Lansley vetoed this. He was categorical. Insisted that it be called 'sex' whilst acknowledging within the meetings that wards were not segregated by sex but by self ID gender.
This is minuted in the meetings and a senior member of the NHS team was very clear that this happened.
Providing single 'sex' accomodation in NHS is a performance indicator.
In the UK it is well-recognised how important this is.
Guardian 2017
'Mixed-sex wards endanger and humiliate women'
by Catherine Bennett
'Even as gender-neutral spaces grow, hospitals show that in some areas men and women are best kept apart'
(extract)
The unacceptability of mixed-sex wards has been a cherished theme for every opposition since Tony Blair alighted, in 1996, on what is still, universally, agreed to be a valid cause of public upset.
Mixed wards, he said “cause indignity, upset people”. Subsequent studies, including a 2008 examination of nurse and patient perspectives, confirmed he had not exaggerated. There were patients, it confirmed, of both sexes and of varied ages, who “experienced a lack of privacy, worried about bodily exposure and felt uncomfortable”. Nurses entirely sympathised. “Mixed-sex accommodation,” it concluded, “is an unacceptable solution to bed shortages.”
Moreover, investigations showed, objections go far beyond the allegedly trivial ones, according to more disinhibited patients, of commodes, Carry On! gowns, proximity to men who might resemble, to pick one or two names at random, the Pimlico Plumber and twat-detector Charlie Mullins or the BBC star and famed beauty connoisseur, John Inverdale.
Patients and their relatives attested to intrusion, exhibitionism and leering from nearby beds, even with staff around. In 2009, Channel 4 discovered that almost two-thirds of sexual assaults by patients in hospitals (21 out of 33 in 2007/8), occurred in mixed-sex wards. Variations on Blair’s question to an evasive John Major – “Is it beyond the collective wit of the government and the health administrators to deal with that problem?” – was a reliable line in opposition outrage until Jeremy Hunt declared in 2014 that this indignity was “nearly”, or “virtually”, history." (continues)
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/30/mixed-sexed-wards-endanger-and-humiliate-women