{"id":163446,"date":"2025-06-06T17:00:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-06T17:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/163446\/"},"modified":"2025-06-06T17:00:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-06T17:00:09","slug":"nhs-mental-health-hospitals-should-not-let-criminals-self-id","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/163446\/","title":{"rendered":"NHS mental health hospitals should not let criminals self-ID"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s hard to imagine a more vulnerable group of women than inpatients in a mental hospital. It\u2019s even harder to understand why some NHS trusts would force them to share female wards with men who identify as women. Yet an audit by a women\u2019s organisation, reported<\/a> in The Times, has discovered that the policy is in operation in several mental hospitals in London, allowing men who have committed violent offences to choose where they are accommodated.<\/p>\n

Central and North Western London NHS Trust, responding to an FoI request, said it \u201crespects an individual\u2019s right to self-identify as male or female\u201d. It added that \u201ctransgender\u201d women have the right to access women\u2019s support groups and toilets, a policy that appears to be in defiance of the landmark Supreme Court ruling in April that \u201cwoman\u201d in the 2010 Equality Act refers to biological sex.<\/p>\n

The same trust acknowledges that problems might arise, including female patients being flashed by \u201ca sexually disinhibited pre-operative transsexual individual\u201d. The risk of such an event occurring on a hospital ward \u2014 the criminal offence of indecent exposure, to be clear \u2014 is not limited to a single hospital. Another NHS trust, South West London and St George\u2019s, says such patients might need to be admitted to a male ward \u201cwhile they are acutely unwell and at risk of \u2018outing\u2019 themselves\u201d. It implies an alarming readiness on the part of staff to collude in deceiving mentally fragile female patients.<\/p>\n

The trusts acknowledge that some trans-identified patients may pose a \u201crisk to a particular gender\u201d \u2014 they mean women but are too mealy-mouthed to say so \u2014 and behave in a manner that\u2019s \u201cvery distressing for other patients on a single-sex ward\u201d. It\u2019s no longer a single-sex ward, critics might point out, if men are allowed on it. But the wishes of violent criminals matter more than the welfare of female patients, who are unlikely to get better in an environment where they\u2019re being told not to trust the evidence of their own eyes.<\/p>\n

West London NHS Trust appears to be ignoring the judgment, sticking to out-of-date guidance issued by the NHS in 2019 while it waits for the Equality and Human Rights Commission to issue a final updated version. Until then, it expects staff to \u201cuse names, titles and hospital accommodation that the service user regards as appropriate\u201d. The trust runs Broadmoor Hospital, which houses some of the country\u2019s most notorious killers, and the public might be surprised to learn that it allows them to impose their preferred pronouns on staff and other inmates.<\/p>\n

The \u201cwaiting for guidance\u201d excuse is popular across the board. Last month the Daily Mail revealed<\/a> that NHS trusts and local authorities up and down the country are still allowing biological males to use women\u2019s toilets. Salford City Council responded to the Supreme Court judgment by talking about having a \u201czero-tolerance approach to transphobia\u201d and said it was awaiting further guidance.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve now got all the guidance they need, like the other public bodies grasping this pathetic fig leaf. The EHRC\u2019s interim guidance<\/a> is clear that \u201ctrans women (biological men) should not be permitted to use the women\u2019s facilities and trans men (biological women) should not be permitted to use the men\u2019s facilities\u201d. There\u2019s no ambiguity about that, but no announcement either from Salford or St. George\u2019s about a change in policy.<\/p>\n

Many publicly-funded organisations have been following guidance that misstated the law. They no longer have any excuse and the revelations about mental hospitals continuing to indulge trans-identified males reveal a ghastly truth. There is simply no cohort of women, no matter how fragile, whose feelings can\u2019t be disregarded if a \u201ctrans woman\u201d might be inconvenienced.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s hard to imagine a more vulnerable group of women than inpatients in a mental hospital. It\u2019s even…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":163447,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4317],"tags":[5100,5566,105,218,211,980,285,15984,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-163446","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-equality-act","9":"tag-gender","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-mental-health","12":"tag-nhs","13":"tag-optional","14":"tag-politics","15":"tag-trans","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114637492918252888","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}