Transgender patients could be treated in private rooms in NHS hospitals to protect their “rights and dignities”, Health Secretary Wes Streeting has said, in a plan critics have branded “outrageous”. The Times has the story.
The Health Secretary said NHS guidance on same-sex wards is being reviewed in light of the Supreme Court ruling that a woman is defined by biological sex under equalities law.
He said hospitals must find a “caring and compassionate” way forward that protects transgender patients while also upholding the “sex-based rights of women”, suggesting this could include providing separate spaces for trans people within hospitals.
Asked if transgender women will be treated on male wards and will use male changing rooms and toilets in the NHS, Streeting told LBC Radio: “No, what we want to do is make sure we have single-sex provision on wards in the NHS, and that’s based on biology, and to make sure that trans people have access to safe and dignified and respectful care.”
Under current NHS guidelines, drawn up in 2019, trans people should be accommodated according to the way they dress, their names and their pronouns, rather than sex. This means that, for example, a transgender woman, who was born male, could be placed on a female-only ward.
However, the Equality and Human Rights Commission has warned the NHS that it would be pursued if it did not follow new guidance that single-sex spaces should be defined on biological sex.
Streeting said “we can and must” uphold the “rights, the freedoms, the spaces for women as sex-based rights” while also upholding the respect and freedoms of transgender people.
Pressed on which wards transgender people will be treated on, he said: “It will very much depend on particular settings.
“The NHS is updating its guidance and what we would like to see is appropriate kinds of rooms and private spaces for trans people to be cared for in NHS hospitals.”
He said most people in the UK are “fair-minded and decent” and want transgender people to live with freedom, dignity and respect and “that’s what this Government wants too”.
On whether there could be transgender wards, he added: “It comes back to this question of scale and we’re talking about a relatively small number of people in our country anyway, and a tiny number of people who might be accessing a different range of NHS services at any one time.
“So I just think, on top of everything else that we’re dealing with, not just in the NHS, but also thinking about how you protect women’s spaces and protect trans people’s rights and dignities, let’s also keep some of these challenges in proportion.
“We are talking about a small, tiny number of people who might be in an NHS service on any given day.
“So I don’t think it is beyond the wits and means of leaders of NHS services across the country to find a caring and compassionate way through this.”
In the top-rated comment (with approaching 800 upvotes) beneath the Times article, infectious diseases consultant John Phillips brands the plan “outrageous”.
Speaking as an infectious diseases consultant this is outrageous. Single rooms in our older hospitals are like gold dust and must be allocated on the basis of clinical need. Will Wes Streeting demand a dying patient be evicted in their last hours to accommodate a man whose feelings might be a bit hurt? Or place a patient with open tuberculosis in a ward because a trans person having an ingrown toenail removed requests it? What about other protected characteristics? Can a Muslim refuse to be in a ward with Christians or a gay person refuse to be in a ward with straight people? Clinical areas must be managed on clinical grounds only. The Supreme Court has made it crystal clear that single sex areas accommodate people on basis of biological sex while other resources must be allocated on basis of clinical needs.
Worth reading in full.
Still, easy way to wangle a private room…
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Well said, Dr Phillips – But no end in sight to state-sponsored pandering to tin-pot tiny minorities.
The delusion is real.
Claim to be trans & get your own room! What could possibly go wrong?
Oh well if its a priavte room you are talking about As in the Spartacus story.
“I am Trans” I will decalre on my next visit, Trans into what appears not to matter. Folks if you want Private without the cost declare your Trans card.
I am sure the NHS will be overwhelmed, do you get to jump to the queue front if you declare you are an Trans Asylum seeker?
“Total: Approximately 262,000 people (0.5% of the population) identified with a gender different from their sex registered at birth.
Trans Men: Around 48,000 people (0.1%) identified as trans men.
Trans Women: Around 48,000 people (0.1%) identified as trans women.
