Green Party leader’s health plight helped him empathise with trans patients facing surgical delays

Martin Shipton

Wales Green Party leader Anthony Slaughter has told how the anxiety he felt while waiting for a serious operation helped him understand the trauma felt by trans people whose gender-based surgery was halted because of a review of the service.

In August 2026, NHS officials announced all surgery commissioned by the Welsh Gender Service (WGS) was being “paused” over concerns about the number of referrals, and whether they were all appropriate.

In 2024 and 2025, the WGS referred between three and four times as many people per head of population for irreversible gender-based surgery as the UK as a whole.

The NHS committee responsible said the pause had been needed for “urgent clinical assurance work”.

Mr Slaughter, who represents Caerdydd Penarth, told the Senedd: “Over the past few weeks, my emails, like others, have been flooded with messages from people, distraught and disorientated. People who had surgeries cancelled at the eleventh hour with no explanation or option to reschedule. Patients, friends and family members desperate for answers as to why this had happened, what went wrong and how they could move forward.”

He said hundreds of patients had their surgeries and surgical assessments paused on August 28 while a clinical review was undertaken into Welsh gender services referrals, with some finding out while already in hospital.

Mr Slaughter said patients had spent years preparing physically and mentally for surgery and had arranged their lives around the planned procedures.

He said: “I listened to people who explained that they were left feeling abandoned, alone and confused, having had the rug pulled from under them at the very last second by the system that is supposed to care for them.”

Mr Slaughter then revealed that he had undergone scheduled and serious surgery himself during the Senedd recess.

He said: “Over the summer, I experienced the reality of what prepping for surgery entailed, the physical and mental stress—something so many here will be able to relate to.

“When I walked onto that silent ward at 05:00 in the morning, the wave of emotion I felt is difficult to put into words—the silence of the sleeping ward, the uncertainty, the fear.”

Reassurance

Mr Slaughter said one source of reassurance had been knowing that he was surrounded by people working to treat and care for him, and that he could trust the healthcare system.

He added: “Now, for some, that trust has been broken. To think that, today, right here in Wales, we have a system that, for a certain group of people, is felt to be actively working in opposition to their well-being is a terrifying thought, one that, had it been something that I had had to consider alongside everything else, would’ve made my personal experience exponentially so much more traumatic.”

Mr Slaughter said his own experience was not the important issue and that the voices of the trans community should instead be heard.

He said: “One of the key principles on which our NHS is based is equal access to healthcare for all, regardless of age, gender or background.

“Another is that it has a patient-centred approach, putting individuals at the heart of their operations, providing a service that is reflective of their needs and their preferences.”

Mr Slaughter argued that gender-affirming surgery was a well-established area of medicine and criticised both the decision to pause operations and the way it had been communicated to patients.

He said: “The decision to pause these surgeries was ill-thought-out and callous. But it also demonstrates a failure of governance within NHS Wales Joint Commissioning Committee (NWJCC) and sadly, a breakdown in communication with the Welsh Government.

“For patients to be told, just hours away from surgery, vulnerable but prepared, that their operation would not be going ahead, with no explanation, no indication of a rescheduled date and with no communication in the days following demonstrates a failure of the duty of care that patients are entitled to during one of the most significant events of their lives.”

‘Dangerous’

He questioned why the Welsh Gender Service was being reviewed when it had referred proportionately more patients for surgery than services elsewhere in the UK.

Mr Slaughter added: “The Welsh Greens are shouting loudly about this, because there’s a dangerous precedent that this decision sets for human rights.”

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