The NHS thinks that sexual orientation is about being transgender

[FOIrequester]

That's the conclusion I have come to after reading the document they supplied in response to my FOI request for the Equality Impact Assessment for their 'Delivering Same-Sex Accommodation' policy.

They list each of the protected characteristics and how they think they will be affected by the policy. This is what they say about sexual orientation (my bold):

5.9. Sexual orientation– Significant as this is the reason the guidance exists.
a) Does the equality group face discrimination in this work area?
The guidance in this area is not new, it is clear on the legal position of trans patients in line with the Equalities Act 2010 and provides advice to staff on accommodating patients. The guidance exists to ensure all patients are treated in a way that protects their privacy and dignity.

pdf version can be downloaded from here:
www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/equality_impact_assessment_for_d_2#incoming-1488421

ThePurported

Did they provide the wrong document?!

It really does look like it. There are a few things that I find odd about it, apart from the emphasis on trans patients, when the aim of the policy is about providing single-sex accommodation.

One is that it seems to have one single author (redacted). It's my understanding that documents such as these are normally produced by more than one person. Also, all the date fields about record keeping are blank.

Is it possible that they didn't actually do an Equality Impact Assessment until I asked for one?

They have not finished and you have been sent a work in progress.

Equality Impact Assessments are supposed to be completed before the final draft of the policy is written, so that the policy can take into account any findings from the EIA.

The new guidance was published last September.

Oh, in that case - do you think they've tried to push one out in a hurry retrospectively? It just doesn't look like a finished document.

Does it have any date on it at all?

Sorry, just had a look at the doc myself - sometimes I'm a lazy article....

The LGB Alliance will probably be very interested in this. And they have top lawyers at their helm.

Has the very hungry Impact-Asessment eating dog struck again?

This relates to all patients and not just those within one of the groups identified within the 2010 Act.

Which patients don't have a race, sex or an age? Gibberish.

They appear to think that the PSED is for the benefit of transgender and non-binary people, and not for anyone else.

This seems like a common error in the NHS. I wonder if it's in some generic training?

This seems like a common error in the NHS. I wonder if it's in some generic training?

The NHS really needs to look into why this keeps happening. Equality in healthcare cannot be all about trans rights.
But they know that single-sex accommodation is a lie because their systems are based on patients' 'preferred gender', so I guess they couldn't analyse impact on the protected characteristic of sex even if they wanted to?

But they know that single-sex accommodation is a lie because their systems are based on patients' 'preferred gender', so I guess they couldn't analyse impact on the protected characteristic of sex even if they wanted to?

Interesting article about this here:

medium.com/@anneharperwright/sex-gender-the-nhs-1e8f4e6363a6

Mumsnet thread:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3396859-Weve-been-lied-to-about-Single-SEX-wards-since-2010

That article is shocking.

" To overwrite a patient’s biological sex in a medical record with their gender identity would be dangerous. The NHS was so concerned about inadvertent confusion between the two concepts that it took careful action to ensure it could keep a record of both. ...
Because the consequences of an NHS mix up between sex and gender was recognised as dire. And this risk was noted in several NHS documents, produced by the Microsoft Health Common User Interface team. The following quotes link to the NHS documents for public viewing.
“The term ‘Gender’ is now considered too ambiguous to be desirable or safe” ...
Despite what the public were told, the policy was always explicitly based upon segregating by ‘gender’ and not sex, right from its inception.
NHS documents and records dated from 2010 show that before the policy was implemented, whilst still in its design stages, the specifications always related to gender, not sex. And yet the name of the policy, and all references to it to the general public were explicitly instructed to be sex, not gender. The opposite of the truth."

'Gender' has replaced 'sex' and now it seems it has replaced sexual orientation as well. The MSA policy is meaningless.