Information Watchdog Orders Transgender Clinic to Release Mermaids Emails

The Tavistock Centre in London in an undated file photo. Aaron Chown/PA

The NHS Tavistock gender clinic could face court action after the UK’s information regulator ordered it to reveal its relationship with the scandal-hit charity Mermaids.

In March, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) responded a Freedom of Information (FOI) request that asked for communications between the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust and the CEO of Mermaids between 2014 and 2018.

The request was made to ascertain how much influence the LGBT charity Mermaids, which promotes transgenderism in gender-dysphoric children, had over official NHS policy.

NHS Tavistock responded to the FOI on March 10, stating that following “an extensive search of emails ... the Trust does not hold the requested information.”

Last year, the trust had previously refused to comply with the request, citing section 14(1) of the FOI Act, which allows public authorities to refuse any requests that have the potential to cause a “disproportionate or unjustified level of disruption, irritation or distress.”

The matter, however, was referred to the ICO, which said that the trust has not “provided a meaningful and comprehensive response.”

The ICO ruled that “on the balance of probabilities,” the trust does have relevant emails and now has until May 5 to respond. It said that it “must conduct fresh searches into the requested information and provide a new response which is adequate for the purposes of FOIA.”

In the UK, it is a criminal offence to block, erase, destroy, or conceal any information held by a public authority with the intention of preventing disclosure following a request.

Tavistock

Tavistock, which has been accused of rushing vulnerable children into treatment, is set to close soon, though a rise in gender dysphoria cases means that the NHS is moving to a new model with “strong links to mental health services.”

In 2021/22 there were over 5,000 referrals to the clinic, which compares to just under 250 referrals in 2011/12.

The interim Cass Review on Tavistock GIDS was carried out by top British paediatrician and past president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, Dr. Hilary Cass.

Cass has expressed deep concerns over the affirmative model, concluding that primary and secondary care staff have had to adopt an “unquestioning affirmative approach.”

NHS England will now move young people who believe they have gender dysphoria into regional centres that will take a more “holistic” approach with mental health support.

Mermaids

Mermaids is currently under investigation by the Charity Commission to determine if there is a “serious systemic failing” in the charity’s governance and management.

Shortly before the investigation announcement in December last year, Mermaids CEO Susie Green quit the charity after six years in her post.

In 2009, Green took her son to Thailand to undergo full gender reassignment surgery on the child’s 16th birthday. In the UK, surgery is only available from the age of 18.

A Telegraph investigation in October alleged that the charity sent chest-flattening devices to children as young as 13 and 14 against their parents’ wishes or behind their backs.

A breast-binder is a body brace device for girls who want to flatten their breasts to appear male.

The investigation also claimed that staff with no medical training were found to have given advice to users as young as 13 and that puberty-blocking drugs were being promoted as “safe and totally reversible.”

A trustee who sat on the Mermaids board quit after it emerged that he spoke at a conference for an organisation that was founded by a convicted child rapist.

Jacob Breslow, associate professor of gender and sexuality at the London School of Economics, gave a talk to U.S.-based B4U-ACT in 2011. B4U-ACT was co-founded by Michael Melsheimer, a paedophile and convicted sex offender.

GenderGP

In March, Green joined GenderGP, a company that provides puberty blockers, as project director.

Puberty blockers are drugs used to postpone puberty in children. Increasingly, brakes are being put on such physical interventions to treat children diagnosed with gender dysphoria in the UK, Sweden, Finland, and France.

In May last year, retired consultant physician and GenderGP co-founder Michael Webberley, who supplied puberty blockers to children as young as 9, was struck off the medical register by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service for wrongly prescribing treatments to seven transgender patients.

The online clinic was founded in 2015 by Webberley and his wife Helen. The company was based in Spain and registered in Belize. The tribunal determined that it was “set up in such a way as to avoid the regulatory framework of the UK.”

In June last year, a medical tribunal inquired into allegations that Helen Webberley’s actions amounted to “serious misconduct” as she did not discuss risks to fertility at a consultation before prescribing puberty blockers to an 11-year-old.

In March, she won an appeal against her suspension as a doctor, with a High Court judge saying the medical panel’s “analysis of the issue of serious misconduct was wrong.” Helen Webberley is now able to return to work.

Mermaids would not provide a comment to The Epoch Times.

The Epoch Times contacted NHS Tavistock for comment.