Fears over ‘flawed’ NHS single-sex wards review carried out by ‘trans advocate’

[ChristinaXYZ]

"The NHS review into single-sex wards is being carried out by a "trans advocate" who has said that rules that allow patients to self-identify their gender will not be changed, The Telegraph can reveal.

Dr Michael Brady, the national adviser for LGBT health at NHS England, has written to campaign groups telling them that there is “no plan to reduce existing rights of trans people”. Controversial charities Stonewall and Mermaids had contributed “very helpfully” to the process, Dr Brady told the Trans NHS Staff Network in emails seen by The Telegraph.

The review came just months after Sajid Javid asked his officials to look at the policies in the wake of a Telegraph investigation which revealed that some issued by NHS trusts said that male sex offenders who self-identify as women could be placed on female-only wards....

Despite the review of this guidance being ordered amid concern for the impact on women, Dr Brady said in emails that the “commitment from the team leading on the review is supporting the maintenance/strengthening of trans rights in the update”. ...

Women and LGB groups have now warned that they were excluded from the process, which began in December.

An investigation by a coalition including Fair Play for Women, LGB Alliance, Woman’s Place UK, Sex not Gender Nurse and Midwives and Sex Matters has found that doctors and nurses have complained it was not widely publicised within the NHS and not opened to public consultation.

They have written to the Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, and Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne will table an amendment in the Lords on Wednesday calling for ministers to withdraw the 2019 guidance and abandon the review as it is “flawed through failing to offer independence”.

“Our demands to the Health Secretary are simple and entirely reasonable: that the review into single-sex accommodation is undertaken transparently, impartially, and in collaboration with representatives of people most affected by this policy,” said Rhona Hotchkiss, a retired nurse and volunteer at LGB Alliance ..."

To read the full article

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/03/15/fears-flawed-nhs-single-sex-wards-review-carried-trans-advocate

@MrsOvertonsWindow

Maybe some carefully crafted questions to our MPs asking them to ask Sajid Javid (Sec of State for Health)? My MP gets answers from ministers on occasions: A few thoughts:

Re the NHS Enquiry into single sex wards. In the light of the information that Dr Michael Brady, national adviser for LGBT health at NHS England who is part of the review, has preempted the outcome having written to trans activist campaign groups telling them that there is “no plan to reduce existing rights of trans people”. As this review came about following revelations that some NHS trusts had policies to ensure that male born sex offenders would be placed on women's hospital wards if they self identified as women, preempting the outcome like this puts women and girls at significant risk of harm.

Please would you ask Sajid Javid (Secretary of State for Health) the following:

1. What is Dr Michael Brady's role in this enquiry?
2. What authority does he have to pre empt the result of the enquiry?
3. His behaviour in advising political lobby groups in this way appears to be biased and in breach of the Nolan principles of public life, in particular Selflessness and Integrity. Are members of the NHS enquiry bound by the Nolan principles?
4. In the light of these revelations can the Sec of State confirm what steps he will take to ensure that the enquiry is "independent" as this now seems unlikely?

Or something similar.

Thanks @MrsOvertonsWindow - have just written to my MP using these and copying in Baroness N!

I watched a tiny bit of the debate early this morning, Baroness Nicholson about a friends (?) SA and how nurse were instructed to gaslight women about men on their words. Then a broke stood up, forget his name but he had massive ears. He was talking about the Equalities Act and how it protected gender reassignment. He sais this inc. men who were intending to undergo GR (or at least who said they were), which would be indicated by them changing there name or growing there hair!

If this is true how is it different from self-id? I had to go to bed then, I could see it being KPSS all over again and I wanted to be able to sleep.

Does this mean during lockdown, when you couldn't get a haircut, all the blokes were flirting with becoming women. Do men have a femstrual cycle between haircuts.

Be funny if it was not scary @IcakethereforeIam

“Leafstamp

ChristinaXYZ
And just to add. I know there is a lot going on at the moment but this is so important - grateful as ever to Baroness Nicolson for trying to ensure that the review is fair.
Agree with this. Thank you to all who are working on this, and to you @ChristinaXYZ for highlighting here.“

It is a real worry that the extraordinary events Re Ukraine will mean things slipping through unchecked like they were doing thick and fast until recently. Thank you for bringing attention to this.

I hope it is ok @MrsOvertonsWindow but I've put your excellent summary onto the activism page of Ovarit. I've attributed the excellent suggestions to your good self.

Jesus, I can English. I swear it's autocorrect, bloke not broke (though I quite like that one), their not there x2.

No problem ChristinaXYZ. It's exhausting having to do all this but the bias is essentially corruption. While I know that this is a government very familiar with "being economical with the truth" when senior NHS staff openly breach the Nolan principles in favour of their mates and have as one of their expressed aims the wish to place male born predators on women's wards, then we've got to challenge this.

