Steve Barclay, the Health Secretary, has rebuked an NHS trust for painting a vast Pride flag on a hospital in what it claims is a celebration of diversity.
Last week, the Princess Royal University Hospital in Bromley, south London, opened a new link bridge wrapped with a giant three-sided “intersex-inclusive flag” showing the LGBT+ rainbow.
It is the first such mural on an NHS site in the country. It follows months of widespread criticism from ministers, MPs and patients over health service chiefs allocating resources to what the Government has branded “waste and wokery”.
Jonathan Lofthouse, a senior executive at King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, one of the largest in the country, which runs the hospital, said it had “adorned the exterior of the link bridge with the Pride flag, a permanent installation celebrating diversity”, adding: “we’re celebrating permanently.”
A source close to Barclay told a journalist from The Telegraph newspaper: “This government is investing record funds in the NHS, including the £6.6 billion extra over the next two years announced in the autumn statement; taxpayers want to see that cash used for cutting waiting lists and caring for patients, not wasted on virtue-signalling vanity projects”.
Valentino Vecchietti, an intersex campaigner, was employed to design the new 30-metre walkway, which took a year to build. When asked, the Trust claimed that it could not put a figure on the project’s cost.
The walkway connects the hospital’s day surgery unit with the main hospital and is lined with Pride flag-themed rainbow wallpaper inside and a giant mural on its exterior.
Though the Trust’s Board seems happy with this horror, the general public is less impressed with over 2,700 mostly negative comments on a Twitter post that the Trust published.
The NHS appear to think that schemes like this will make their facilities seem more welcoming to all, but that is far from the truth, with many people feeling uncomfortable when this “woke” ideology is forced on them.
The Homeland Party would stop this kind of propaganda from being pushed on people by state-funded bodies. The amount of money wasted to promote “diversity and inclusion” is spiralling out of control at a time when the NHS is sinking further into crisis.
£8.62 million a year is spent on “diversity and inclusion” officers. Last year £165,000 of taxpayers’ money was spent creating a guide to advise NHS doctors to communicate with patients in a “gender-neutral” way. This money could be paid to employ more front line staff or put towards clearing some of the backlogs of postponed operations and treatments.
The NHS managers seem more interested in virtue signalling rather than managing the medical services of the NHS. There needs to be a major reform of the NHS, and it should start with removing the managers and trust board members who care more about promoting their politics than treating patients.
