Adam Doyle gives evidence in Redvers v NHS Sussex
An NHS exec accepted in court today that a key element of his defence against a gender critical doctor’s discrimination claim was “absurd”. He also accepted he was aware of concerns that a transgender GP, Dr Sam Hall, was prescribing hormones to children in contravention of the policies put in place by the organisation he ran.
Adam Doyle, the former CEO of NHS Sussex is the Second Respondent in an employment tribunal brought by a safeguarding specialist and GP, Dr Sarah Redvers. The First Respondent is NHS Sussex itself. Redvers claims she was victimised after she reported concerns about Dr Sam Hall to NHS Sussex and the General Medical Council. Hall worked for the Brighton and Hove Wellbeing Centre, which became WellBN – a GP surgery in Brighton, out of which Hall ran something called the Trans Healthcare Hub.
Redvers first raised formal concerns against Hall in 2020. By 2022 her concerns had been dismissed and Redvers was being investigated for transphobia. After being put through a traumatic process, Redvers left NHS Sussex and claimed constructive dismissal. Redvers’ concerns were borne out by an investigation which concluded in 2026, nearly six years after she first blew the whistle. You can read the full story here.
NHS Argues Evidence-Led Medicine Is Opinion
Part of NHS Sussex’s defence to the tribunal claim was that Dr Redvers’ belief in evidence-based medicine is a mere opinion. Redvers belief is set out in paragraph 5 of her Particulars of Claim:
“The Claimant holds a philosophical belief in the integrity of explanatory and evidence-led medicine (the Medical Integrity/MI belief). That belief is the cornerstone of her vocation and life. Whilst the precise form of treatment in any particular instance is subject to evidence, the paramount role placed on exploration and evidence is not merely an opinion based on current evidence. It relates to a weighty and substantial aspect of human life and behaviour, namely the health of the populace. It is cogent, coherent, serious and important. It is worthy of respect in a democratic society; indeed it is fundamental to the operation of the physician’s oath. It is thus a protected belief.”
In their Grounds of Resistance to Redvers’ claim, NHS Sussex wrote:
“It is not accepted that the Claimant’s purported philosophical belief at paragraph 5 of the Particulars of Claim is, or is capable of being, a protected belief…. In particular and without limitation the Second Respondent contends that the Claimant’s purported belief in “the integrity of explanatory and evidence led medicine” (“the MI Belief”) is in reality an opinion or viewpoint, does not relate to a weighty and substantial aspect of human life and behaviour and lacks cogency and cohesion.” [my emphasis]
On Tuesday the Second Respondent began giving evidence to Redvers v NHS Sussex at the South London Employment Tribunal in Croydon. Unsurprisingly, Dr Redvers’ barrister, Chris Milsom, wanted to understand how one of the most senior men in the NHS could think that evidence-led medicine was “an opinion or viewpoint” which “lacks cogency and cohesion.”
Milsom took Doyle to the Cass Review, which states “Although some think the clinical approach should be based on a social justice model, the NHS works in an evidence-based way.” He then referred to Redvers witness statement, in which she wrote: “in the absence of a reliance on evidence, there is nothing underpinning medical science, except any prevailing fashion. The absence of an evidence base means that medicine can only be based on blind faith. That is not science, and is more akin to a secular religion.”
Milsom suggested to Doyle that Redvers “belief” is “in reality, the entire foundation of western medicine, isn’t it? That you treat a patient, rather than espouse affirmative care or some model of social justice?”
“Yes”, replied Doyle.
Milsom took Doyle to the legal statute which requires the NHS to use “evidence obtained from research” and then into the General Medical Council (GMC) regulations which state that medical professionals must “respect every patient’s dignity and treat them as an individual” and “act promptly if you think that patient safety or dignity may be seriously compromised.”
Milsom suggested this recognised “the sanctity of the individual rather than any wider social cause” and “the importance of the duty to speak out if there’s a divergence from the paramountcy of the individual.”
Doyle agreed.
Doyle also accepted that when Dr Redvers raised her formal concern about the activities of Dr Sam Hall, she was manifesting her beliefs in a “not objectionable” way (important to negate the Bananarama Defence). He also accepted that a clinician “must” report any concern about patient safety even if it turned out to be mistaken.
