The decision* by Glasgow’s Sandyford gender clinic to pause the prescription of puberty blockers to children is good news for the children of Scotland. In due course, a public inquiry is needed into how doctors ever got involved in what may possibly be one of the greatest medical scandals of all time. For now, however, it’s important that no more children are harmed by an experimental treatment that in many cases did not improve children’s mental health and sometimes made the situation worse.
Children who identify as transgender have been let down badly by an NHS that succumbed to an activist lobby.
That is the obvious conclusion to make after Dr Hilary Cass published her final report this morning* as part of the Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People.
Children in England will no longer be prescribed puberty blockers at NHS gender identity clinics. This is good news: it was never appropriate to halt the normal physical development of young people struggling with the concept of growing up into the men and women that nature intended.
The Department for Education has delayed yet further its long-awaited transgender guidance for schools. Rishi Sunak had pledged that the document would be in our hands ‘for the summer term’, but that looks increasingly like another broken promise.
Sajid Javid is right to worry about the way the NHS has treated children who identify as transgender. The Health Secretary is reported to be preparing an urgent inquiry into the issue, and planning an overhaul of how the health service treats young people with gender dysphoria.
As professionals, parents and concerned adults, we urge the government not to rush through ill-judged legislation to ban so-called conversion therapy. Abusive and harmful practices are already illegal, but ambiguous language and weak definitions risk criminalising ethical exploratory therapy.
Debbie Hayton