Exclusive | TL;DR: Labour health secretary Wes Streeting met a bereaved mother to talk about the suicide of her trans daughter, Alice Litman. Now, she's written to Streeting – who is responsible for criminalising puberty blockers for trans children and pausing new prescriptions of gender-affirming hormones for trans 16 and 17-year-olds – about his stance on trans healthcare and rights.
The mother of Alice Litman, a young trans woman who killed herself in 2022, said she was "gobsmacked" that health secretary Wes Streeting brought up his religious beliefs in a meeting with her, where he also insisted he is not a “right-wing, evangelical God-botherer who has issues with trans people”.
Streeting made the comments in a two-hour meeting with Caroline Litman, a former NHS psychiatrist turned trans rights campaigner, on 17th March.
The two met, along with representatives from NHS England, the Department for Health and Social Care and James Palmer, the NHS’s medical director for gender services, to discuss Alice's suicide after Litman had repeatedly contacted Streeting asking to talk about Alice, Labour's trans policy rollbacks and trans suicides.
Since becoming health secretary in 2024, Streeting has called the use of puberty blockers to delay trans children's puberty a "scandal" and proposed segregating trans men and women in NHS hospital wards. He told Litman that he was "uncomfortable" making these decisions and is aware that the LGBTQIA+ community is critical of him.
Now, in a letter addressed to Streeting and seen by QueerAF, Litman says that the health secretary was "at peculiar pains to insist [his] religious beliefs don't influence [him]" when making these decisions.
Streeting's attempt to distance his decisions from his beliefs may stem from a perception that Christian groups view LGBTQIA+ people negatively. This is sometimes the case: in 2025, QueerAF exclusively reported that Core Issues Trust, a Christian fundamentalist organisation, was one of four groups that spent £2 million between 2019 and 2023 promoting so-called 'conversion therapy' in the UK.
Litman's 24-page letter to Streeting follows up on their March meeting and asks the health secretary more than 50 questions pertaining to his views on trans people, trans healthcare and 'gender critical' ideology. Streeting has been praised by 'gender critical' groups including Sex Matters for his "integrity" in restricting trans healthcare access for young people.
Streeting's insistence he wasn't a "God-botherer" was "quite lighthearted, as if it was all some kind of joke", while he insisted that his views couldn't be more "soggy, liberal Anglican" and that he "absolutely accepts trans people", Litman writes.
"It’s my considered opinion that your religious beliefs do influence you and it is trans people themselves that make you uncomfortable," Litman writes.
Speaking to QueerAF, Litman said her impression of Streeting is that he “is preoccupied with detransition, and this is influencing the decisions he makes about trans healthcare policy as Labour's health secretary.”
Wes Streeting 'places high value on trans women's ability to pass'
During the meeting, Litman also alleges that Streeting spoke "in admiration" of meeting a "beautiful trans student who you would never be able to tell was born male".
"You appear to place a high value on the ability to ‘pass’", Litman's letter to Streeting says.
"This was both deeply concerning to me and revealing. It came across as: women are only women if they meet certain beauty standards. And yet you choose to restrict access to the care that would facilitate that which you appear to admire."
Streeting and Litman met the week after NHS England paused new prescriptions of hormones to trans 16- and 17-year-olds, and advised GPs not to support trans young people who access hormones using private clinics - QueerAF
Litman's daughter Alice died by suicide after spending more than 1,023 days on a waiting list for an NHS gender clinic. In a 'Prevention of Future Death' (PFD) report issued by the coroner who investigated Alice's suicide, her lack of access to gender-affirming care was assessed to be a factor in her death and one that could be prevented in future - PFD report
Litman begins her letter to Streeting by outlining the issues in Alice's PFD report around gender-affirming healthcare. Litman says she heard nothing in the meeting "to reassure me that the DHSC and NHS England are moving in the right direction to prevent future deaths".
In Litman's letter, she also discusses the situation for trans rights since Labour came to power, Streeting's attitude to detransitioners, the Cass Review, and suicide rates in the trans community.
The Department for Health and Social Care and Wes Streeting’s office acknowledged but did not respond to QueerAF’s request for comment.
Analysis: The lady doth protest too much?
There are many LGBTQIA+ Christians, as well as many LGBTQIA+ people of other faiths.
While it's true that as an organised religion, Christianity has historically persecuted LGBTQIA+ people and still does to this day – see for example the US Christian right's war on trans people – it's wrong to assume someone will be homophobic or transphobic simply because they are Christian.
Many Christian queers have worked hard to challenge preconceptions about their faith's attitude towards LGBTQIA+ people and to change Christian institutions’ view and treatment of our community.
All that makes it somewhat surprising that Wes Streeting not only brought up his Christian beliefs in a meeting about trans people, but insisted he is not a “right-wing, evangelical, God-botherer who has issues with trans people” – without anyone else suggesting such a thing.
We don't give up on a story easily
The National Child Mortality Database has beated us around the bush regarding access to worrying and critical statistics about Trans+ youth suicides for the best part of a year now. But we didn't give up.
Despite growing pressure to release its analysis and having made statements that contained misdirections issued to us, it refused to release the data.
Thanks to our lead investigative journalist, we now have a much clearer understanding of what they know.
Previously, we knew they had data for four years, in which they said suicides of Trans+ young people "comprised very low numbers". Ludovic Parsons' investigation shows they had far more information than even we knew about. Indeed, our later piece with Good Law Project shows, that despite a need for more comprehensive data sets, trans people are dying of suicide more than the general UK population.
Both of these investigations, have formed the basis of letters, reports and advocacy to politicians, including to Streeting.
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