Public Policy Researcher Carys Moseley digs into the unsatisfactory ‘care’ given by the Welsh clinic
The Welsh Gender Service based in Cardiff has been forced to pause all referrals for gender reassignment surgery. This is because the rate of referral has been significantly higher than for England. Writing in the Sunday Times at the end of August, journalist Nick Wallis warned that as many as 17% of all UK referrals for surgery in 2024-2025 came from Wales. This is despite Wales making up only 5% of the population of the UK.
This decision was taken by the NHS Wales Joint Commissioning Committee (NWJCC). It came after Wallis was told that the WGS could be designated a “potential service of concern” for “significant singular service failures, or cumulative or systemic concerns regarding a service or setting.”
Referral figures across the United Kingdom
On his blog, Nick Wallis has linked to the most recent Freedom of Information responses on gender reassignment across the UK.
The Welsh Gender Service made:
- 148 referrals for feminising gender reassignment in 2024 and 163 in 2025
- 234 referrals for masculinising chest surgery (mastectomies) in 2024, dropping to 207 in 2025
- 46 referrals for masculinising gender reassignment in 2024, rising to 56 in 2025
As can be seen from the comparison table on What Do They Know, there have been unusually high numbers of referrals from Wales given its small percentage share of the population.
On 19 August this year, the Information Commissioner’s Office gave a ruling forcing the WGS to provide evidence about 2025-2026, as it had neither provided information nor issued a refusal to do so to the requester. This doesn’t bode well for the upcoming independent clinical review. Will the WGS co-operate or not?
Surgeries paused, everything else continues
The executive medical director of Cardiff and Vale University Health Board, David Fluck, told the press that only gender reassignment treatments would be paused.
“The pause applies specifically to referrals for gender affirming surgery, surgical assessments and surgery. Other elements of care provided by the Welsh Gender Service, including hormone therapy support, endocrine review and psychological support services, continue to operate and are not affected by this decision.”
This means that the upcoming independent clinical review is going to be rather narrow in scope.
‘Irreversible procedures’
The Welsh Conservative spokeswoman for health, Natasha Asghar, called for a full independent review of the WGS.
“It’s not an issue or a debate about whether Wales should have a gender service, Wales already has one. The current issue for me is whether the service is actually operating safely and appropriately…When one service is referring people for irreversible procedures at three or four times the UK average, there has to be proper scrutiny of why that is happening. It could reflect differences in referral pathways, clinical practice or the way the service assesses patients … Before anyone undergoes an irreversible procedure, we need to be absolutely confident that the system is asking the right questions and putting patients’ long-term interests first.”
The fact that Asghar refers to gender reassignment as an ‘irreversible procedure’ shows how seriously the problems associated are taken here.
Gender clinic staff tried to turn patients against their relatives
This concern about the adequacy of assessment of patients was echoed by Dan Thomas, the leader of Reform UK in the Senedd:
“It is essential that the review examines not merely the non-surgical pathway in general, but the clinical decision-making that leads to surgical referrals. I have also received serious allegations about the conduct of WGS staff, including claims that patients were encouraged to distance themselves from family members who questioned proposed intervention. These allegations must be examined as part of the review where there is an appropriate evidential basis.”
This means the WGS is alleged to have tried to get vulnerable patients to avoid relatives who didn’t think gender reassignment was a good idea. This behaviour by staff is akin to that of a cult.
Gender clinicians will run the ‘independent’ review
Unfortunately, the Times went on to quote the NWJCC saying that this ‘independent’ review would be conducted by “experienced gender clinicians”.
This is hardly reassuring. Far too many gender clinicians have a very long track record of playing along with, if not outright promoting, transgenderism. There’s a real danger this review is simply the work of a closed shop system circling the wagons.
Who runs the Welsh Gender Service?
This is the list of staff of the Welsh Gender Service.
Dr Sophie Quinney, a clinician who was until recently the Clinical Director, tore a phone camera out of the hand of someone filming a trans rights counter-protest against gender-critical feminists in April 2026. This was reported to the General Medical Council by a gender-critical woman who was part of the protest on the Supreme Court’s judgment on sex. The GMC told Quinney to ‘reflect’ on her behaviour.
Psychotherapist Ben Sears has pointed out that Sophie Quinney is on record as saying ‘we try to make this an art not a science’. I think this says everything we need to know about the Welsh Gender Service. It is not based on real medical scientific evidence at all.
