A GP who was taken to court for running an unlicensed gender clinic has spoken out amid proposals to permanently ban puberty blockers for children in the UK.

Monmouthshire doctor Dr Helen Webberley – who moved her GenderGP online clinic overseas in 2019 after being fined £12,000 with £11,000 costs by a South Wales court – was suspended in 2022 after a General Medical Council investigation and Medical Practitioners Tribunal, but later won her fight to be reinstated on appeal.

Her husband and co-GenderGP founder Michael Webberley – a former gastroenterologist at Nevill Hall Hospital – was struck off, however, for "wide ranging failings" in supplying puberty blockers to children, which are designed to prevent gender development in youngsters wanting to "transition".

Following the Cass Review earlier this year on the nation's gender services – which said there was insufficient evidence to support the safe or effective use of puberty blockers and trans drugs for children – the Tory Government passed a three-month ban on doctors prescribing the controversial hormone therapy until September 3.

New Labour Health Secretary Wes Streeting has said he is minded to make the ban permanent, which also prevents doctors overseas directly prescribing to patients in the UK.

But claiming that GenderGP had "tens of thousands of people needing our care” across the world, Dr Webberley, 55, told The Times newspaper that Dr Hilary Cass' review will have already led to deaths in the transgender community.

And in an open letter to new PM Keir Starmer – citing the Holocaust and slavery as examples of "the damage that’s done when humans are allowed or encouraged to discriminate against minority groups" – she called on him to "work with the trans community in the UK and their allies to promote visibility and education".

Having previously described her work as "lifesaving", the Abergavenny GP told The Times: "I wonder how many mums and dads at the moment are saying that she (Dr Cass) has put their children at risk? Hundreds.”

Asked whether doctors should be "experimenting" on children by prescribing puberty blockers, she said: “All of medicine is experimental when it starts. We’ve got this new language that’s being tainted by an anti-trans narrative, which is, 'Oh, they’re experimental'."

And she claimed that in the wake of the ban, parents of children at GenderGP were resorting to going abroad to obtain prescriptions.

“I know mums and dads who are just going on holiday to get their puberty blockers instead,” she said.

Dr Cass, a paediatrician and ex-president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, concluded in her report that the field of gender medicine was “built on shaky foundations”.

But Dr Webberley, whose online clinic attracted further controversy this year for replacing health advisers with AI generated services, hit back, saying: “She (Cass) read a different set of papers and research papers to the world’s medical experts in transgender health. It’s completely stymied our children’s service.”

In her open letter to the new PM published on GenderGP's social media, she accuses the UK of persecuting "trans and non-binary people".

"Transgender people are, today, being murdered, bullied, persecuted, neglected, and ignored.

"Their voices are drowned out by a small group of loud voices. If they’re brave enough to speak up, they’re targeted.

"They’re targeted now in the same way that women, people with disabilities, people of colour, homosexual and bisexual people, Jewish people once were.

"We should be deeply ashamed that we are, once again, allowing this to happen...

"Transgender people’s identities are being publicly challenged: “A man is a man, a woman is a woman”, said your predecessor (Rishi Sunak).

"If he – the UK Prime Minister – is allowed to deny transgender identities, that gives permission for the rest of the world to follow."

And she adds: "I ask that you introduce a policy of zero tolerance of behaviour that in any way mirrors the atrocities of history that we teach our youngsters not to recreate.

"Everyone has the right to live in a world where they feel safe, included, and respected, regardless of their gender identity.

"I invite you to have a cup of tea and a discussion, so that you and I can work together to make this happen."