International Women’s Day

Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne Excerpts

Thursday 11th March 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne (Con)]

My Lords, it is a very great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Loomba, whose work is incredibly wonderful and inspiring for widows, particularly in India but also elsewhere. I am followed by one of the most eminent Members of our House, the noble Lord, Lord Winston, whose speech a week ago on the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Lucas on the maternity Bill was truly outstanding and exceptional. It is a pleasure to speak this afternoon.

I raise the challenge of single-sex wards in hospitals, and specific female-only medical treatment in hospitals, special schools and homes. Sir Simon Stevens’s guidance, now over two years old, wrongly informed hospitals that patients may choose their treatment and wards according to gender self-selection. Annexe B of Sir Simon’s guidance seems to have interpreted the equal opportunities Act incorrectly—one of a raft of government institutional statements that followed the same misunderstanding of the Act. In fact, hospitals are excluded from the Act, as prisons are. Therefore, to attempt enforcing inaccurate guidelines piles Pelion on Ossa, to the serious detriment of the good, professional care for which the NHS is rightly famous.

Natal males demanding, and nurses be threatened with expulsion if they do not carry out, the most intimate female treatments on males—vaginal smears and chestfeeding are just two of the many examples I have been given over the last two years—has led to unacceptable challenges for the medical staff and negative outcomes for females. The reverse is true, of course, for young people who are female. I have had some cases with mental health problems where it is clear that a natal male is deemed to be a female for the purpose of offering the most intimate of personal care relating to periods. It cannot be right.

I ask the Minister to meet me on this unique issue and to agree an assessment of guidance from Sir Simon, which may be flawed. Indeed, I heard on 11 March 2020, exactly one year ago today, from the Minister for Public Health, the Member of Parliament for Bury St Edmunds, that there was going to be a review of these guidelines. Has that review happened? I have written a couple of times to the Minister, my noble friend Lord Bethell, and I have not heard that anything has happened—my last letter was in October last year.

We have a wonderful Minister in the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, and I was very happy indeed to have read the wonderful statement about her in this week’s Evening Standard outlining the splendid work that she has done. We have two Ministers for Equalities, the Members of Parliament for South West Norfolk and for Saffron Walden, both outstanding people, but perhaps their work should be more supported. This falls fairly and squarely within the Covid debate, since males seem to be more affected than females, and the gender versus sex identification is therefore even more strongly relevant in healthcare than in this week’s census wording judgment, where the judge definitively ruled that sex and gender are not one.

I congratulate all who work in this very difficult area, but I believe the time has come to follow the science. Public health provision must follow the science, a lesson we have all well learned.