“Can you agree with me on this”, asked Milsom, “that it’s a very serious thing indeed to take any reprisal action against somebody who honestly and reasonably makes any referral to the GMC?”
“I completely agree”, replied Doyle.
Even if the information was coming through to a whistleblower on an “ad hoc or second or third hand basis”?
Doyle agreed.
Finally Doyle agreed that he accepted Dr Redvers’ “belief” in evidence-based medicine was sincerely held. Reminding Doyle he had agreed that Dr Redvers’ “belief” matched the entire foundation of western medicine, Milsom took Doyle to the paragraph in the Grounds of Resistance I have quoted above.
“You have worked in the NHS for 24 years”, said Milsom, incredulously. “What do you think a doctor does?”
There was a pause before Doyle, the judge and then Milsom started talking over each other. The judge indicated Milsom should rephrase, so he did.
“Do you really say that the precepts of western medicine do not relate to a weighty and substantial aspect of human life and behaviour?”
There was another pause.
“No”, said Doyle.
“Do you really say that they lack cogency or cohesion?’
“No”, replied Doyle.
“Why are you committing to such an absurd defence then?” asked Milsom.
Doyle tried to explain that the phrase “Medical Integrity Belief” was what was confusing him, saying it was not a term he had come across in his career. Now he understood the belief to be in line with the foundational principle of western medicine, he agreed his assertion it was incoherent was “inaccurate”.
Milsom wasn’t convinced by this, as Redvers had spelt out exactly what she meant by Medical Integrity Belief in her witness statement – a belief in the scientific process and “exploratory and evidence-led medicine”. Milsom asked: “That’s central to what a doctor does, isn’t it?”
There was another silence before the judge moved to put Doyle out of his misery.
“I think you’ve made your point, Mr Milsom”, she said.
Sex Sometimes Matters
Having got Doyle to disown a key position he and the NHS were running for the tribunal, things moved at a light trot. Doyle soon agreed that Redvers’ belief in evidence-led medicine was not just how most doctors practised, but how they and the NHS should be practising. Milsom then got Doyle to accept that a belief in evidence-led medicine was also likely to inform Redvers’ understanding that sex is “real, biological and sometimes matters” – her Gender Critical belief.
Milsom then had a look at some of Dr Sam Hall’s beliefs. These were, he suggested, not evidence-led. The first port of call was an open letter co-signed by Hall from the Clare project in Brighton, which advocates for transgender people. The letter is dated 25 April 2023 and was sent to all Sussex MPs. It says:
“TNBI [Trans, Non-Binary and Intersex] people are being reduced to a simplistic notion of ‘biological binary sex’. This simple binary is a falsehood unsupported by science and medicine which regard physiological sex as complex and nuanced…. Intersex is physiological, varied and can be complex. Approximately 2 per cent of the population are intersex [horseshit invented in 2000, thoroughly debunked two years later], yet intersex people have no legal recognition or protections. A definition of ‘biological sex’ will further erase their existence. Being TNB is innate, like sexuality. It is equally biological, even if not well understood – i.e. not a behavioural or non-biological trait, nor a psychological disorder. It is the diversity of humanity and has always existed.”
Milsom then took Doyle through the articles Hall had written for Scene magazine (quoted in my last piece) about dosing up on testosterone. Milsom described Hall’s writing as “evangelical”. Doyle admitted Hall was certainly writing “very positively” about the experience of taking hormones. Then Milsom took Doyle to the transcript of an interview Dusty Amroliwala had undertaken with Hall as part of NHS Sussex’s investigation into Dr Redvers in 2021. In it, Hall objected to people describing puberty blockers as “experimental” saying:
“This has been bandied around so much. It’s really, really obnoxious. There are WPATH guidelines; the World Professional Association of trans health. There are European guidelines, North American guidelines, Canadian and Australian guidelines, even guidelines which the GID Tavistock and Portman in this country acknowledge is the treatment, the correct treatment. Nobody, apart from gender critical activists who have been building their case for years now with really well funded right-wing money that comes across the water. All you have to do is put it out there, Dusty, in the ether, that this is experimental treatment, and people buy into it.“
Milsom contrasted this with what the High Court had ruled about puberty blockers in 2020, which was:
“There is real uncertainty over the short and long-term consequences of the treatment with very limited evidence as to its efficacy, or indeed quite what it is seeking to achieve. This means it is, in our view, properly described as experimental treatment.“
Gender Guru
Milsom asked Doyle to accept that Dr Hall was taking an “extremist” position. Doyle started off by telling Milsom it was a “difficult question to answer” but by the end of it had talked himself round to accepting that Hall had an “extreme” position, even if he couldn’t quite bring himself to call Hall an extremist.