In the same video clip, Quinney is also on record as saying that it is ‘acceptable’ to have the opinion of only one doctor before having ‘chest surgery’ (i.e. a mastectomy so as not to look obviously female).
Nobody who has networked with her to build up the Welsh Gender Service should be involved in this independent review of the WGS.
Media bias in reporting on Welsh Gender Service
It’s very telling how media outlets have reported on this story. The Times and the Telegraph in London reported the grave concerns about the WGS in a comprehensive manner, spanning both physical and psychological dimensions.
By contrast, the BBC and S4C interviewed someone who was upset that their gender reassignment surgery appointment had been cancelled. Neither outlet interviewed detransitioners or others who had stopped going down the path of gender reassignment. Neither did they bother asking for the views of those family members whom the WGS regards as the enemy to patients’ healthcare. This is a grotesque abuse of the licence fee, as it is not balanced or impartial news coverage.
Meanwhile, Wales Online gave the microphone to the Trans Greens group, which claimed the service had caved in to ‘moral panic’ and the Welsh Conservatives’ call for what they called a ‘bogus inquiry’. Whilst Welsh Government-funded outlet Nation.Cymru has reported the facts about the data, it has not interviewed any critics of the WGS. Welsh Government-funded news site Golwg360 has not reported at all on the story.
This clearly shows an appalling bias in Welsh news media on this topic.
Questions that must be asked about referral numbers
We need to know the histories of these patients.
Were some of the patients previously referred to NHS services in Wales for other psychiatric conditions, and if so which ones?
Were some of them in Welsh schools since Relationships and Sexuality Education was first rolled out?
Were they all living in Wales before 2019, and before the lockdown? Or did some of them move to Wales to jump the queue to Charing Cross Hospital Gender Identity Clinic?
What are the figures for prescription of hormones to the same patients?
There are bound to be other questions that need asking, but these will do for a start.
Plaid Cymru campaigned for the Welsh Gender Service
First Minister Rhun ap Iorwerth told the BBC that he wants a quick inquiry.
This is to be expected as the Welsh Gender Service was something that he originally pushed for, as the Senedd Record shows. On 27 October 2016 he added a point to a motion noting “the establishment of a gender identity clinic for Wales achieved by Plaid Cymru in negotiations on the 2017-18 budget” with the Labour government.
Before the 2026 Senedd elections, he was grilled by Ed Balls on ITV’s Good Morning Britain on the issue. He treated gender self-ID as a free speech issue, envisaging a Wales where people could agree to disagree in conversations. This came across as being anxious over not splitting small town communities on culture war issues – no doubt so as not to lose any votes. In reality it amounted to ignoring a major policy issue ultimately linked to responsible healthcare and also RSE indoctrination.
Christian Concern warned about Plaid Cymru’s general support for transgender ideology in our 2026 Senedd election guide.
Could the Welsh NHS provide real help for patients?
Plaid Cymru comes across as scared of being perceived as undermining people’s human rights. Its public messaging on this is all about trans rights – even as the Welsh NHS faces such serious problems.
However, under the Wales Act 2017 passed by the then Conservative government in Westminster, healthcare is devolved to Wales, whereas gender recognition is not.
This just proves that gender reassignment is not real healthcare at all! There is no need for Welsh politicians or doctors and healthcare workers to stick to the trans script.
The main problem that they have is that NHS Wales belatedly signed the MOU on Conversion Therapy in 2022. This prohibits psychotherapists and counsellors who are members of the signatory bodies from offering treatments that aim to change a person’s sense of themselves as male or female. This makes it very difficult to provide psychotherapy or counselling for people who regret gender reassignment or decide they want to walk back previous steps in the process. Nevertheless since then the UK Council for Psychotherapy left the MOU coalition in April 2024, and the Cass Review called for more help for detransitioners.
However, there is nothing in the law stopping doctors in Wales from setting up a system to investigate physiological problems brought up by patients who have been undergoing gender reassignment treatments. Patients who continue living in Wales after their surgery would presumably first visit Welsh GPs if they start suspecting they are suffering negative consequences. This is well within the bounds of healthcare and medical research.
What is needed is for the doctors and medical researchers who have not been part of the Welsh Gender Service to make this happen.