Thank God. At last an authoritative voice in the trans so-called debate.

The Cass Review into gender services for young people in England has found that children have been let down by being given medical interventions based on “remarkably weak” clinical evidence.

The review says a lot of other things too, but it’s worth taking a moment to let this key point settle, as it is relevant here in Scotland too. Children were being given puberty blockers and hormone treatments which have poorly understood impacts on things like brain development, without evidence that they even work in easing feelings of gender dysphoria and without knowing the long-term impacts on health and wellbeing.

This isn’t how things are done elsewhere in the NHS. It’s what happens when assumption and belief are allowed to take over from evidence-based medicine.

We knew this was coming. Dr Hillary Cass, a consultant paediatrician, had already published a critical interim report. The Tavistock in London, NHS England’s specialist gender clinic, has already been shut down.

But two additional points will land hard for some people.

One is Dr Cass’s recommendation that children with gender-related distress should, as standard, be screened for mental health problems and forms of neurodiversity like autism. There’s been a huge and sudden increase in numbers seeking help for gender distress in the last 10 years and a great many are young teenaged girls with additional needs or mental health problems. Each patient should be treated holistically, instead of looking at their gender identity in isolation as has tended to happen, says the review. “For most young people, a........

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