10 November 2011 Last updated at 15:29 ET

Sittingbourne family fight killer's sex change

Jim and Judy White have started a petition against prisoners receiving NHS-funded sex changes

The family of a Kent man who was beaten to death are campaigning to stop his killer getting a sex change in prison.

Relatives of Clive White have said taxpayers should not pay for treatment for jailed Robert Page, from Sittingbourne, who uses the name Emma.

The Department of Health said prisoners had the right to receive the same NHS services as anyone else.

Disabled Mr White, of Sittingbourne, was attacked with an axe and hammer in 2000. Page was jailed in 2001.

Page, then 24, lived four doors away from Mr White, 56, at the time of the killing.

In 2003, his murder conviction was quashed and his guilty plea to manslaughter was accepted. He is now in HMP Wakefield, West Yorkshire.

'Same rights as anyone'

Robert Page, now called Emma, is in HMP Wakefield

Mr White's brother Jim and sister-in-law Judy, from Chatham, have started a petition campaigning to stop prisoners receiving NHS-funded sex changes.

Jim White said: "For this man to do this, is actually despicable, that's my only thing.

"I feel so hurt for these people that can't get their operations and he can go ahead and get all this done through taxpayers' money."

A statement from the Department of Health said: "All decisions made about gender reassignment are rightly based on an individual clinical assessment."

It added: "Transsexual prisoners have the right to receive the same range and quality of NHS treatments and services as anyone else, including treatment for gender reassignment."

A spokesman for the Prison Service said he could not comment on individual prisoners, but added that in most cases, transsexual prisoners were transferred to a prison of the same sex as their acquired gender.

Janet Scott, from the transgender support charity the Beaumont Society, said: "He's entitled to the same treatment whether he's in prison or out of prison.

"It doesn't matter if he's transgender, suffering from mental illnesses, or suffering from cancer, the treatment is National Health Service treatment, standard procedure."