Patients wanting single-sex wards have been treated like racists, says Health Secretary

Patients who ask for single-sex wards should not be treated like racists, the Health Secretary has said.

Victoria Atkins made the remarks as she proposed changes to the NHS Constitution to ensure that women have the right to accommodation which is only shared by those of their biological sex.

Previous NHS guidance from 2021 said trans patients could be placed on single-sex wards on the basis of the gender with which they identified.

Women’s rights campaigners said the situation left female patients who asked for intimate care from a woman pressured into accepting care from staff who were born male.

Ms Atkins told The Times: “We have heard farcical stories that claimed patients who demanded to be on single-sex wards were equated to as racists. This cannot be right.”

The constitution, updated every 10 years, aims to set out the principles and values of the health service and set out legal rights for patients and staff.

Under the proposals, the constitution will state: “We are defining sex as biological sex,” in a landmark move.

The significant shift follows accusations that the health service had been captured by “gender ideology”.

The proposed changes enshrine the right to ask for intimate care from a health worker of the same biological sex.

Maya Forstater, chief executive of the gender-critical group Sex Matters, welcomed the proposed changes, saying healthcare providers had become “confused and frightened by the idea that a gender recognition certificate, or even just a personal identity claim, overrides other people’s rights when it comes to same-sex care from healthcare professionals”.

The draft constitution, now subject to an eight-week consultation, also places a duty on health providers to use “clear terms” to communicate and take account of biological differences.

It follows pledges from ministers to stop NHS trusts using terms like “chestfeeding” and to “people who give birth”.

Ms Atkins said that attempts by the NHS “shouldn’t have to eradicate women from our language in order to be inclusive and welcoming”.

She told Sky News: “We know that in some parts of the NHS some language is used which is meant, with the best of intentions, to be inclusive, but it can, I think, also actually exclude people.

“For example, I visited a wonderful maternity unit recently full of warmth and joy and happiness with wonderful members of staff, but they were talking about ‘service users’ and I realised after a while they meant women or mums-to-be or mothers, the language that we would use in conversation when talking about someone having a baby.

“So that sort of language… we shouldn’t have to eradicate women from our language in order to be inclusive and welcoming.”

The eight-week consultation will be the first stage of a review of the NHS Constitution.

The Government will consider responses from the public, clinicians and medical professionals, patients, carers and organisations representing patients and staff and health stakeholders, before publishing its response and a new NHS Constitution.