Thousands of transgender inclusivity badges left unused in Scotland after staff snubbed scheme

Thousands of pin badges ordered for Scottish NHS staff who took a transgender inclusivity pledge are lying unused in storage after health workers snubbed the “ideological” scheme.

The SNP government, in partnership with NHS Scotland, launched a national initiative in 2021 and encouraged staff to take a formal vow to “respect the identity” of trans people and adopt “inclusive language”.

Those who did so were given a badge which they were asked to wear at work to signify that they were an “ally to progress” for trans people and other minority groups.

Senior NHS staff spent months designing the scheme, in consultation with the lobby group Stonewall, with the SNP government spending more than £33,000 on an initial order of badges and an internal promotional campaign.

However, more than 18 months on, more than 10,000 of the badges, or four in 10 of those ordered, have gone unclaimed as lower than expected numbers signed up, figures released by health boards show.

Gender critical activists attacked what they claimed was a politically-driven plan, claiming NHS staff had been pressured by bosses to endorse an ideology that would have seen biological men placed in female-only wards and promotes language that “erased” women.

Scottish NHS bodies have previously come under fire for offering smear tests to “anyone with a cervix”, rather than women, under an “inclusive language” push that critics claim is confusing and potentially dangerous.

Women who express concerns about sharing wards with biological men who identify as female have also been compared to racists in official NHS documents, despite UK equality laws allowing for trans people to be excluded from single-sex spaces.

“This may sound like a harmless scheme but it is underpinned by a dangerous ideology which harms women’s rights,” Trina Budge, a director at For Women Scotland, said. “It is astonishing that NHS Scotland partners with a group like Stonewall which believes sex doesn’t matter and ideology trumps biology.

“Given the pressures on the NHS, asking staff, many of whom may not understand the ethos behind it, to pledge to this ideology is absurd. It is no surprise that so many of these political badges are lying in a drawer somewhere.”

While some NHS boards said they had distributed all of the badges they ordered, after staff took the pledges, at Scotland’s second largest, NHS Lothian, only 1,000 out of 3,200 it ordered were given out.

Across 13 of 14 health boards who gave figures following Freedom of Information requests, 11,131 of 27,940 badges ordered – around 40 per cent – remain in storage. They cost just over £1 each.

Those designing the scheme were keen to design the badge so that it was not mistaken as a general show of support for the NHS, after the traditional rainbow emblem of LGBT campaigners was used to signify backing for health workers during the height of the Covid pandemic.

Progress Pride

They settled on a “Progress Pride” flag, which includes pink, blue and white chevrons to represent trans and non-binary people, and black and brown for ethnic groups, claiming this was “easier to distinguish between the rainbow flag used during the pandemic.”

By taking a pledge staff were told that their badge would become a “signpost of safety” for LGBT and minority ethnic groups.

They were told that they must commit to “call out hate speech and report incidents of discrimination,” which under the definition of some trans activists, would include stating that trans women are not literally women or seeking to preserve single-sex spaces in the NHS.

A spokesman for the Scottish government claimed that demand for the badges had outstripped supply when the scheme was launched and that new stock had been ordered to be “distributed soon”.

She added: “Our health system is based on the core values of care, compassion, openness, honesty, dignity and respect for everyone, irrespective of their individual identities.

“The NHS Scotland Pride Badge encourages open and constructive conversations on difficult issues pertaining to ethnicity, age, sex and sexuality and showcases our commitment to foster an environment that is open, tolerant and inclusive for all.”