Wales: Doctor fined for operating illegal gender clinic

Helen Webberley, 49, treated children at her home clinic, charging £75 to £150 an hour to patients who sought gender reassignment.

Merthyr Tydfil Magistrates’ Court heard that she gave hormones to children who had been denied them on the NHS.

Dr Webberley, who had been refused a licence for her clinic last year by Healthcare Inspectorate Wales (HIW), ran her company without one between March last year and February.

She was convicted of illegally providing healthcare service, with District Judge Neil Thomas ruling that she and the company had fallen foul of the Care Standards Act 2000.

Russell Davies, defending, said she had established the company in 2014 after working as a GP and the initial success of her website MyWebDoc.com.

“Here was a doctor who was providing care, information and advice that was very much needed,” he said. “She didn’t appreciate that the company needed registration until it was pointed out to her.”

She continued to run the company after being told to stop, he said, because she feared closing the website could harm patients.

“She was a very caring practitioner who never developed the company for financial gain,” he said.

She was fined £12,000 and her company £2,000 in addition to £11,037 in costs.

The judge said: “There seems to be a clear refusal to follow the law and that is a significant aggravating factor.”

Dr Webberley said in a statement: “I began providing private healthcare to the trans and non-binary community because there was a desperate need and no NHS provision within Wales … I never set out to break the law.

“The needs of this minority group of people must be recognised … I am taking this fight to Parliament.”