple: do no harm. We call on the government to honour that principle and stop this trial from going ahead before more damage is done to children who are too young to understand what they are doing to themselves.”

This week, Dr Aidan Kelly, a clinical psychologist and director of Gender Plus – the UK’s only regulated trans healthcare provider that sees patients under the age of 18 – welcomed more research into puberty blockers but expressed concern that the trial would not expand knowledge of the medication.

“This trial is unlikely to provide a conclusive answer either way as to the benefits of so-called puberty blockers,” he told PinkNews. “In this instance, puberty-blocking medication is being assessed as a standalone intervention.

“In reality, the benefits of this treatment pathway are experienced after a patient has progressed on to gender-affirming hormones, allowing them to achieve the required puberty changes which will bring them into alignment with their gender identity.”

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