Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to help reduce NHS waiting lists for transgender healthcare.

We recognise that waiting lists for specialist gender services are too long. This has been caused by multiple factors, including unprecedented demand for gender services and a shortage of specialist clinical staff to meet the rapidly rising demand.

This is why NHS England is working to open new services for both children and young people and adults.

In line with the findings and recommendations of the Cass Review, NHS England has opened three new services in the North West, London, and the South West that offer a fundamentally different clinical model, embedding multi-disciplinary teams in specialist children’s hospitals. A fourth service is anticipated to open in the East of England shortly and NHS England is aiming to deliver service provision in each region of England by the end of 2026/27.

For adults, NHS England has also increased the number of gender dysphoria clinics in England from seven to 12, with the rollout of five new adult gender clinics since July 2020.

We are also working closely with NHS England to implement the findings from the Review of adult gender dysphoria clinics, chaired by Dr David Levy. This includes creating a single, national waiting list that will help effectively manage the wider waiting lists and end the disparity in wait times between the adult gender dysphoria clinics.

We recognise the negative impact long waiting times can have on mental health. This is why the Department has commissioned a pilot to support patients on the waiting list for the Adult Gender Service in the South West of England. This pilot launched on 7 April. We will evaluate the effectiveness of the pilot in due course.

Separate to this, through implementation of the NHS Adult Gender Services Review that was chaired by Dr David Levy, NHS England is working to develop further waiting-well pilots to provide support to patients, including mental health access and self-management resources.