Non-binary: Around 30,000 people (0.06%) identified as non-binary.
Other: 18,000 people (0.04%) wrote in a different gender identity.
It’s important to note that not all individuals within the 262,000 population specifically identified as transgender, with some simply indicating that their gender identity differed from their birth sex. The census also included a question on sexual orientation for the first time, with 3.2% of people aged 15 and over identifying as gay or lesbian, bisexual, or another sexual orientation.”
So the total identifying as trans is 96,000 of which less than 10% will pursue surgical intervention so 9,600 but for which the whole of the NHS has to be turned upside down and the taxpayers must foot the bill which will run in to millions.
We are being insulted.
I looked after a MtF trans person years ago when I was doing a shift on Day Surgery. They were in a female bay and it was a urology list. They’d already had their sex reassignment surgery and were there for a bit of a tweak to their ‘plumbing’. Had I moved that person to a male bay with the men the consultant urologist would have had my guts for garters, but the thought didn’t cross my mind. It would’ve been totally inappropriate and disrespectful to them.* They presented and lived as a ‘woman’, and I recall none of the ladies had any issues at all, in fact, this person was very outgoing and friendly, distracting the women from their dog-eared paperbacks and from their nervousness about going into theatre, getting everyone laughing and chatting.
For me the clincher is if they still have their tackle. Hard to be much of a potential sex pest if you’ve got a ‘fauxgina’ and your testosterone is in your boots. The regular, non-pervert, non-militant screaming banshees that ( lest we forget ) make up the majority of the tiny minority of the population that are legit ‘trans’ have always been decent people deserving of respect and dignity, same as everyone else. I’m not sure how these folk, who don’t define themselves by their ‘transness’ because they’re not obsessive narcissists and have more going on in their lives, are coping with all this hoo-ha.
I used to work (Civil Service) with a trans-woman who had had all the surgery. “She” did “her” best to look female and there was never a problem within the office that I was aware of. I certainly didn’t object to “her” using the ladies loos.
The problem has been created by the militant trans-activists, the ECHR and the cowardly Establishment which didn’t have the guts to tell men-with-dicks that if they want to be classed as a woman, they first must have the surgery.
Wes Streeting:
Groucho Marx:
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, a new low.
My goodness really they are living on another planet.
If only we could make your last sentence really come true. Got a spare rocket Elon?
B-Ark.
Considering setting aside a room isn’t a silly suggestion to be dismissed out of hand. The numbers *will* still be tiny, especially now opportunist predators can’t just claim femaleness to get on a female ward. It feels rather as if the demographic of ‘trans people’ isn’t actually treated as a demographic of human beings anymore, by any side.
The main danger of making trans identity a protected characteristic (which is linked to the problem of the very recognition of such arbitrary characteristics in law) is predatory men using it as an excuse to be predatory. Of course the problem will now be similar opportunists lying to wangle a private room, but that problem should be dealt with on its own. My main issue with this proposed solution is that it still avoids the challenge of how to differentiate between chancers and non-chancers. Most people in most cases can make that distinction based on common sense and their eyes and ears, but no one in government wants to make that the official method so they pretend there’s no way around it.
In the clamour around this whole tangle, it seems to be forgotten that a man who has consistently tried to be like a woman for so long that he can no longer behave like a normal man would probably be extremely uncomfortable surrounded by men, and honestly the other men on the ward would probably be pretty unhappy too. That may not be as important as women’s safety, but it’s especially relevant in hospitals, where people are already vulnerable by dint of having to be in a hospital in the first place, yet it’s being treated as a complete irrelevance and that’s wrong.
Perhaps they should open a few old fashioned mental hospitals for “trans-women, because that’s where they really belong.
Give them a choice to pay for a private room in a private Hospital or be treated free as their birth biological sex in an NHS one. Then see who is willing to pay for their hurt feelings.
The ridiculousness of these policies has long passed the stage of causing upset and is now in the realms of comedy.