Taxpayers foot a £6.5m NHS bill as breast removal operations for trans patients soar 52 per cent in two years

Each procedure costs around £5,800, pushing the annual total to £6.5m — though the NHS puts that at just 0.003 per cent of England's £187bn budget.

Operations are only approved for adults referred by a specialist gender identity clinic after a formal assessment for gender dysphoria, typically taking years.

Masculinising genital surgery rose from 270 to 322 operations over the same two-year period, while feminising genital surgery fell from 420 to 364.

The NHS spends an estimated £21m a year in total on gender reassignment surgery, equivalent to 0.01 per cent of its annual budget.