I'm sorry, I do take this deadly seriously. I am flippant, perhaps inappropriate sometimes. But it's all so stupid and cruel. I'm not the smartest of people, but I don't think I missing any great epiphany to convince me men can be women. There are folk who can talk about Nolan principles, etc., their knowledge and eloquence shame me and give me hope.

I'll be on the sidelines being snarky.

This from the baroness speech really shocking

@littlebrowndog
That is truly schooling.

Placemarking so I can add this to my to do list!

Can anyone remember a thread from about the last 4 months either about or posted by a disabled woman ( or an expert writing on behalf of disabled and vulnerable people)?

There are a huge number of incidents of sexual attacks perpetrated on them while they are supposedly being cared for.

The NHS should be writing its own policies based on proven science and research and not be being trained how to think by self-interested lobby groups.

Staff are there for the patient, not for the patient to validate or in any away support the needs of the staff.

The Equalities exemptions on grounds of needing the same sex should be applied.

Thank you @littlebrowndog

Also useful - link to Hansard where Barnoness Nicholson began to speak. The second part marked 1.15am in the margin is shocking. Useful to send to your MP also?

hansard.parliament.uk/lords/2022-03-16/debates/84C9B6AA-0214-4CEF-A41D-302373BDC190/HealthAndCareBill#contribution-0E3BB87F-8B92-477C-B9BF-6672F71C385D

This is the bit of the debate I watched. Lord Bigears spoke immediately following.

Lord Etherton @IcakethereforeIam ?

This bloke?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Etherton,_Baron_Etherton

Bald, check.
Massive ears, check. Could be.

Dammit, just read his wiki, I have sympathy for him now.

The quote 'Nothing about us without us' is very apt.

“IcakethereforeIam

Dammit, just read his wiki, I have sympathy for him now.”

I have just read it and I agree there to some extent.
But, being from roughly the same era and having socially known some men like him when they were young, I suspect he is the sort of gay man who finds women to be very other/ possibly repulsive- in other words misogynistic. ( I remember how women used to be called ‘Slits’ by some gay men.)

He is evidently brilliant but his argument uses that brilliance for sophistry against the exemptions in the Equalities Act imo.

In the Wikipedia article it quotes here:
“On his appointment as Lord Justice of Appeal in 2008, he said, "My appointment also shows that diversity in sexuality is not a bar to preferment up to the highest levels of the judiciary".

For me is saying “diversity in sexuality” rather than the more common homosexuality seems slightly odd, as though a world of general sexual diversity (and by extension, possibly. Transgenderism) might be something he champions. Of course I may be wrong.

Having read that Hansard report posted earlier I cannot believe how he so blatantly ignored the rights of women in his argument as though they don’t exist.

However clever and legally exact his speech was, what he says about annex B is surely not in the spirit of the Equalities Act and it’s allowed exemptions for sex segregated spaces.

Isn't Etherton one of a number of gay men in power busily promoting the rights of men over the rights, safety and safeguarding of women and children. Cashman, Paddick, Blunt and the rest?

I always thought that some gaymen had a touch of the misogynist about them but I worried I was projecting. I agree Lord Etherton choses his words carefully, to be expected I suppose in his line of work. I hoped his interpretation of the act was just him practising his craft, 'nothing personal ladies'. Perhaps, if asked, that's what he would say.

I didn't expect the rape in the hospital to blows up like it has today, I thought it must already be public knowledge, now I feel sickened. I also thought mumsnet wouldn't allow the word 'rape' in posts.

@IcakethereforeIam

I watched a tiny bit of the debate early this morning, Baroness Nicholson about a friends (?) SA and how nurse were instructed to gaslight women about men on their words. Then a broke stood up, forget his name but he had massive ears. He was talking about the Equalities Act and how it protected gender reassignment. He sais this inc. men who were intending to undergo GR (or at least who said they were), which would be indicated by them changing there name or growing there hair!

If this is true how is it different from self-id? I had to go to bed then, I could see it being KPSS all over again and I wanted to be able to sleep.

Does this mean during lockdown, when you couldn't get a haircut, all the blokes were flirting with becoming women. Do men have a femstrual cycle between haircuts.

There is some discussion about this debate on this thread: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4506091-Emma-Nicholson-in-the-Times?msgid=115919634

Lord Etherton seemed to be saying that the protected characteristic of gender reassignment exists primarily to allow self-identification for the purpose of accessing single-sex spaces.

I'm not sure if this part of his speech could be interpreted to mean anything else:

It is not a legitimate aim that some people feel uncomfortable sharing accommodation and facilities with trans people of the opposite birth sex. That would make a nonsense of having the statutory protected characteristic in the first place.

The way the main media outlets cover this - or don't - really makes me cross. Nothing at all on the BBC, not even their health pages. Not on ITV or Sky. It is the lead article on the GBNews website though.

Etherton is a privately educated gay man.