Milsom then demonstrated how Hall’s “extreme” position manifested itself. In an interview published on YouTube in July 2025 Hall is recorded as saying:
“I’ve always said to people who I train that the principles, the ethical principles that underpin the informed consent model of gender-affirming care are the same principles that should underpin all primary care interactions… but we work in a medical model that’s still very paternalistic and deprives people of bodily autonomy and active decision-making or choices. And there’s a whole load of epistemic injustice that underpins this. The doctor knows everything and nothing – like… this is madness that we’ve reached.“
Hall intimated this kind of thinking would be at odds with the evidence-led approach:
“it was always clear to me that there was going to be some kind of, what should we say, like a moral or ethical clash between these two models of care, one of which predicated on the multiple assessment, GIC [gender identity clinic] type: somebody jumping through hoops, gatekeeping, someone else gets to say you’re trans… Alternatively, the informed consent model of care, which is predicated on essentially, I have a license to prescribe, you have a need…. we discuss the risks and benefits of you taking a medication that I’m gonna prescribe for you. And that’s like a contract between you and your GP.“
Milsom suggested there was a “clear dichotomy” between Hall’s model of “informed consent” and Redvers model of “evidence-based medicine”.
Doyle accepted the proposition.
Surgeries Are Hideous
Milsom noted that Dr Hall had taken the BHWC/WellBN practice from 60 trans patients in 2019, to 2,500 in 2025. He pointed to a September 2025 video interview for Scene Magazine in which Hall said:
“It goes something like this… you’re struggling with gender incongruence. You might feel more comfortable, you think, with some oestrogen on board. I’m prepared to prescribe that for you. You need to understand what the risks are and then help me to help you keep your body safe. Our service is based on no gatekeeping, on your bodily autonomy, your right to choose, your reproductive rights, what you do with your reproductive organs should be yours and yours alone to decide. And I don’t care how old you are, we won’t do anything irreversible until you’re in adulthood. We never do anything irreversible until you’re in adulthood and you’re making an informed decision about surgeries, for example, which by the way, nobody goes into lightly. Surgeries are hideous.“
Milsom pointed out Hall was being funded by NHS Sussex whilst pursuing a model of care “in opposition” not only to the Claimant’s protected belief, but the basic precepts of western healthcare.
“Correct?” asked Milsom.
There was a pause, and then a rather strangulated “yes” from Doyle.
“And yet it was the claimant who left her employment in 2024 and all the while WellBN are continuing to provide this service. Correct?” asked Milsom.
“Yes”, replied Doyle.
Hall Feels Scene
After lunch Milsom started drilling down into the commissioning rules for WellBN and the terms on which it was funded. WellBN started life as the Brighton and Hove Wellbeing Centre (BHWC) before merging with another local practice and transforming in 2022 to WellBN, out of which Hall ran a Trans Healthcare Hub for young people. Despite technically being a GP service, BHWC (and WellBN after) operated like a gender clinic. At no stage was Hall ever licensed by NHS Sussex to prescribe hormones for under 18s.
Milsom took Doyle through a lot of the paperwork around the commissioning of healthcare by NHS Sussex to point out that whilst WellBN was growing its patient numbers from sixty to 2,500 based on Hall’s willingness to provide easy access to hormones, all the medical literature was advising varying degrees of caution, including papers published by the GMC and the Royal College of GPs. Also, despite having no competency or licence to do so, WellBN was treating children.
Milsom again showed Doyle the transcript of the September 2025 Scene Magazine interview, in which Hall said:
“I think one of the really important facts to just get straight here is I will not, as a transgender person, discriminate against another transgender person on any grounds, and that would include age. So there was never any time when I wouldn’t see young people if they… we… didn’t advertise as a clinic for young people, but if people came to us… who were under 18, I would not turn them away. That would be discriminating. So even though NHS Sussex have funded the service for over 18s, we have always, within that service, seen under 18s.”
