NHS Trust torn apart over decision to keep 'trans inclusion' policy despite ruling on single-sex spaces: 'Removing privacy!'

Midlands Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust has sparked outage after telling staff last week that there would be "no immediate changes" to its policies or practices until it received further guidance from NHS England.

Patients are still able to access single-sex facilities, that includes hospital wards, due to the Trust’s Trans Inclusions and Single Sex Accommodation policies, which allow for gender identity to choose spaces over biological sex.

Staff are also allowed to access single-sex spaces based on their gender identity, including toilets and showers.

Reacting to the decision by the trust, Ms McAnena told GB News: "Just to be clear, when they say transgender people can use the facilities that match their gender identity, they're saying that any man can walk into a women's changing room or a women's toilet and say, 'I feel like a woman'.

"So this is absolutely a voyeur's charter and no one should want this, whether you have a trans identity or not, because it just removes everyone's privacy."

She predicted that the decision may cause "more lawsuits" across the north of the UK as a result.

Fiona McAnena has expressed her outrage at the decision by an NHS Trust to keep their trans toilet policy

GETTY / GB NEWS

Ms McAnena argued: "Why are they still waiting for guidance? One can only imagine that people inside the NHS really do believe that the feelings of men who identify as women are so fragile or so important that women just have to put up with it.

"And that's despite the fact that NHS trusts in the north of England and in Scotland have lost lawsuits about this, and I think there will be more lawsuits."

Highlighting last year's Supreme Court ruling on single-sex spaces and now the Government's ruling, host Christopher Hope questioned how such a public body can "ignore" the legislation.

Ms McAnena responded: "Well, the painful thing that this reveals is that the law works if we all respect it, and if people break the law, they don't necessarily get stopped unless someone brings a case.

"So that's why we've seen people like Sandie Peggie in Scotland and the Darlington Nurses go to tribunal and say, this is not fair, this is a breach of our rights at work.

"But all over the country, NHS trusts are still letting this happen, and vulnerable women and indeed female staff who fear for their jobs are sort of having to choose between putting up with it or making a fuss, and that's a difficult call to make."

Ms McAnena concluded that it is "depressing" to see an NHS trust "put women's rights aside so easily".

She said: "Everyone cares about our privacy or most people do, men and women, especially when they're unwell and they're vulnerable in a hospital bed.

Ms McAnena told GB News that it is 'depressing' to see women's rights 'set aside so easily'

GB NEWS

"But it's a particular horror, I think, for these NHS trusts to put the feelings of men who identify as women as so important and so precious, that female staff and female patients lose any expectation that they might have to have privacy. And I think ultimately, it's very depressing to see how women's rights, women's needs can be set aside so easily."

An MPFT spokesman said: "The Trust accepts the Supreme Court judgment and is implementing the EHRC Code of Practice through a structured implementation programme.

"A small number of policies are under formal review, informed by external legal advice and any relevant NHS England guidance as it becomes available.

"As a mental health and community provider, we must also balance our wider legal duties to protect safety, privacy, dignity, safeguarding and human rights, including for vulnerable patients."