Hormone therapy for all, climate testing medicines and race-based targets for mental-health detentions are among Green Party proposals to reform healthcare in England. A policy document submitted by Zack Polanski’s official Health Policy Working Group, leaked to The Spectator, also reveals ambitions to push the NHS towards veganism and a ban on ‘sustained efforts’ to discourage ‘gender-affirming’ treatments. The document will be put to Green members at the party’s autumn conference in Brighton next month. Its provenance makes it particularly significant – this is not merely a motion from an individual activist, but the work of an official policy group.
The prospect of a trans-obsessed, plant-based NHS dispensing climate-tested medicines is unlikely to be an obvious electoral draw
The 296-page document, titled The Green Way to Health, devotes considerable space to transgender issues. It calls for NHS provision to be expanded to encompass a ‘wider range of gender affirming treatments’, without specifying what those treatments would involve. No minimum age, parental-consent requirement or separate safeguarding framework for children is proposed. The policy group also demands that the NHS fund fertility preservation before gender-affirming treatment, even when the treatment itself takes place outside the health service. Transgender patients would be permitted to change the sex recorded in their NHS files, with anatomical details – such as whether they have a cervix or prostate – stored separately. Elsewhere, the document backs a broad ban on ‘trans conversion practices’ and uses terms including ‘birthing people’ and ‘chest-feeding’ throughout its maternity policy.
Beyond gender, the Greens propose subjecting all medicines and medical devices to environmental testing, with the regulator NICE required to consider ‘planetary health’ when granting approvals. Environmental-impact assessments would also become part of NHS procurement. Meanwhile, a new state-owned national pharmaceutical service would manufacture medicines ‘chosen based on public health priorities rather than profit’.
On race, every healthcare provider would be required to adopt a ‘robust antiracism’ policy, provide mandatory ‘cultural-competency training’ and produce ‘data demonstrating progress towards equity in outcomes’. Polanski’s party would also seek to reduce mental-health detention rates among ‘people from the global majority’ and those with developmental disabilities. The document warns that unspecified ‘further action’ would follow if disparities failed to narrow.
The Greens also propose a familiar range of nanny-state interventions on food and drink. These include additional taxes or levies on products high in fat, salt and sugar, alongside planning restrictions on fast-food outlets near schools. The document would introduce mandatory front-of-pack labelling, tighten controls on the marketing of unhealthy food to children and steer retailers’ promotional spending towards healthier products. Public institutions would be pushed towards ‘plant rich’ menus, while ministers would promote price parity for plant-based alternatives and extend restrictions on multibuy deals to processed meat. The party would also consider minimum alcohol pricing, imposing a legal floor on cheap drinks according to their alcoholic strength.
Perhaps the most striking feature of the plan is the policy group’s candid admission that it has no idea what its proposals would cost – or even how to produce a rough estimate. The document concedes: ‘Healthcare modelling and health economics are specialist subjects. None of our volunteers in the Health Policy Working Group had these (sic) expertise, and few had experience in the economic side of health or the NHS. Neither were the Policy Development Committee or the Policy Development Team able to assist.’
The plan comes as Polanski was today confirmed as the Green Party candidate in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election. Across much of the country, the prospect of a trans-obsessed, plant-based NHS dispensing climate-tested medicines is unlikely to be an obvious electoral draw. But in a central London constituency populated by students and progressive activists, such proposals may find a more receptive audience. The by-election will therefore provide a revealing test of whether this agenda remains confined to the activist fringe – or whether a significant bloc of voters is prepared to try and carry it further into the political mainstream.
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