Every time the door to the Department of Health swings open with a new name on it, I find myself doing the same thing: scanning the record, reading between the lines, and asking what it means for the tens of thousands of trans people who are still waiting. Wes Streeting resigned on 14 May, and James Murray, MP for Ealing North and most recently Chief Secretary to the Treasury, steps into what is arguably the most consequential role in British public life for trans people right now.
What do we know about him?
What Murray has said about trans rights
In 2022, Murray said clearly on TalkRadioTV: "I believe trans women are women." That was a position worth something, and I do not dismiss it just because the political wind has since shifted. Many people said the same thing in 2022 and have since found their courage tested by a much harsher climate.
The test came in April 2025, after the Supreme Court ruling on the Equality Act. Murray was among 54 out LGBTQ+ Labour MPs who did not respond when PinkNews asked whether they believe trans women are women. That silence is a kind of answer, even if it is not the one any of us wanted. He did write, in a letter, that "trans people must be able to live their lives with dignity and safety" and that he supports a full trans-inclusive ban on conversion practices. By May 2025, he was saying that single-sex spaces should be provided "on the basis of biological sex", in line with the Supreme Court ruling, while adding that "trans people should have access to services they need but in keeping with the ruling."
That phrase, "in keeping with the ruling", is doing a lot of work. The ruling did not remove legal protections from trans people: it offered one interpretation of the Equality Act, and a contested one at that. The Equality and Human Rights Commission guidance that followed remains in draft. Murray's framing treats a court's interpretation as settled policy in a way that the law itself does not yet require, and that matters for what happens next.
The shadow of Wes Streeting
Streeting arrived in office with a record of trans support and left having presided over the ban on puberty blockers for trans youth. He told The Sun in 2024 that he no longer stood by the statement "trans men are men, trans women are women", replacing a clear position with "there are lots of complexities." It was a retreat presented as nuance, and trans people noticed.
Murray is gay, and PinkNews frames his appointment with that detail, suggesting it might count for something. I understand the instinct. But being gay does not automatically make someone an ally to trans people, any more than being a woman makes someone a feminist. What counts is the record, the decisions, and who pays the price when those decisions go wrong.
What the job actually requires
Murray now holds the levers. Waiting lists for NHS gender services run to years. The ban on puberty blockers on private prescription remains in force and has caused serious, documented harm to trans young people. The NHS gender pathway for adults is under-resourced and overstretched. These are not abstract policy questions: they are the daily reality of people who write to me, people whose families are fracturing under the strain of a system that cannot give them what they need.
The questions I would want to put to Murray are concrete ones. Will he commit to rebuilding NHS gender services, not just reviewing them? Will he look honestly at the evidence on puberty blockers rather than deferring to the Cass Review, which has been widely discredited internationally? Will he commit to a conversion practices ban that actually protects trans people, including trans children? And will he use his platform to say, clearly, that trans people are not a problem to be managed but people who deserve care?
His letter said he believes all LGBT+ people must be treated fairly, with dignity and respect. I take that at face value, for now. But dignity and respect look like accessible healthcare, not just warm words. They look like a trans teenager being able to get the medical support that international guidelines recommend, without waiting until the damage of an unwanted puberty is already done.
Murray has the chance to be genuinely different from his predecessor. The record so far is cautious, and some of it is worrying. But the record from this point forward is the one that matters.
