Former Mermaids boss vows to exploit Northern Irish loophole to bring puberty blockers into England
The former boss of trans rights charity Mermaids has vowed to exploit a loophole in Northern Ireland to bring banned puberty blockers into Britain.
Activist Susie Green believes she can evade the law through a network of willing families in Northern Ireland, where the hormone blockers are not outlawed.
Prescribing the drugs to the under 18s is banned in England and Wales but the legislation does not forbid importing them, provided they are not supplied to someone else.
Ms Green plans to get foreign doctors to write prescriptions for the drug, which will be sent to addresses in Northern Ireland where they could be picked up and taken back to Britain.
She also believes the ban will not stop youngsters from being prescribed puberty blockers in an EU country and travelling there to pick them up before returning home with the drugs for personal use.
“We’ve got a network of NI families who are willing to take receipt of medication sent to them,” she told the Belfast Telegraph.
“The families just need to go over there and the kids need to get the medication and if they bring it back it exploits this legal loophole.”
The current emergency ban, imposed by the Conservatives four months ago, expires in England and Wales in September.
It was imposed after the Cass Review urged doctors to exercise caution before transcribing hormone drugs to anyone before they were 18. It stopped short of calling for a ban.
Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, has announced that the Government will make the temporary ban permanent.
Ms Green stepped down as the chief executive of Mermaids after six years in 2022 after the transgender children’s charity came under intense scrutiny.
She has now opened a clinic providing services to transgender people and told the i newspaper she had sought legal advice about the loopholes.
Jolyon Maugham, a KC and director of the Good Law Project, said on X last month the ban could not stop EU doctors prescribing them to British children who travelled outside the UK.
“So you can get your EU prescription fulfilled at an EU pharmacy and lawfully bring those puberty blockers back into the UK,” he wrote.
The exception would be if the intention was to supply the drugs to someone else, which is covered in the ban.
Department of Health and Social Care officials are willing to explore legal sanctions against anyone using loopholes to supply the drugs in Britain, it is understood.
The temporary ban is subject to a High Court challenge, which could further muddy the legal waters around a law penalising those prescribing the drugs with up to two years in prison.
Supporters of the puberty blockers argue they can help people struggling with their gender identity at a crucial time in their development.
Northern Ireland is an ideal place to pick the drugs up because Stormont is responsible for health policy, which is a devolved power from Westminster.
The puberty blockers have not been banned in the private sector in Northern Ireland, unlike in Britain. However, they are no longer available to new NHS patients in Northern Ireland.
The Department of Health in Northern Ireland has confirmed the current emergency ban “applies only to Great Britain”.
“This is a complex issue and the decision as to whether these provisions will apply in NI is a significant and cross-cutting one for the Executive to consider,” it said in a statement to the Belfast Telegraph.
However, political parties in Northern Ireland are divided over the issue, which means any ban is likely to be blocked.
The Democratic Unionist Party and Ulster Unionist Party back a ban but Alliance and Sinn Fein do not, meaning a breakthrough on the issue, and a change in law, remains a distant possibility.