Children barred from changing NHS number

[ArabellaScott]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/03/20/children-barred-from-getting-new-trans-identity-nhs/

'Health Secretary orders doctors to stop issuing new numbers and medical records to under-18s following damning safeguarding review '

https://archive.ph/krLxW

'Transgender children will be banned from getting a new NHS record following an intervention by Wes Streeting.
The health service has been ordered to stop issuing new NHS numbers to <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/o/krLxW/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/24/children-who-think-they-are-wrong-gender-surges-50-fold/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">under-18s who want to change their gender, following a damning independent review.
Until now, adults or children of any age have been <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/o/krLxW/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/02/06/what-parent-believes-child-is-transgender/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">allowed to request a gender change on their medical record at any time.

This involves a new NHS number and medical record being issued to change the sex marker, and no distinction is made between requests from adults and those from children.

The review, conducted by Alice Sullivan at the Social Research Institute in University College London, highlighted serious concerns about this practice because it means data on biological sex can be lost, creating safeguarding and clinical care risks.

Mr Streeting, the Health Secretary, declared that “<a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/o/krLxW/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/06/child-under-5-among-thousands-nhs-gender-care/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">children’s safety must come first” as he confirmed the changes on Thursday.
He said: “It’s completely wrong that children’s NHS numbers can be changed if they change gender, and I’ve made it clear this must not happen.

“We must deliver <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/o/krLxW/www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/12/21/wes-streeting-facing-backlash-labour-mps-puberty-blockers/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">safe and holistic care for both adults and children when it comes to gender, and that also means accurately recording biological sex – not just for research and insight, but also for patient safety.'

Sims/ Cpoms etc will have to have sex meaning sex. I can’t imagine that parents who’ve got sex market changed won’t have find the same there

they already have gender identity, certainly Cpoms does. My school ignores that but I’ve no idea what others’ do

i imagine it will be a while before that goes

There's a Robin Hobb plot including a young girl raised as a boy from birth as she was born in a brothel and her mother managed at least for a few years to protect her better than a boy than a girl.

It's the same as the women in history who dressed as men normally to be safer, or to be able to do a job unharrassed and escape the issues that come with being stuck in a biologically female body.

It has nothing to do with gender ideology and a belief that reality is what you wish it is.

Realised on reflection that this isn't quite on topic with the thread. But it's all linked, as per comments which followed.

@WeMeetInFairIthilien for clarity, it's the statutory KCSIE guidance I was referring to, not the draft Gender Questioning Children guidance.

The 4 paragraphs in this guidance make it clear that being LGB is different from identifying as T/being gender questioning. The key difference is the risk difference, as explained in KCSIE.

It's a shame that the Gender Questioning Children guidance isn't yet finalised (and I agree with MrsO that it doesn't go far enough) but one thing that is particularly helpful within it is that it makes it clear that gender identity is a belief, not a fact.

Hopefully the 4 paras from the statutory KCSIE can be uplifted into Working Together to Safeguard Children. Not only will that help reinforce how daft it is to let children get new NHS numbers because of a belief that they hold, but it may have other helpful ramifications. For example, it would be a great foundation from which to look at "conversion therapy practices". As far as I know, the KCSIE guidance is the only government legislation which separates LGB from T - if that level of understanding could be applied to conversion therapy conversations, it could make a big difference. Otherwise, the whole lot gets muddled up and there are unintended impacts (in that case, therapists may be scared to help a gender questioning child/adult unpick why they feel the way they do - for fear of it being labelled conversion therapy), just as there are when NHS numbers and someone's sex marker gets changed.

This is interesting.

I recently followed up with my children's school on mixed-sex sport in PE.

During one particular conversation, the school told me that their system currently recorded children's sex as their "gender" but they were confident that the information was correct for sex.

It came up during a discussion about the numbers of boys and girls in each year group that were doing PE, when the school was justifying its blanket approach to mixed-sex PE (grrrr. That's a whole other thread topic). The data they had was labelled "gender".

