A prisoner serving a life sentence for a brutal murder is to have a sex-change operation costing the taxpayer £20,000.

Paris Green was born Peter Laing but has identified as female since 2011. She was jailed for life in 2013 for killing Robert Shankland.

Green and two accomplices lured Mr Shankland, 45, to her flat, tied him up and tortured him for several hours, beating him so badly they left a footprint on his neck. They also sexually assaulted him with a rolling pin.

Paris Green was born Peter Laing but has identified as female since 2011 and is now to undergo gender reassignment

Green, 26, began her sentence of at least 18 years at Cornton Vale women’s jail in Stirling, Scotland, but was moved after reports that she was having sex with female prisoners in her cell.

Now – to the fury of her victim’s family – she is to receive full ‘gender reassignment’ surgery paid for by the taxpayer. Green will be transported hundreds of miles from her cell to a hospital in England under constant guard.

Last night, Mr Shankland’s sister, Pauline Bell, 46, said: ‘She should not be getting the operation on the NHS. It’s not lifesaving treatment. She took somebody’s life away and destroyed a family.

Robert Shankland was tortured for several hours and beaten so badly it left a footprint on his neck. He was also sexually assaulted him with a rolling pin

‘She destroyed my mum’s life and now she is being given this treatment so she can feel better?

‘The Prison Service says it’s about human rights – but she took away someone’s human rights in the worst possible way. I’ve got absolute sympathy for transgender people. Let them have the operation. But not her.’

Mr Shankland’s mother, Mary, 74, said: ‘Green doesn’t know the meaning of the word remorse. She shouldn’t get the operation, especially when so many people need vital treatment on the NHS – and they’re not getting it. But the authorities are jumping through hoops for her.’

Writing from the women’s wing of HMP Edinburgh, Green confirmed to The Mail on Sunday: ‘I am having the op, and pretty soon. The letter has went out [sic] to the surgeon asking him to take on my case.’

As Peter Laing, Green spent much of her childhood in care. In 2011 she officially changed her name to Paris Green. Two years later, while waiting to be sentenced for Mr Shankland’s murder earlier in 2013, she wrote to her mother complaining she had ‘nothing to wear to court’ and worrying about having no make-up.

Judge John Morris told Green and her co-defendants at the trial: ‘It beggars belief you could act towards another human in this way. You left the victim, even in death, without any dignity.’

Most Scots undergoing gender reassignment on the NHS are sent to the private Nuffield Hospital in Brighton.

Green was convicted along with Kevin McDonagh and Dean Smith in 2013

A judge told Green that ;beggars belief you could act towards another human in this way'

That would mean a 1,000-mile round-trip for Green, who would require a 24-hour guard for several days.

A Scottish Prison Service spokesman said: ‘We cannot discuss individual cases but if a request is made by the NHS for surgery for one of the prisoners it is treating, we would not and could not stand in the way.’

A former prisoner with Green said: ‘When I first went in she looked, talked and acted like a woman.

'But she had a spell where her behaviour changed. It seemed she was having doubts, had stopped taking the hormones and was growing facial hair again. She was also sexually active and everyone knew about it. She had at least one girlfriend.’

Another former prisoner said Green was notorious for having sex with other prisoners, adding: ‘He didn’t seem to be acting much like a woman to me.’

Last week, the MoS reported that prison governors feared that moving sex offenders who are born male but identify as female into women’s jails could lead to vulnerable inmates being attacked.