Health Secretary Victoria Atkins: ‘The Labour Party is writing women out of our vocabulary’

[IwantToRetire]

What gets her most impassioned is the topic of women – and what she sees as attempts to eradicate their place in society.

Most recently, an NHS trust provoked fury after saying that <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/o/Bm1bq/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/18/trans-womens-milk-as-good-as-breast-milk-says-nhs-trust/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">breast milk produced by trans women who were assigned male at birth is as good for babies as that produced by a mother who has given birth.

Before that, the health service was found to be using the term “chestfeeding” in place of breastfeeding.

“I’m a mum – I find it extraordinary that a trust thought this was an appropriate use of their time,” she says, suggesting that such services would do better to concentrate on tackling long gynaecology waits.

“I’m very comfortable and clear that I am a woman and I would like my rights as a woman to be protected. And they will be protected by the Conservatives.”

She is most scathing of all about Labour’s approach to women, suggesting that a “Left-wing mindset” is creeping into the NHS.

“That is why we need to be making this robust case to refuse to wipe women out of the conversation,” she says.

Sir Keir Starmer <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/o/Bm1bq/www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/07/26/keir-starmer-woman-is-adult-female-labour-hardens-stance/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">famously struggled to define a woman, settling on the statement that 99.9 per cent of women do not have a penis, as the party became embroiled in trans rows.

Last year, then-health secretary Steve Barclay promised the return of “sex-specific” language to the NHS after references to women were expunged from its advice on the menopause and diseases such as cervical and ovarian cancer.

But many trusts have resisted the shift, routinely referring to “people who give birth” while some have referred to “birthing parents”. Atkins can barely contain her outrage.

“When I see reports of mothers as ‘people who give birth’! No – they are mums. I find it deeply concerning that there are parts of the Labour Party and the Left who seem to think that women can just be written out of our vocabulary.”

“Half the population are women. Of course the NHS should use the word ‘woman’,” she adds.

These paragraphs are just a small part of quite a long article in the Telegraph but thought they would be of interest https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/02/23/health-sec-victoria-atkins-interview-mothers-nhs-trans/

She also talks about women and prisons and abortion being decriminalised. Full article can be read at https://archive.ph/Bm1bq

Whilst I am pleased with what she says, more action from her wouldn’t go amiss.

The erasure of women in offical language has happened on the Tory's watch. The capture of many organisations has happened on the Tory's watch. Self ID was first put forward by the Tories. This entire mess has got so far because they have been absent from the running of public services for 14 years and other organisations have been able to step in.

Even when they realised 'anti-woke' might be a vote winner they haven't done anything. They've declined to strengthen the EA guidance. They had to be hammered for years by the education sector to issue lackluster guidance to schools.

This woman is the fucking health secretary, she could mandate single sex wards and correct language right now.

Thats the thing with the tories

the way they talk you’d think they only got into power last week

I know what you mean. But it's harder than you might expect for the government to mandate language change from the NHS. All the NHS trusts operate fairly autonomously, and if they decide to use Stonewall training and adopt Stonewall policies, it's not obvious that the government can stop them.

Yes indeed. Perhaps she doesn’t realise her party has been in Government for over a decade, when all this writing women out has been going on. Such blatant hypocrisy.

This. I'd be more interested if she could talk about what she is actually doing rather than just ranting about the party that is not in power and hasn't been for a long time. FFS.

I'll still voter them over Labour.

But yes - they need to get their finger out.

Usually, the parties that aren’t in power scrutinise and criticise the actions of the ruling party. They have the advantage of being able to make all kinds of seductive promises about how they’d handle things if only they were in power.

Victoria Atkins is acting like one of these parties on the outside looking in. Ah, if only the Tories were in charge, eh? We’d do everything so differently, we wouldn’t erase women.

Well, I hate to break it to you Victoria, but while Labour are indeed completely captured when it comes to gender ideology, they are not the bosses of the country! This all happened on the Tories’ watch. Women were erased and it seems the Tories have only just started to notice.

All of this is about votes and nothing else. They have had years to do something about this and didn't because it suited them.

