Thursday 29th July 1999

NHS must pay for sex swaps

by Colin Adamson

Transexuals were today granted the right to have free sex change operations on the NHS.

A landmark ruling by the Court of Appeal controversially recognised their condition as a legitimate illness.

Health authorities, already struggling to cope with lengthy waiting lists and overstretched resources, face having to fund the £8,000 cost of each operation.

To refuse would be both “unlawful and irrational”, according to a panel of senior judges, who today unanimously upheld an appeal by three transsexuals who had been banned from receiving free operations.

The decision by the North West Lancashire Health Authority to refuse funding in three test cases left them with a legal bill of around £200,000.

In the first case of its kind to come to court, Miss A, Miss D and Miss G were described in court as females trapped in male bodies at birth.

They had all already started gender reassignment, taking hormones which their counsel, Nicholas Blake QC, said had led to irreversible changes to their bodies, including the growth of breasts.  The three were said to be trapped in bodies with physical aspects of both sexes.

The health authority said it did not have the funds to carry out full sex change operations.  But Lord Justice Auld, with Lords Justice Buxton and May, dismissed an appeal by the authority against the ground-breaking decision by High Court Judge Mr Justice Hidden last December that they had a duty to carry out the operations.

Miss A, 22, and Miss D and Miss G both 52 , were already living their lives as women and were suffering from an acutely distressed mental and physical state.

They were refused treatment in 1996 and 1997.  Lord Justice Auld said the health authority’s policy did not treat transsexualism as an illness but as a state of mind which did not warrant medical treatment.

He added that the provision it made for exceptions in individual cases amounted to a blanket policy against funding treatment, “because it does not believe in such treatment”.

There was “overwhelming evidence” that transsexualism is an ill-ness that requires treatment.

The judges rejected claims that the authority’s refusal was in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights or was sex discrimination.

The Legal Aid Fund, which backed the three, must pay part of the costs of that issue, with their bill estimated at £30,000.  The authority was refused leave to appeal to the House of Lords.

Copyright © Associated Newspapers Ltd., 29 July 1999