NHS should focus less on diversity and inclusion and more on raising maternity care standards, says Family Education Trust

The Family Education Trust (FET) has said that government’s try to make life easier for sexual subcultures has come at the associated fee of basic maternity services.

The trust cited research by baby-loss charities which suggested that since 2018 at the least 2,500 babies died needlessly resulting from poor maternity care. The government has already announced that maternity and neonatal services at 14 English hospital trusts are to be subject to a national investigation.

As well as patchy maternity care, the trust noted that some hospitals struggle to fulfil their core function of providing care to their patients and, in some extreme cases, are places where patients have experienced abuse and even criminality.

Blackpool Victoria Hospital specifically was singled out for being the scene of several sexual assaults on staff by a senior cardiothoracic surgeon, and the illegal killing of a patient. There were also reports of patients being unlawfully sedated and mocked by staff.

Rather than funding proper maternity care and basic services, the Family Education Trust argued that too many resources have been put into diversity and inclusion initiatives and into “harm reduction” measures for people engaging in harmful sexual behaviours and drug use.

“The London Ambulance Service now hands out harm‑reduction cards at chemsex call‑outs with QR codes linking to ‘safer sex’ and drug information,” said the trust. 

“For those that don’t know, ‘chemsex’ parties are drug-fuelled orgies where gay men have sex with multiple different partners, which may go on for days.

“Rather than advising men that unprotected sex with strangers is unadvisable resulting from the health risks, the Government is taking a ‘non-judgemental harm reduction’ approach and using thousands and thousands of kilos of taxpayers’ money to accomplish that.”

Rather than try to scale back the harm brought on by such behaviour, the trust has called on the federal government to neutrally and factually inform young people in regards to the risks involved.

For example, men who’ve sex with other men are 23 times more more likely to get HIV than the final population and, similarly, anal sex has a better risk of spreading sexually transmitted infections than conventional sexual intercourse.

The trust said, “Education policy matters here. RSHE statutory guidance expects LGBT content to be integrated across programmes.

“But if schools present all adult sexual lifestyles as equivalent in risk, they will not be educating — they’re withholding material information that matters for safeguarding and health. 

“RSHE should teach biological facts and evidenced risk profiles without euphemism or cheerleading, in order that children hear the identical clear message we expect from clinical services: delayed sexual intercourse, stable relationships and low partner numbers protect against each physical and emotional harm.”