It's not that hard. Every other government in our history has managed it. They've introduced much bigger changes over the last 14 years.

It's mainly 3 things-

Data collection- centralised and wouldn't need primary legislation to make sure sex was being recorded properly because it already should be it's just not been implemented properly. Minister could order that today.

Training- certainly the minister shouldn't mandate providers directly but the department sets policy. 'NHS to be politically neutral and provide proper training GD for GPs' could be announced today and it would immediately set a direction for boards, even if that took a long time to fully implement.

Proper clinical support for GD- Hard. Needs time, money and leadership but the only reason it is so shit is the same reason everything else in the NHS is shit- 14 years with no money or leadership. The problem with GD is it's a developing area so snake oil salesmen have filled the gaps.

The idea that the Health Secretary can't change the way the NHS works is ridiculous. There would be no point having one if that were so.

I take your point, donquixote. But at the same time how do you enforce it? The last Labour government - back in the late 1990s - said it would ban mixed-sex wards. Then the coalition government also said it would ban mixed-sex wards. In 2011, it became mandatory for NHS trusts to report breaches of the single-sex wards policy.

And yet, today, we still have mixed-sex wards. How come?

And yet, today, we still have mixed-sex wards. How come?

Because they set it as a policy goal, rather than putting in place policies to make it happen. In fairness to Labour, at the time they had targets and timescales and quite a lot of progress was made. That's not unreasonable for change in big organisation.

But since then the Tories a) haven't done anything to implement it (they report it but what does that achieve?) b) haven't defined single sex as single sex- which wasn't an issue when Labour first brought the policy in. This is true of loads of NHS policies and targets that still theoretically exist but are now ignored because every area is in crisis.

I do not know enough about the NHS to comment more than generalities but I have direct experience in Education when the sector needed leadership on getting kids into school during the pandemic and we just couldn't get responses out of the DfE- just radio silence for months and failure to act for years.

To pick a recent example- it was only decided about a month ago that students sitting GCSE Physics would have an equation sheet and what was on it. They've been on that course for 18 months. The decision should have been made 2+ years ago.

Of course policies take time and are complex to implement but you can do things quickly if you think it's important enough. It's not that they are taking time to consider and implement slowly, they just don't do things.

I don't think we've ever had a government in history that doesn't function to this extent.

Having been writing to MPs for years & receiving vague hand waving away responses along with the downright creepy - mixed sex toilets in schools are sooo inclusive for children said Damian Hinds (ed secretary 2018)
They've all failed to exercise any critical thinking and are now compromised in how they tackle the mess they've funded and condoned.

They are the bloody government! They can certainly do something about it but strangely don't. I am sick of this being mined as political issue and the actual Government sitting on its hands as if it has no power. It does have the power.

It refuses to use it. Badenoch, Atkins, all of these strong opinions but no action. Zero credibility.

As for Labour they will be the same when they get in. Useless

That's not actually true. The NHSE mandates many things. The minister from the DoH is in charge of NHSE. The minister is obviously a member of the government. They could if they chose.

I agree with the view that neither party is doing this for women's benefit and have no intention of voting Conservative. However probing your opponents perceived weak spots is what all parties do. It's also a line of attack that Labour could neutralise any time they chose.

The new draft guidelines for schools about gender questioning children will be a game changer. They clearly centre safeguarding children and make unequivocal statements that protect children, ie no child must be forced to undress etc in front of the opposite sex. Once that's established again, then the force of Stonewall's fake law starts to wither. Not perfect but a start.

Shame that it's taken so long given the extreme levels of social contagion in some schools. Discussion here:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5009817-schools-guidance-consultation-closes-12-of-march-can-we-collate-ideas-for-responding

This all happened on the Tories’ watch.

Nonsense. So much of this is a direct result of Labour laws; the GRA and GR in the Equality Act. It has taken years for the impact of those to fully work themselves through the system but it is these laws that Stonewall have been misrepresenting and impacting a vast range of governmental and justice organisations.

