Transgender patients will no longer be allowed on female hospital wards in the NHS under new plans to tackle “wokery” and “ideological dogma” in the UK’s national health service.
Health Secretary Steve Barclay today vowed to restore “common sense” in the NHS, saying today that he recognised the “importance of biological sex in healthcare.”
He made the pledge during his speech at the Tory conference on Tuesday, saying that “as Conservatives, we know what a woman is.” Mr Barclay said the plan would signal the return of “a common-sense approach to sex and equality.”
“That is why I ordered a reversal of unacceptable changes to the NHS website that erased references to women for conditions such as cervical cancer, and stopped the NHS ordering staff to declare pronouns to each new patient,” he said.
The Health Secretary continued: “And that is why today I am going further by announcing that we will change the NHS constitution following a consultation later this year to make sure we respect the privacy, dignity and safety of all patients and recognise the importance of different biological needs and protect the rights of women.”
Mr Barclay said he believed women’s rights have been sidelined, as he announced the changes which are set to see women given the right to receive care on single-sex wards. The new rules would give women and men the right to be cared for on wards only shared by those of the same biological sex, and to have intimate care provided by those of the same sex as them.
It is set to mark a reversal of NHS guidance published in 2021, which stated that trans patients could be placed on single-sex wards based on the gender they identified with.
Sex-specific language will also be reintroduced throughout the NHS, after references to ‘women’ were removed from advice on issues like the menopause and diseases including ovarian and cervical cancer.
The Telegraph reports that the Health Secretary had become frustrated by “ideological dogma” within Britain’s health service, where phrases such as “breastfeeding” had been replaced by “chestfeeding” and words like “women” had been substituted for “people.”
The UK paper reports that source close to the Health Secretary said:
“The Secretary of State is fed up with this agenda and the damage it’s causing, language like ‘chestfeeding’, talking about pregnant ‘people’ rather than women. It exasperates the vast majority of people, and he is determined to take action on it.
“He is concerned that women’s voices should be heard on healthcare and that too often wokery and ideological dogma is getting in the way of this”.
Barclay said if the proposal seems like “simple common sense, that is because it is”.
According to The Telegraph, transgender patients would be accommodated in separate accommodation which could mean being provided with their own rooms.
The Health Secretary told the paper ahead of Tuesday’s Conservative party conference:
“We need a common-sense approach to sex and equality issues in the NHS. That is why I am announcing proposals for clearer rights for patients.
“And I can confirm that sex-specific language has now been fully restored to online health advice pages about cervical and ovarian cancer and the menopause. It is vital that women’s voices are heard in the NHS and the privacy, dignity and safety of all patients are protected.”
Maya Forstater of campaign group Sex Matters welcomed the development as “fantastic.”
BBC – Single sex hospital accomodations in England to be single sex
"Fantastic news" @MForstater
— Sex Matters (@SexMattersOrg) October 3, 2023
The executive director of the organisation said:
“This is fantastic news – the return of common-sense and reality-based thinking about biological sex within the NHS.
“Staff trans activists have been wreaking havoc across the health sector, from the removal of sex-based language in women’s health to insisting that the identity of NHS workers trumps patients’ rights to single-sex care.
“Undoing the damage will take years of concerted effort but will bring huge benefits for all patients and staff, most especially women.”
However, LGBT+ charity Stonewall blasted the news. A spokesperson for the charity said:
“This is a cynical attempt by the Secretary of State to ‘look busy’ instead of getting on with the graft of implementing the Women’s Health Strategy, and, besides being unworkable, all it will achieve is to restrict access to healthcare for trans women, by making it humiliating and dangerous.”
Earlier this year, a Policy Exchange report found that NHS trusts were compromising women’s safety and rights by providing same-sex intimate care, based on staff member’s self-declared gender identity as opposed to biological sex. The report cautioned that the NHS’s embrace of gender ideology was “diminishing the rights of women and girls.”
Conservative peer Lord Blencartha, at the time, pressed the Department of Health about what it was doing “to ensure that every hospital trust is able to guarantee same-sex accommodation and intimate same-sex care”.
The report, published in January, claimed the NHS had been “increasingly compromised” by gender ideology, something it said disregarded “the realities and immutability of biological sex.”