Hall continued:
“sixteen is widely regarded, even though it’s not the legal age of adulthood… as an age where you can consent. And importantly, we give hormones to under 18s all the time in the cis female population. So to deny hormones to a young person under 18, but just because they’re trans wouldn’t, that would be a moral injury to me. I’ve never been prepared to discriminate against trans youth, but the NHS is, and they are, and they have been, and we’ve watched this unfold over the last few years, haven’t we?“
By the time this interview was conducted, Hall had left WellBN, so it was up to Milsom to demonstrate to the tribunal that Hall’s rule-breaking was known to the NHS before 2025.
Firstly, Milsom walked Doyle through NHS Sussex’s stated desire in its policies for “allyship” with the trans community, creating an environment in which Dr Hall could and did become an influential figure. Doyle tried to argue NHS Sussex policies were seeking allyship with everyone who had a protected characteristic, which is when Milsom raised a quirk of the policy. The NHS Sussex policy on disability corresponded with the law “but”, he noted “a policy that says ‘all forms of sexual orientation are protected’ is a misrepresentation of the law.” (there was some consternation in court on Monday when Dr Charlotte Elves, Milsom’s junior, pointed out that attraction to children is a sexual orientation). Milsom wanted to know why NHS Sussex’s policies in this area “distort legal reality”. Doyle could not answer that question. He also accepted people within NHS Sussex were afraid to speak out about WellBN for fear of being labelled “transphobic”.
The Webberley Workaround
Milsom took him back to Hall’s July 2025 interview and read him through more of Hall’s words, which the barrister said seemed to explain a “workaround” that Hall had devised for treating children:
“People would come to our clinic and… go to one of the private providers to access treatment under 16 and then bring their private prescription back to us. And we would take over that private prescription on the NHS, in what I would call a ‘best interest’ decision. The fact that the NHS is not providing a route for this doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be a route. So we’ve made one.“
Milsom suggested this “workaround” was happening in full view of NHS Sussex and NHS England. Doyle wasn’t sure, so Milsom took him to a September 2020 meeting transcript between Dr Clare Cochrane-Dyet of NHS England and Dr Sam Hall. This meeting had come about because of Redvers’ initial whistleblowing in August 2020, which she had been advised by her superiors at NHS Sussex to take directly to NHS England.
In these meeting notes, Cochrane-Dyet is listed as the Medical Director of NHS England (NHS Improvements South East). The minutes of the meeting state that as per information from Hall:
“Patients often take the private route because of the waits, often using Gender Care arid Gender GP which are private transgender clinics. Gender GP operate from aboard now end prescribe online. When patients that have taken this route… the partners including Dr Hall, take over prescribing their drugs on the NHS to ensure that the necessary monitoring takes place since this feels that safest and best option.“
Further down the same page of minutes, Cochrane-Dyet is recorded as asking why the work Hall was “doing is not being promoted as it seems to be addressing a significant health inequality.” Doyle accepted that not only this was evidence that NHS England were well aware that Hall was presscribing, but actively encouraging it.
Trans is a Colonial Issue
Milsom turned his attention to what NHS Sussex knew, bringing up another extraordinary document written by Hall in March 2021. This was titled “Position paper for Sussex Commissioners re prescribing for trans young people”, which NHS Sussex eventually accepted as a blueprint for operating WellBN and Hall’s Trans Health Hub. In it, Hall states:
“the treatment of trans kids has become even more of a spotlight issue. Anxiety provoked around this in the medical profession is based on fear of getting it wrong, or being seen to operate outside of the expected or agreed ‘norms’…. If we can accept that our beloved healthcare system is built on the power structure of empire which continues to hold up, amplify and champion white, male, cisgender & straight privilege, then we can start to see how and where it enacts violence on anyone who does not fit in that category.”
In quick order, Hall rails against the inequalities meted out to the “oppressed”. That is, the elderly, the poorly paid, the QTIBIPoC community (a group comprising “queer, trans and intersex people of colour”) which, “coupled with disability… means that we will almost certainly be enacting the most violence on communities who remain unseen”.
