Mixed Sex Wards and Labour's broken promises (further update)

I blogged about Labour's broken promises on ending mixed sex wards in December 2007, when I wrote that:

"Do you remember Tony Blair saying, whilst leader of the opposition, regarding mixed sex wards in hospitals ""Is it beyond the collective wit of the Government to deal with that problem?". Maybe you remember the Labour party's promises, made at the 1997 election and repeated in 2001, to bring an end to male and female patients sharing facilities in NHS hospitals.

You will be staggered to read here and here that the "Department of Health disclosed that eliminating mixed-sex wards is no longer an aim. A DoH spokesman said: "We have to get away from this idea of single-sex wards. That is not what it is all about. "Now we are in a situation where we are moving away from a set target on single-sex accommodation and moving towards the NHS locally taking privacy and dignity much more seriously. "It is possible to envisage patient privacy and dignity with patients of different sexes on the same wards but with proper segregation. "There are different ways of ensuring that. It's not about targets. Now it's much more about what the patient feels." The spokesman said a mixed ward divided into bays by fixed partitions - not necessarily fixed to the ceiling, but high enough that patients perceive they are in a separate room - counted as single-sex accommodation.""

In February 2008 I wrote that:

"I read on the BBC that "Lord Darzi said the government was committed to single-sex accommodation whereby wards are divided into male and female bays by fixed partitions... He said the goal was never to create single-sex wards as this was not achievable...A Department of Health spokesman said Lord Darzi's comments were "fully in line" with the government's "long-standing commitment on mixed-sex accommodation"...Ministers were insisting as recently as November 2006 that 99% of patients were being seen in single-sex accommodation.""

Today I read in The telegraph that:

"Figures obtained by the party under the Freedom of Information Act suggest two thirds of NHS trusts are still failing to meet set standards.

The data comes after Health Secretary Alan Johnson said just a few weeks ago that mixed-sex accommodation in the NHS will be abolished within a year, adding the goal was within "touching distance".

But the Tory figures show two thirds of hospital trusts are still failing to provide single-sex accommodation which, according to the Government's own guidance, is single-sex bays with three solid walls where patients do not have to walk past opposite sex bays to get to the toilet or washroom.

...


In total, 67% of trusts showed by at least one indicator that they were not complying with Government guidance on single-sex accommodation.

Just a third (33%) of trusts could show they met the minimum standards relating to both bays and access to toilets and washrooms, according to the figures."

Even the BBC have to admit that:

"Ministers had originally pledged to end mixed-sex accommodation by 2002.

By 2006 ministers were claiming it had been achieved in 99% of cases, but patients surveys soon showed this to be untrue."

This Labour government were elected partly due to such false promises as this and more should be done to hold them to account.