Vulnerable children are wrongly being given gender hormone treatment by the NHS, the UK’s Health Secretary believes, as he prepares to launch an urgent inquiry. Irish children are sometimes taken to British clinics for such treatments at the expense of the HSE.

Sajid Javid thinks the system is “failing children” and is planning an overhaul of how health service staff deal with under-18s who question their gender identity.

Javid is understood to have likened political sensitivities over gender dysphoria to the fears of racism in Rotherham over grooming gangs mostly run by men of Pakistani descent.

Critics have accused England’s only specialist services for children with gender dysphoria of rushing the underage patients into life-altering treatment and being too willing to give puberty blockers to young teenagers.

Hilary Cass, a former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, has been leading a review into NHS gender identity services for children. In interim findings last month, she said children were being affected by a lack of expert agreement about the nature of gender identity problems, a “lottery” of care and long waiting lists.

Javid is said to be particularly alarmed by her finding that some non-specialist staff felt “under pressure to adopt an unquestioning affirmative approach” to transitioning and that other mental health issues were “overshadowed” when gender was raised.