NHS Policy Audit - working party - thread #2

[KnottyAuty]

This is a thread about “keeping the receipts” on NHS Policies prior to the Supreme Court ruling on 16th April 2025.

Our working theory is that there were no single sex spaces for NHS Staff or Patients in the entire country before that date, having all been removed by stealth. We are aiming to prove this by auditing websites and policies for all the UK trusts and using the results to raise public awareness. As well as recording what has happened historically, the information will form a baseline so we can check which Trusts comply or defy the judgement in due course.

We are working around the country region by region. If you fancy getting involved in a bit of grassroots feminism then please do join in to help!? Each trust takes about an hour to research and you can upload online without giving any personal details away. Comment below and we can give you the link to an online survey - it changes for each region.

Thanks soooo much to all the vipers who have helped so far and @ Twoloons for doing a great job with the thread wrangling!

Here are the press articles we’ve managed to generate so far:

Scotland:
25th March: The Telegraph
https://archive.is/dTUhY
26th March: Scottish Daily Express
https://archive.is/kaLCB
26th March: The Telegraph
https://archive.is/iSD9m

London:
21st April: The Telegraph
https://archive.is/awGuz
23rd April: The Telegraph (in conjunction with another thread by NHS mumsnetters)
https://archive.is/1DO8d

Original thread #1 here:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5291237-nhs-policy-audit-working-party?page=1

Oh @KnottyAuty! We’re no longer “sturdy Scottish mums” we’re now “women’s rights campaigners”. Oh, I’m kinda tearful!

I think that's looking at it from the wrong end of the telescope. Delivering Single Sex Accommodation isn't and never was a single sex policy with an addendum about gender. It is and always was a single gender policy with a misleading name. Putting transwomen in the women's bay isn't a breach, because the women's bay is for woman gender, not woman sex. Putting the transwoman in the male bay, would be the breach.

It's clear from the stuff Anne Harper Wright found, that the NHS team that worked on the police and the DoH at the time knew full well and intended it to be a single gender policy. Thy just deliberately misnamed it

@nothingcomestonothing I've just been reading through this info you posted earlier and I entirely agree with your interpretation. We were increasingly feeling that the problems of single sex accommodation were baked in and this explains why.

They never mention Mumsnet though, do they?

I'm chuffed as nuts with all this coverage, but given we've saved them hundreds of hours of googling and FOIing and served them Knotty's brilliant analysis on a plate...

They did the first time, but they said that Mumsnet itself had done the research, so we had to correct them. I think the journo has decided to steer well clear since then, to avoid any legal issues.

Maybe it’s time for us to have some sort of group name, though, so we can be referred to?

ETA: we started this before the SC, and so were very conscious that most of us wanted to stay below the radar. I think until things settle down, many still will…

Viper Research Group? 😁

Thanks for spotting that! Apparently in the paper edition tomorrow

Ah I see - their intention was single gender. Yes if you view it that way then this random unlinked annex gives you Carte Blanche.

And back in the real world - with telescopes used in the conventional way 🤣 - it still means that it’s legally problematic.

Their intention was one thing and they managed to get it all a long way but in the end the piss takers and the jokers have spoiled the party. The conventional view is returning - or coming into clearer focus if we really want to stretch this metaphor 😅 That Annex B isn’t legally watertight and certainly won’t meet with public approval. Massive own goal in the end IMO

LOL!
Great name 😘

Exactly - for about 14 years the public have been lied to by the government that we had single sex accommodation in NHS hospitals, when we did not. It was hidden, deliberately, because they knew the public wanted single sex accommodation and what they were doing was not what they told us they were doing.

And now thanks to FWS, it's becoming known because that policy is now, finally, explicitly, not lawful under the Equality Act.

<re-emerges>. Sorry for my silence. I want to help, but it's a case of wrangling kids and work, as people here know.

Thinking out loud, most journalists are too time-poor to go for more than a quick headline and Annexe B is paperwork. So on the basis of 'show, not tell' we need to join the dots for them.

