Men are finally being banned from women’s spaces in hospitals. New NHS guidance says that wards, toilets and changing rooms should be segregated by biological sex, not gender identity. It’s a victory for women patients and female NHS employees, including nurses who have had to go to tribunals to defend their right to privacy. But the question remains: why has it taken so long?

The law on single-sex spaces has been clear for 18 months, ever since the Supreme Court ruling in April last year. It always was, in reality, until NHS trusts started giving in to lobbying from trans organizations. Suddenly, female patients found themselves on single-sex wards with men who claimed to be women, while nurses were threatened with disciplinary action for refusing to undress alongside trans-identified males.

Women had to raise thousands of pounds to go to employment tribunals when their legal rights were denied. Sandie Peggie won her case for harassment against NHS Fife in December last year and has appealed against other sections of the judgment, which dismissed her claims for discrimination and victimization. Another nurse, Jennifer Melle, received a settlement from the Epsom and St Helier NHS Trust in April this year, after being suspended for using “incorrect” pronouns for a convicted paedophile who racially abused her. The Darlington NHS Trust had to pay £187,000 in compensation in June after a tribunal found it had unlawfully discriminated against and harassed seven nurses who didn’t want to share a changing room with a trans-identified colleague.

None of this should have been necessary. Existing NHS guidance, which said that trans people should be able to use whichever facilities they prefer, was simply wrong. Once the Supreme Court had made the error clear, ministers had no excuse for any delay in replacing the old, incorrect guidance.

In April this year, however, research showed that 97% of almost 200 NHS trusts in England were still allowing trans-identifying biological males to use women-only spaces. In an interview, then-Health Secretary Streeting frankly admitted this was wrong, saying: “I believe very strongly that women’s wards should be for biological women.” But he still hadn’t replaced the old guidance by the time he resigned his brief a month later. His successor, James Murray, didn’t do it either.

Whenever Labour ministers talk about how seriously they take equality and women’s rights, they should be confronted with this failure. It is a scandal that female nurses, doctors and patients ever had to put up with males in women-only spaces, but especially so after the Supreme Court judgment. Everyone in Government knew the guidance was wrong, but they allowed women’s safety and privacy to go on being compromised for 18 months.

What will they do now, if hospitals drag their feet? Can we trust ministers to ignore the usual accusations of “transphobia” and special pleading on behalf of men who claim to be women? We’re going to hear a lot of that from Labour backbenchers and other MPs who have embraced the cult of gender identity. They should receive short shrift from a government that owes the women of this country a groveling apology.

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Joan Smith is a novelist and columnist. She was previously Chair of the Mayor of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls Board, and is on the advisory group for Sex Matters. Her book Unfortunately, She Was A Nymphomaniac: A New History of Rome’s Imperial Women was published in November 2024.

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