LGBT Foundation’s Pride in Practice Scheme Embedded Throughout NHS

Gender identity group allowed power over GPs, pharmacies, optometrists and dentists with Stonewall-style awards ranking system

Pride in Practice Gold Certificate

As shown in the certificate above, NHS England and the Government Equalities Office endorse the LGBT Foundation’s Pride in Practice scheme. This scheme was ‘developed by the LGBT Foundation and funded by the Government Equalities Office’. In 2019, the LGBT Foundation’s Pride in Practice scheme received part of £1 million government funding due to Penny Mordaunt’s 2018 LGBT Action Plan. Mordaunt’s plan also saw gender identity activist Dr Michael Brady given the newly created role of National LGBT Advisor for NHS England (which he still holds). In the launch of her 2018 plan, Penny Mordaunt parroted the trans activist mantra ‘trans women are women; trans men are men’ - so what happened to the NHS next was not entirely surprising.

A system similar to Stonewall’s bronze, silver and gold award rankings, the Pride in Practice scheme involves the LGBT Foundation working ‘with over 1,000 primary care services across the UK, presenting over 650 accredited awards [and] recognising excellence in LGBTQ+ healthcare’.

The Pride in Practice scheme is still active and ranks NHS GPs, pharmacies, optometrists and dentists (mainly in England) on how much they follow the LGBT Foundation’s rules, rules ostensibly based around being as inclusive as possible. Ironically, however, on more than one occasion, the word ‘Lesbian’ seems to have been missed from GP surgeries’ Pride in Practice certificates.

Map showing all of the primary care services that have received Pride in Practice awards as at Nov 2024

NHS England Allegedly Directs GP Practices to Join LGBT Foundation Scheme

A source has described that when she raised concerns with her GP practice about the influence and changes taking place due to the LGBT Foundation’s Pride in Practice Scheme, they stated they had not realised the detrimental effects of this and that NHS England had told them to sign up to the scheme. We have submitted a Freedom of Information request to NHS England to confirm this and clarify the degree to which GP practices have been compelled by NHS England to join. It is concerning that NHS England seems to be instructing GP practices to follow the diktats of this gender lobby group and is allowing the LGBT Foundation to have substantial power over taxpayer-funded NHS services - especially considering that the LGBT Foundation has a recent history of attempting to diminish sex-based rights in the NHS.

LGBT Foundation continuing to diminish sex-based rights in the NHS

In June 2023, the LGBT Foundation published national guidance on same sex care which would put female patients at risk and was considered unlawful. As I described in my article So over the rainbow: The gender zealots running the NHS Rainbow Badge Scheme, there was uproar over the guidance and it was subsequently changed. In the same article, I outlined that the LGBT Foundation co-ran the NHS Rainbow Badges scheme in its second phase. Predictably, this was given enthusiastic endorsement by the aforementioned National LGBT Advisor for NHS England, Dr Michael Brady.

Dr Michael Brady (National LGBT Advisor for NHS England) announcing phase 2 of the Rainbow Badges Scheme

A recent LGBT Foundation scoring document for a GP practice (November 2024) confirmed that the organisation is continuing to give NHS services across the country legally dubious advice, including false definitions of ‘sex’ and ‘sexuality’. The LGBT Foundation’s definitions of these are sexist, homophobic and contrary to the Equality Act 2010.

The LGBT Foundation tells the GP practice:

‘As best practice, we recommend listing this characteristic [sex] within your policy as

• Sex (including gender)

We recommend understanding sex (gender) and therefore sexual orientation in a more inclusive way.

Sexual orientation - to whom a person is attracted romantically and/or sexually.

This definition acknowledges that a person may be attracted to people of a different gender to themselves, or the same gender, but avoids using binary words such as ‘opposite’ [or, we must infer, ‘same’]. ’

The Pride in Practice programme advising a GP practice how it would like the characteristics of ‘sex’ and ‘sexuality’ to be represented

Young patient-led wants rather than needs

In 2021, LGBT Foundation and NHS England launched ‘If We’re Not Counted, We Don’t Count’

The LGBT Foundation and NHS England led a joint project in 2021 called If We’re Not Counted, We Don’t Count. The content of this included putting the onus on GP practices to record trans-identified females as male. Separately, GP practices are then expected to ensure that they contact ‘anyone with a cervix’ for their cervical screenings, due to the inaccurate recording of patients’ sex meaning that these women will not routinely receive invites to these essential health checks. As highlighted in the recent Sullivan Review, corrupting the accuracy of male and female patient data in this way is dangerous and is likely to cause unnecessary harm.

