NHS England axes ‘anti-women’ LGBT badge scheme

NHS England has ditched its taxpayer-funded LGBT scheme which pushed hospitals to erase sex-specific language.

Since 2021, the NHS Rainbow Badge scheme has rated hospitals gold, silver or bronze based on their promotion of gender ideology. A coalition of activist groups which led the scheme, including Stonewall and the LGBT Foundation, awarded points for calling pregnant women “clients” and asking for patients’ ‘preferred pronouns’.

But NHS England has now closed the scheme across 77 trusts due to a “lack of funding”, after the Department of Health and Social Care decided it was no longer “value for money”.

‘Huge step’

Helen Joyce, Director of Advocacy for women’s group Sex Matters, commented: “The end of the NHS Rainbow Badge scheme is a huge step towards rooting transactivism out of our public institutions.

“The news should be a huge relief to NHS staff and patients, since the Rainbow Badge harmed women’s rights by prioritising trans identities over sex-based rights.”

Caroline Ffiske of Conservatives for Women said the scheme “promoted an ideology that erases women, our language, our safety, our dignity. Gender ideology should be nowhere near the NHS”.

However, an NHS spokesperson stated: “The NHS Rainbow Badge programme is an important initiative to address LGBT+ health inequalities and to support LGBT+ inclusion, for both patients and staff. Our work in this area will continue”.

Stonewall

Last year, a former Health Minister said Stonewall’s radical trans ideology should not displace the reality of biological sex in NHS guidance.

Will Quince MP cautioned NHS trusts in England against succumbing to Stonewall capture, after a Daily Mail investigation uncovered the involvement of the LGBT lobby group in writing gender policies for dozens of NHS trusts in England.

The Daily Mail exposed Stonewall’s influence in guidance produced by 30 trusts, while 65 respondents to Freedom of Information requests made by the newspaper said they admitted men who claimed to be women to female-only wards.