It has become increasingly clear just how much aggressive activist groups have been allowed to take over control of civil services. Just look at the response to the government’s schools guidance: activist groups, politicians, lawyers, schools and teachers all declaring they will ignore that government guidance. The Tories have been much too slow to realise they have been usurped in this way (they still mostly don’t seem to have figured it out). They should have banned these activist groups from all public sectors a decade ago.

"They should have banned these activist groups from all public sectors a decade ago".
Agreed @@SaffronSpice The guidance is all there. The Nolan principles of public life are specific:
Selflessness - Holders of public office should act solely in terms of the public interest. Integrity - Holders of public office must avoid placing themselves under any obligation to people or organisations that might try inappropriately to influence them in their work. All being ignored.

Schools are meant to be politically impartial by law.

The tools are there to tackle this but we've an incompetent and weak government that's likely to be replaced by one who also ignores these standards - but for different reasons.

The Nolan Principles aren't even adhered to by actual politicians. They have no teeth unless they do. A fish rots from the head.

I think that VA is having a rant because she has discovered that she doesn't actually have the authority to effect any changes. The CEO of NHS England doesn't report to anybody and is accountable to a departmental sponsor (senior civil servant) in the DHSC and to parliament directly through the Commons Health and Social Care Committee. This accountability only extends to the annual NHS mandate. This mandate from the Secretary of State sets out the objectives and budgets for the upcoming year. The objectives are very high level and are nowhere near the level of detail that would enable the Secretary of State to direct any changes in communication content. There is no control of NHS England by the Secretary of State.

This isn't wrong, but can you imagine the uproar had they tried to do this, from Labour, and the media?

Governments have made it harder and harder for themselves over the years to directly influence state organizations like health and education, supposedly because this is meant to keep politics out of these sectors. (This thinking is not just in the UK, it seems to have been all over the place.) It's in many ways had the opposite effect though, it's meant that outside groups and influences have been able to insert themselves all the more.

Though part of the issue there may be what is a cultural change. Many people no longer understand, or believe, the idea that civil service and state orgs are meant to have a very politically neutral approach. If they did, they would be equipped to resist this stuff.

I must admit I was a bit disappointed to have the same old rhetoric about this all happened under the Tories. This has been said over and over again and other have pointed out it is more complex than that.

And surely the biggest factor is that any Government minister feels able to speak so boldly and not have to fudge her words. If a female Labour MP said something like that she would have been isolated, trashed and called transphobic by other Labour members.

Whether you like it or not during the time that the Tories have been in power like virtually every institution in this country had effectively been captured by Stonewall and others.

We are not dim on FWR. It was when the Tories put forward the idea to revise the GRA to make self id easier that many women, including those on FWR spoke up and lobbied.

AND ... the Tories listened. The proposed self ID changes didn't happen.

Can you imagine if Labour had been in power.

I hardly know who she is (sorry) but the fact is she had made a very pro women's sex based rights public statement.

Maybe we can congratulate ourselves as having been part of creating the tiny (and hopefully growing) space in the media for women to speak out.

Nothing is achieved by constantly restating concepts we may have been true a year ago or 5, but the reality now is different.

By the way, most other feminists groups are talking about her equally bold proposal to get rid of the abortion still being a criminal offence.

I didn't create an OP about that, as I thought someone might do so. If that goes through that will be a major change for women.

A more interesting or disturbing current fact about the Tories is that most think of all the options Sunak should stay as leader of the party, and in fact the next most popular is Penny Mordaunt who is not exactly anything and presumably her prowess in holding a heavy sword for a long period of time is qualification enough to be thought competent to be leader of the Tory party!

I must admit I was a bit disappointed to have the same old rhetoric about this all happened under the Tories.

But it did, and many of them have been and still are pretty gung ho about it, including some prominent women like Caroline Nokes. Gillian Keegan, the Education Secretary, has been noticeably dragging her feet. So not just the “same old rhetoric”, as you characterise it, but a valid observation.
Both parties are captured and complicit, as bad as one another.

This! It’s obviously their strategy in the run up to the election.
Make everything labours fault and enough stupid people will fall for it. (Like they did for Johnson and Brexit). You can’t blame them for trying a tried and tested method.