The NHS puberty blocker ban for children is long overdue

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.

Puberty blockers, followed by cross-sex hormones, were a so-called solution that, in my view as a transgender adult, created a very serious problem. A cohort of young people identified as transgender, non-binary or maybe something yet more mysterious. They demanded powerful and life-altering drugs to ward off what they – or their parents – feared might be a mental health catastrophe. All too readily, those demands were met.

Now, Hilary Cass – the paediatrician who is conducting an independent review of gender identity services for children and young people – has helped put the brakes on this madness.