Mick Hartley

From the Times today:

NHS trusts have been accused of compromising women’s rights by refusing to guarantee same-sex intimate care.

In a letter leaked to the Policy Exchange think tank, the then chief executive of North Bristol NHS Trust confirmed that it allowed patients and staff to self-identify their gender.

It means that an employee of the trust who is biologically male but identifies as female can provide intimate care and assistance to female patients.

Policy Exchange publishes a paper today containing information about the letter, while revealing up to 30 sexual assaults against females on the Bristol trust’s hospital property since 2019.

Nimco Ali, a former independent government adviser for tackling violence against women and girls, said the NHS was being “compromised” by gender ideology. She said: “The letter . . . marks yet another addition to a growing body of evidence which reveals the NHS to be seriously compromised by an ideology that is diminishing the rights of women and girls.

“There can be no compromise when it comes to women’s rights. There is no legitimate reason why a hospital cannot guarantee same-sex accommodation and intimate same-sex care, especially when the law explicitly allows for it.

“The right to privacy, dignity and safety as a patient is inextricably linked to the foundations of the NHS. To remove this right without consent is nothing short of a national scandal.” …

In the leaked letter, from February 2021, sent to a member of the public by Evelyn Barker, the chief executive of North Bristol Trust at the time, she sets out the trust’s policies for patient single-sex accommodation.

Her guidance says that this includes “allowing trans people to be accommodated according to their presentation, the way they dress and the pronouns they currently use” ,,,.

Policy Exchange said the “prioritisation of gender above sex” endorsed “in the letter and by officials across NHS departments fundamentally fails to recognise the consequences of denying sex-based rights”. It says freedom of information requests revealed up to 30 sexual assaults against females on hospital property at the Bristol trust.

The think tank says Barker’s letter contains policies that “explicitly compromise sex-based rights permissible within the law”. It added that its paper reveals a “staggering incompetence within the wider NHS in dealing with gender identity ideology”, saying the case was unlikely to be isolated.

Policy Exchange said the trust and all others in the NHS must uphold a patient’s right to same-sex intimate care and same-sex accommodation. It called for trusts to state that sex does not mean gender, but biological sex.

The think tank also said that NHS England and all trusts should withdraw from membership of political or lobbying organisations such as Stonewall.

It called for the scrapping of “Annex B”, in the 2019 NHS same-sex accommodation policy, for specifying that self-identified gender — not sex — determines where trans people should be accommodated.

You'd think the NHS might have better things to d than follow the dictates of Stonewall.

Here's the Policy Exchange report – Gender identity ideology in the NHS.