The project also appears to have produced questionable results—such as the LGBT Foundation’s patient survey claiming that only 33% of non-binary patients feel their GP provides adequate care. The survey also found that the younger the patient, the less likely they were to express satisfaction. We must ask whether the ‘needs’ that the LGBT Foundation describes could actually be self-diagnosed wants in the cohort of patients that they are surveying.

Graph from LGBT Foundation’s Pride in Practice Patient Survey

LGBT Foundation wants GPs to automatically affirm patients’ ‘gender identity’

Another section of the LGBT Foundation’s patient survey describes that ‘trans and non-binary respondents to the survey reported incidents where they had been denied referrals to specialist Gender Identity Clinics (GICs) and of cases where GP practices refused to follow a shared care agreement once one had been obtained. While this may be down to a lack of education, knowledge, or training there are also examples of where inaccurate and transphobic narratives have a detrimental impact on patient outcomes and access to care’. It also described that ‘some respondents found themselves educating healthcare professionals on a range of topics including […] gender-affirming treatments’.

We must ask what authority or medical qualifications the LGBT Foundation possesses that entitle it to sit in judgement of GP practices and insist they always affirm a patient’s self-diagnosed ‘gender identity’ and belief in the need for so-called gender-affirming treatments. These patients are normally not medically trained, and neither are the LGBT Foundation.

Like WPATH, they appear to be self-identified ‘experts in LGBTQ care’, relying not on solid evidence but on anecdotal, feelings-based accounts—often from young people influenced by media and online propaganda. The Account Managers put in place by the LGBT Foundation, who monitor and advise GP practices on how successfully they are obeying the LGBT Foundation’s demands, are also not medical experts.

Royal College of GPs endorses Pride in Practice scheme

Although the Royal College of GPs also endorses the Pride in Practice Scheme (alongside NHS England), its recent guidance says that GPs do not have to be involved in areas such as ‘gender identity’ prescribing if they do not feel qualified to carry this out. This is described in a recent article by an anonymous GP.

LGBT Foundation’s website proclaiming ‘Pride in Practice is nationally endorsed by the Royal College of GPs and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’

However, the impression given is that the Pride in Practice scheme bases its rankings on whether patients’ demands for so-called ‘gender-affirming treatments’ are met or not, without considering whether the GP thinks they are appropriate or would be harmful to the patient.

As we can see, GPs are receiving mixed messages, with the Pride in Practice scheme implying they must affirm patients and also compelling the expression of a belief in ‘gender identity’ that they may not hold, as it scores practices on e.g. whether doctors have pronouns in their email signatures and wear pronoun badges. But as the anonymous GP points out, with regards to providing ‘gender identity’ interventions, it is the GPs who will be liable if they prescribe in a way that ultimately harms the patient.

The Royal College of GPs has an unfortunate history of gender identity capture and has allowed other gender lobby groups to have more influence on primary care in the UK than could ever be appropriate. Who can forget, for example, the spectacle of Susie Green - then CEO of disgraced children’s charity Mermaids - teaching NHS GP trainees about ‘gender identity’ alongside other Mermaids activists.

Susie Green (then CEO of Mermaids) and other Mermaids activists teaching NHS GP trainees in 2018

NHS England and the Government Equalities Office allowed the LGBT Foundation this inappropriate access to NHS services in the first place. Now that NHS England is being shut down and brought under the control of central government, Wes Streeting should turn his attention to dealing with this harmful Pride in Practice Scheme.

Furthermore, he must emphasise that healthcare professionals—including GPs, pharmacists, optometrists, and dentists—are duty-bound to prioritise evidence-based medical care over ideological assertions of groups like the LGBT Foundation. Gender lobby groups such as these should never have been given the wide-ranging control over NHS services they still enjoy.

How did this madness come to take hold of the UK’s National Health Service—an institution once regarded as a beacon of public healthcare around the world? Who let it happen? How might it be reversed? And what steps will be taken to support the professionals and patients now left to pick up the pieces?