Why did the Sandyford clinic delay pausing puberty blockers?

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.

That’s what the Cass Report told us when it was published on 10 April. NHS England – who commissioned the report – had seen enough to halt the use of puberty blocking drugs the previous month. It raises the question of why it has taken so much longer for the health service north of the border to respond. Children are the same whichever side of the river Tweed they happen to live.