Although it's possible that they are now using that field for sex, and then presumably aren't recording gender (where would they put it?)... I'm feeling rather sceptical. It wasn't that long ago that they were allowing children to use different names at school and parents weren't supposed to know. I posted about this point a long time ago on a different thread: I was talking to a member of staff about my daughter when suddenly she (staff member) paused after using a nickname for my daughter - this was during a time when my daughter was actively gender questioning. I said "it's OK, we know she uses that name at school". The staff member sighed with relief and said something like "oh, I'm so glad. I can't keep up with which parents know and which don't any more". There are still several gender questioning children at the school so it's not a great leap of imagination to think that the school has been recording children's preferred gender identity as well as their preferred name, possibly also without telling parents in the past. I don't know when they started telling parents but I'm going to accept that they now do.

Given the school's... interesting practices... on how they handle gender identity overall, I'm going to take a wild guess that the confident answer I was given (by the DSL) that the data in the gender field is an accurate representation of children's sex may not be as clear cut as that.

This, it's as if there's a whole set of 'oh but they only had access to books/articles/websites that confirm their belief....anything else just wasn't easily available'.
It's just another way to find a way to blame 'other people' when as expected things go wrong. Then it goes from
"BIGOT! EVIL TERF!! YOU ARE KILLING ME BY DENYING MY EXISTENCE!!!" with the demands and threats to be accepted/treated as the opposite sex to...
"How could you let this happen?!! I am vulnerable!! YOU FAILED ME!!"

It's the 'i couldnt have seen it coming' defense that pisses me off most.

Think of all the books written about authoritarianism. The trouble is they aren't 256 characters long and require you to think and question rather than blindly accept.

Of course you could have worked this out and seen it coming. History has quite a lot to say on the matter.

Even if you are young.

The problem is close mindedness and laziness.

I am pleasantly surprised by Wes Streeting - he does seem to listen to all voices and hasn’t become trapped by ideology.

Great news - thanks for sharing Arabella!

I am quite stunned that anyone was allowed to change such a key data item on their records - there is absolutely no justification.

In particular it allows abuse of children by parents pushing or enabling them to ‘identify’ as the opposite sex with all the associated medical harm so I’m very glad they stopped it.

Sadly I fear that some activist doctors will continue to do this as some seem determined to continue harming children.

I only heard about ‘gender disappointment’ through Mumsnet, but some people think it’s becoming more widespread. If it is, then guarding against the changing of sex markers for babies and young children becomes even more important.
The author of this seems to use the words sex and gender interchangeably, and she’s a well-qualified consultant psychiatrist specialising in in perinatal mental health.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/bjpsych-bulletin/article/its-a-girl-is-gender-disappointment-a-mental-health-or-sociocultural-issue/6C94244174A6908EB13E8864BDFC9009

Yes, he's proving to be the most sensible and the most competent politician on the Labour front benches.

if you change your NHS number, does it change not just the sex marker, but also wipe out all the original data?

So any history of anything? Illnesses, conditions, risks, the lot?

I'm pretty sure the boy who was in DS year at primary who "changed gender" at 6 had disappointed his mum by being a boy.
I'm only hoping he's gone through puberty and sorted himself out now (they are now both 13) before the girls in his school had to share changing rooms with him.

That was certainly the case for some.trusts, at least. They explicitly said patients needed to copy all history as it would be wiped. Madness.

What the ever loving fuck!!!

I know we see madness on here, on a regular basis, but this could easily be tantamount to a death sentence for some people, for kids.

it really is insane. The fucking medical profession!

It looks like half of its being run by charlatans, snake oil salesman and magic mongers.

Good news, but one of many where it’s hard to believe the thing being corrected could ever conceivably have been allowed. Sex is relevant to drug dosages and many other healthcare issues.