Start with a contemporary story (e.g. mixed sex wards and personal harm). Link it explicitly back to the Trust policies and Annexe B. Then do the Lanesley quote to show the intention.

That's catnip to the journalist who then has a reason to go after the past and present governments for a response and makes them squirm. We can throw in a fact % of trusts follow the same policy as uncovered by Mumsnet Viper Research Group.

We've got human interest, government cover up and the NHS wrapped up in a neat bow.

And as much as it has clearly been a policy followed through by all our main political parties in the last 15 years it won’t hurt getting it into The Times/DT that they will be applying pressure to our current Labour government to rectify what Labour introduced. Conveniently forgetting the Tory/Lib Dem coalition and then the Tories did nothing to address it while they were in.

Nicely done - do you write for a living?

I am definitely thinking of doing some digging on the history of this - if anyone else knows of anything already, or wants to dig themselves, please do. I’ll see about finding a sensible way of collating everything.

You can see under your account profile the user names you have used. I don't think there are date ranges, which would be helpful.

Oh with that tip I found one of my old threads thanks!

Anyone who wants to see an NHS Trust call women and people of faith TERFs and transphobes who are impeding the human rights of others, please see here:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4190278-Help-me-respond-to-a-captured-hospital-please

I'd like to say things have improved at my workplace since then, but as they are still in the Stonewall scheme,and sent round an all staff email offering support to trans and non binary colleagues about the supreme court ruling, that would be a lie.

Oh that’s amazing! Thank you! I’m going to make a cup of tea and have a read!

Oh CRIKEY! You are from that trust! The one referred to in our most recent Telegraph article! Oh my god how awful for you.

I’m just sticking my head round the door to your office to say I’ve seen the article in the Telegraph and it has your fingerprints all over it.
Great work vipers!!
Thank you.

Damn, I thought we all agreed to wipe the Tunnocks chocolate off before we handled this stuff!

Yes, sorry, fingerprints are ours 😜

@TwoLoonsAndASprout

This afternoon I’ve done a bit of googling. Annex E predates Andrew Langley as SofS for Health by at least a year (May 2009 Chief Nursing Officer letter). The eliminating mixed sex wards (later accommodation) policy itself was from 1997, based on a manifesto commitment. I haven’t been able to find any guidance before 2009, but if anyone has a subscription to the Nursing Times, the Health Service Journal or is better at using the wayback machine they make get further. I’m working my way through the wayback machine looking at communication summaries by the Dept of Health before 2009 on this topic, but its slow work.

I’ve got a lot more detail, if anyone wants it. The furthest back I’ve found the guidance is the May 2009 Chief Nursing Office (CNO) letter including Annex E, on transgender adults and children, which effectively creates a self ID exemption to the the mixed sex accommodation rules.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7cd02ced915d6b29fa8d19/CNO_note_dh_098893.pdf

Later versions of the CNO letter make quite a point of mentioning that the annexes remain current, even when the guidance is updated. And there’s some interesting wording changes to the Operating Framework (the key annual document instructing the NHS at that time).

How awful! Can you DM me the trust name please?

Thank you! Nice to know people are reading this stuff. All we are doing is reporting the facts... quite remarkable facts, but hey ho!

Wowsers - over 1000 comments in under 12 hours. That is a lot.

Gift link so you can read them:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/392bd8a6d567b197

Also archive link for future ref:
https://archive.is/uLsfi

Nope, I'm from a different Trust that has twice called me a TERF in writing. From a part of the country that you amazing vipers haven't done yet.

You're in for a treat if they send you the current transgender care policy, though sadly (from the point of view of getting jaw dropping copy, not the point of view of a hospital being properly run) in 2024 they took out the line about how any concerns re single sex spaces are transphobia, and should be treated the same as racism. It still refers to placing children in bays according to their 'true gender' not their sex though, so still worth reading as a fine example of what you get when you let TRAs write your policy. I've raised concerns 4 times, and 4 times they've defended it.