Midwives are being asked to fill out ‘farcical’ electronic forms which record newborns’ gender identity and sexual orientation as part of the rollout of a £450 million software upgrade across the NHS.
A whistleblower told The Mail on Sunday that staff at Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust were ‘shocked’ to find during a training session for the Epic software system that there was no option to record a baby’s biological sex on registration forms, which are filled in just hours after a baby is born.
Instead the form – described by campaigners as ‘ludicrous’ – asked healthcare staff to log infants’ legal sex, sex assigned at birth and gender identity alongside the birth time and date, with a drop-down menu giving options for sexual orientation. The midwife, who asked not to be named, said colleagues were ‘worried’ by the forms but afraid to raise the issue with NHS managers in case they were labelled as bigots.
Last night, women’s rights campaigners hit out at the NHS for being so ‘in thrall’ to gender identity ideology that it failed to acknowledge its software could impose misleading information on newborns for life.
It is understood the US software, embedded with the options to appease trans rights activists who had successfully lobbied the Biden administration for their inclusion, has been adopted in at least ten NHS trusts. Fiona McAnena, from campaign group Sex Matters, said: ‘Trusts can and do customise this software, they could easily remove anything that might get in the way of accurate information and good healthcare. This is an example of how harmful transgender ideology can be.
‘The concept of babies having a gender identity is farcical, but sex is essential medical information. Trusts have chosen to include ludicrous software elements, such as babies’ gender identity and pronouns.’
The MoS revealed in 2023 that midwives filling in discharge forms for newborns at Guy’s and St Thomas’s Hospital and King’s College Hospital, both in London, could select only a ‘gender identity’ on the same Epic system.
NHS bosses said there had been a ‘system error’ and the technology would be updated to record biological sex only, but the latest incident suggests the issues remain.
A whistleblower told The Mail on Sunday that staff at Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust found there was no option to record a baby’s biological sex on registration forms hours after they are born (stock image)
Instead the form asked staff to record infants’ legal sex, sex assigned at birth and gender identity (stock image)
The Torbay midwife said: ‘Why on earth hasn’t this form been adapted to be appropriate for a newborn? I hope that common sense will prevail and nobody would try to fill in those boxes. Unfortunately, common sense doesn’t seem to be in good supply.
‘These are not mandatory fields. But this is the backbone of documentation that will follow babies for life. It’s proof the baby exists and is needed to get a birth certificate. The fact that it’s asking for assigned sex at birth is worrying.’
Professor Alice Sullivan, who led a government review last year demanding public bodies collect data on sex as well as gender, called on the Government to intervene and said the NHS should not be allowed to purchase software that ‘embeds a particular political ideology instead of facilitating appropriate medical data collection’.
One Devon, responsible for implementing the Epic software at University Hospitals Plymouth and Torbay Trust and South Devon Foundation Trust, said: ‘The
system has a template when registering new patients, including newborns. When creating a newborn’s record the only data the system is configured to require is date of birth and legal sex.
