The government has announced proposals to ban transgender women from single-sex female NHS wards.
It comes after a pledge last year by the then health secretary Steve Barclay to prevent people who had changed their gender identity from being treated on male-only or female-only wards.
It is part of a package of proposed changes to the NHS constitution, which sets out what rights patients have in terms of the care they can expect to receive from the NHS.
The announcement split opinion with gender-critical campaigners welcoming the plan but with hospital bosses and LGBT+ campaigners accusing the government of stoking division.
The government has been accused of stoking ‘culture wars’
PA/Getty
Under the proposals transgender people, whose gender identity differs from their biological sex, may be provided single rooms, where appropriate. Patients will have the right to request a person of the same biological sex delivers any intimate care.
Maya Forstater of the Sex Matters gender-critical campaign group said: “The confusion between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ in official policies like the NHS Constitution is what has enabled women’s rights to be trampled over in the name of transgender identities.”
However, Cleo Madeleine, of Gendered Intelligence, said: “After 14 years of austerity, medical professionals are crying out for more funding, more resources, and better conditions for staff and patients.
“The government seems hell-bent on pursuing its obsession with the transgender community instead of addressing these longstanding needs.”
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Cleo Madeleine, of Gendered Intelligence, said the government was ‘hell bent on its obsession’
PA
Same-sex accommodation rights, which have existed for years, can and are breached where there is a clinically urgent need to admit and treat a patient. The regulations would not extend to areas such as critical care or accident and emergency.
Health and social care secretary Victoria Atkins said: “We want to make it abundantly clear that if a patient wants same-sex care they should have access to it wherever reasonably possible. We have always been clear that sex matters and our services should respect that.
“By putting this in the NHS Constitution we’re highlighting the importance of balancing the rights and needs of all patients to make a healthcare system that is faster, simpler and fairer for all.”
Under the planned revisions, transgender people could be placed in a room on their own if another patient requests to be in a single-sex ward.
Health Secretary Victoria Atkins
PA
Meanwhile, Labour’s shadow health secretary Wes Streeting said: “rights on paper are worthless unless they are delivered in practice.”
Deputy chair of the British Medical Association council Dr Emma Runswick, told The Guardian: “Some of the proposed changes to the NHS constitution run the risk of causing more harm than good, with the potential to incite further discrimination, harassment and ostracisation of an already marginalised group
“If these proposed changes come into effect, transgender and non-binary patients will potentially find their access to vital NHS services limited.”
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