"The NHS has U-turned on controversial transgender plans after a revolt by midwives.
NHS England had been trying to recruit a group since Dec 16 to run “trans and non-binary birthing people” training across 40 NHS maternity services, including trans-inclusive language and pronouns.
A tender document offered £100,000 taxpayer funding and also sought online resources, information posters and “best practice examples of how to care for trans and non-binary birthing people”.
The scheme was underpinned by taxpayer-funded research by the LGBT Foundation, a charity which ran a session last year on “LGBTQ+ sex toy delights” and called for nephews and nieces to be replaced with the gender-neutral term “niblings”.
Some 300 nurses, midwives and psychologists wrote to Lizzie Streeter, the NHS national LGBT programme manager behind the project, warning it had “no evidence base” and put maternity wards “at risk of ideological capture”.
Two days after the letter was sent on Jan 9, NHS England backtracked and told bidders that “the contract has been withdrawn early” while officials launch a review into its evidence base.
With Woman, the group of maternity staff which coordinated the letter, also signed by 1,700 members of the public, said it was a “watershed moment” for health staff rooting out trans ideology from the inside.
“This may be one of the first times a major programme based on flawed research and linked to gender activist organisations has been prevented in the UK public sector,” they said.
“At least for us in the maternity sector, it is a watershed moment and gives us great encouragement that ideologically-driven schemes with no evidence base will have no place in NHS maternity services.”
‘Flaws in its methodology and analysis’
The scheme, which was due to be rolled out this month, required a group with “a track record in trans awareness training” to deliver classes for midwives and nurses.
In their six-point letter, the health staff cited the closure of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust’s child gender clinic after criticism over activist influence, warning: “A scandal similar to Tavistock could be repeated in NHS maternity services due to poor research and the influence of advocacy organisations.”
It also outlined how the LGBT Foundation’s “bogus” trans maternity report, based on its 121-person sample of trans patients, was “not peer reviewed and contains significant flaws in its methodology and analysis” as well as no research on the medical needs of such people or the impact of any changes on female patients.
NHS England confirmed that the decision to shelve the training was made on Jan 11. A spokesman said: “The NHS has already paused this programme while we look into its scope so that it is based on the latest evidence.”
Fears of activist agendas were heightened by Ms Streeter who blocked multiple gender-critical campaigners on Twitter, including signatories of the letter.
NHS England is now facing further questions over why the LGBT Foundation was handed taxpayer cash to produce the report, and why staff time was spent planning extensive training which may never be rolled out.
The LGBT Foundation, which has received hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayer cash in recent years, drew up a pronouns guide in October which claimed “it is impossible to know someone’s pronouns based on how they look” and listed “Xe/Xem”, “Dey/Dem” and “Fae/Faer” pronouns alongside “he” and “she”.
The charity also ran a workshop titled “the sex tapes - sex toy delights” in May last year, with tips on how to “utilise toys to explore and express your identity”.
The With Woman’s letter said trans and non-binary people needed research into the impact of treatments such as testosterone or chest masculinisation mastectomy.
With Woman said it was “hard to justify the level of funding and hours dedicated to this training” when the current estimate of the prevalence of trans and non-binary maternity service users is at most 1 in 2,000.
The group said the scheme “almost flew under the radar”, adding: “We worried a training programme would be bulldozed through the entire English maternity system… it’s an ideology that denies the importance of sex, ignoring the reality that women have experiences directly related to their female bodies.”
Dr Louise Irvine, from the Clinical Advisory Network on Sex and Gender, said: “As the Cass interim report implied, areas of the NHS such as [the Gender Identity Development Service] have been subject to ideological capture at the cost of person-centred, evidence-based care. We hope NHS maternity services do not make the same mistake.”
Dr Paul Martin OBE, chief executive of LGBT Foundation, defended its research as “robust” and added: “What the research shows is that trans and non-binary people have sometimes been let down by maternity services so we’d encourage everyone to listen to what they have to say so that these services can be improved.”