NHS hospital criticised for advising staff against saying people are “born male or female”

An NHS hospital has reissued guidance telling its staff to use the phrase “assigned female/male at birth” instead of “born” female/male.

Named “Celebrating Pride”, the guidance from the James Paget University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust claims that “‘assigned’ language accurately depicts the situation of what happens at birth”.

First issued in 2021, it was reviewed in June this year, and includes a glossary of ideological terminology and a section on “LGBTQ+ inclusive language dos and don’ts”.

Language matters

Helen Joyce, Director of Advocacy at women’s rights group Sex Matters, said it was “hard to fathom that any hospital is still promoting trans activist language more than two years after the then Health Secretary instructed the NHS to return to biologically accurate language”.

She continued: “It is also frankly embarrassing to see a hospital – a place where medical knowledge matters – making the ridiculous argument that people are ‘assigned’ female or male at birth rather than simply being female or male, as a matter of material reality.”

Joyce called for the hospital trust to “return to recognising that accurate language about the two sexes matters in healthcare”.

Medical reality

Rupert Lowe, the Reform UK MP for Great Yarmouth where the Hospital Trust is located, commented: “It’s astonishing that guidance from a hospital, which is full of doctors and nurses who have spent years studying, does not seem to know what happens when a baby is born”.

He continued: “We aren’t ‘assigned’ male or female at birth. We are male or female at birth. There are sexes. We must not be afraid to say that”.

He stated: “We must be respectful to all, but we must also not deny medical reality.”