This underlines what a fantasy world transgenderists have created for themselves. Unfortunately, they come up against the real world when their body does ordinary real-world things like falling ill, or indeed having a reaction to wrong-sex hormones.

What’s shocking is not that fantasists have fantasies, but that authorities and institutions that have responsibilities in the real world play along with them.

I've just had a quick look at a few trusts at random - as far as I can tell the process varies from trust to trust. Some are very clear that they wipe the record entirely, issue a new CHI number and the patient is responsible for adding info to the new record; some seem to preserve all medical info and just change the 'gender' marker; some have options to preserve 'minimal' info or more on health conditions etc.

https://www.therotherhamft.nhs.uk/patients-and-visitors/patient-information/change-name-title-gender

'In all cases of creating a new hospital record under a new NHS number, any original paper records are scanned and archived. Your previous electronic patient record is digitally sealed. This prevents unauthorised access to the original clinical records. Access to both the scanned and sealed electronic records is restricted to Health Records Management staff only. The new record contains a reference to the existence of a previous record under a restricted section in your electronic patient record. The restricted section is limited to access by:

1. the Health Records Management team, to enable location of the original record should you wish to request access to it, and
2. the hospital legal team, in the event that you take legal action against the hospital and the original records are of relevance.'

I do find it odd, to say the least, that an old record is sealed and restricted. What is this idea that the knowledge of a person's 'transition' is some kind of state secret? What's the logic? Are there other people whose medical history is treated as radioactive?

For reference, here is a trust that wipes all info:

https://www.marsdenmg.nhs.uk/information-for-transgender-patients/

'Changing your gender marker on your NHS records to male or female
You can do this at any time, by completing a change of details form and you do not have to have undergone any form of gender reassignment treatment. You must be aware that changing your gender will mean you will be allocated a new NHS number, and your pre-exisiting NHS number will no longer be accessible or be reversible.
Your new medical record will be completely blank, with none of your previous medical history, COVID vaccinations, medication etc. saved onto it.'

What's the logic? Are there other people whose medical history is treated as radioactive?

Perhaps they took their favourite bits from the Edinburgh Trans Heath Manifesto, so as to be inclusive of the patient voices of a "marginalised minority"?

https://www.tumblr.com/edinburghath/163521055802/trans-health-manifesto

Completely wiping or removing access to patients' medical history, to presumably deliver "better" care that supports the patient's belief that their biological sex is irrelevant, seems on par with its core principles.

It’s quite horrifying that medical professionals and governing bodies were persuaded to do something so ridiculously wrong and potentially harmful to patients at the behest of activist groups.

Presumably it's that teenage level hysteria about "being outed" transposed onto healthcare records resulting in medics being too terrified to point out that restricting important medical data could be dangerous. Especially in people undergoing poor quality experimental drugs and surgery that will cause untold harm to their once healthy bodies.

Unbelievable that this was ever allowed, but for a group of people who've never been told no, preventing hysterical spiralling when confronted by reality must evidently be avoided. Even if it harms them. 🙄

I just remembered that the children’s bill was to introduce a unique number system (which according to a sw friend had been planned to come in when Labour last were in power, and the coalition abandoned it)

If that’s still going ahead, this clearly had to happen.

And I dread to think of the bigger mess we’d be in now if it had happened in the first decade of the millennium given this has clearly been happening all over the place.

Thank heavens. It was always an insane idea. Congratulations Wes

The trans ideologists who dreamed up all this nonsense such as 'dead naming' amongst many other illogical demands must have thought it was like taking candy off a baby. How the medical and scientific sectors just agreed to it all without alarm bells going off is baffling. It really doesn't instill faith that anyone in authority can be trusted to protect us especially when it comes to children.

Men can pretend to change sex and their DBS gets wiped and all their NHS information gets deleted.

It's like a horrifying software bug that some poor lab assistant uncovers late at night while doing some routine checking.

Not a process and policy that everyone is on board with, proactive about, and enthusiastically encourages with flag-waving and punishment for those who disagree.