In the face of NHS guidelines, there is growing concern as individuals can gain access to female-only wards based on transient gender identification, prompting urgent calls for the Health Secretary to intervene. The Mail has the story.
The Health Secretary faced pressure tonight to scrap ‘shocking’ rules that mean patients who only occasionally identify as women can share female-only hospital wards.
NHS guidance uncovered in a major audit by the Daily Mail means transgender women can use the facilities they wish, regardless of whether or not they have had surgery or legally changed sex.
Many hospitals make it clear that patients need only ‘temporarily’ present as women to enter female-only bays and bathrooms.
One NHS trust’s policy states: “People who are not living full-time as a woman have been on women’s wards with no issues at all.” Some liken anyone who objects to the policy to racists, while others make it clear that if another patient complains, it is they who must move rather than the trans person.
Campaigners warn it makes a mockery of strict rules that ban hospitals from placing men and women in neighbouring beds.
They want Health Secretary Steve Barclay to take urgent action after a review was launched two years ago amid concerns about the policy but never published.