Hall then turns to children:
“If a child under 16 is not deemed competent to consent to GnRh analogues [puberty blockers] in order to alleviate distress caused by pubertal changes that they cannot tolerate, what does this say about those using contraception, which effectively works by the same mechanism, shutting down the pituitary gland. This opens a sinister door in terms of protecting the rights of children in the UK, and in England in particular, where the provision of healthcare for trans children is already on a knife edge, and under siege from a well funded and well orchestrated campaign to diminish and undermine trans rights in the UK. This movement has gathered strength and gravitas, under the guise of positing trans women in particular as a sexual threat to society in general, and to women in particular. It is gaining traction in the echelons of power, particularly in the House of Lords and in the Conservative party. The arguments put forward to oppress and restrict trans lives are based on and feed off fear. Fear is not a reason to neglect our duty as clinicians to look after the person in front of us.“
The positioning paper contains a ringing endorsement of Helen Webberley’s GenderGP, with Hall claiming:
“We a robbing young people of their lives. Many can’t go to school, or bear to socialise, struggle to find or keep friends, and sadly many have hostile families. These are the people most at risk of suicide. Those whose families do support them are almost certainly seeking other routes for treatment, including GenderGP, which has been blacklisted by the GMC despite modelling their care on that which is deemed acceptable in many European countries, Australia, Canada and many parts of the USA. The informed consent models respects autonomy, and in terms of medical ethics, fulfils the pillars of justice, beneficence and non-maleficence. The mental health impact of not getting HRT [Hormone Replacement Therapy] when it is needed is deeply harmful, and this has long lasting effects. We should not be afraid of blockers or cross-sex hormones, however little we understand the need for them.”
Doyle said he couldn’t recall ever seeing Hall’s positioning paper before the documents for the tribunal were being circulated, whilst accepting for a second time that day that there was no “expectation” that Hall or WellBN were ever allowed to or should have been prescribing to under 18s. Milsom wanted to know how, if it was a unilateral understanding at NHS Sussex that WellBN and Hall either were not, or should not be prescribing to under 18s, that a positioning paper arguing to do just that was adopted by NHS Sussex in 2022. Doyle was not sure.
La Pistola Humeante
Milsom took him to the notes of Dusty Amroliwala’s interview with Dr Hall in August 2021. Amroliwala had been hand-picked by Doyle to investigate Hall’s complaint of transphobia against Sarah Redvers. Amroliwala recorded:
“so far as SH [Sam Hall] is aware, two [patients] were under the GIDS [Gender Identity Service] and receiving puberty blockers which they [ie Hall and co] were administering and one… who had received them from GenderGP had taken over by a previous GP in Brighton and then the patient had moved to BHWC where they had continued the prescription. SH categorically made the point that he had never initiated puberty blockers to any person under the age of 16 at any point ever, and still hasn’t.“
This was a smoking gun delivered directly to Doyle’s desk, which sat there for a full three years before senior management at NHS Sussex showed sufficient curiosity about what might be happening to the children in Hall’s care.
Milsom wondered if NHS Sussex’s current legal position was that neither Doyle nor anyone in authority knew of a single child being prescribed hormones, when Dr Hall felt “perfectly comfortable” telling an investigator that under 18s were receiving medication.
Doyle accepted that people – like Dr Redvers – were “very concerned” about Hall’s practice. So, said Doyle, “the organisation knew”. Milsom pointed out that Hall had explicitly confirmed they were treating at least one minor in a report which was delivered to Doyle’s desk. Milsom asked the question again – was Doyle aware that Hall was prescribing puberty blockers and cross sex hormones to children in contravention of NHS Sussex’s own stated policies in 2021?
Doyle gave a long answer about receiving Amroliwala’s report and taking it to his Chair because he wasn’t quite sure what to do with it and then asking his Chief Medical Officer to “get to the bottom of what had happened”.
Milsom asked again – was Doyle ever aware that Hall was prescribing to children?
“There were clearly concerns raised”, said Doyle.
“So you knew”, said Milsom.
“I knew that people had raised concerns about it”, said Doyle. “I wasn’t sure what the outcome was.”
Doyle continues giving evidence today. Unfortunately I won’t be able to cover it, but live tweets of Redvers v NHS Sussex and Adam Doyle are being provided by Tribunal Tweets. You can find their substack page here and read them on X here.
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