UK Government Secretly Shuts Down NHS Pride Programme

The LGBTQ diversity programme run by England’s National Health Service (NHS) is being shut down, VICE News can reveal.

The NHS Rainbow Badge scheme employs a team of people to assess LGBTQ inclusion policies across the health service, as well as providing hundreds of thousands of healthcare staff with Pride flag pin badges to wear at work.

Civil servants have told VICE News that UK government officials within the Department of Health and Social Care encouraged NHS bosses to pull the funding of the diversity scheme, as part of a wider pushback against LGBTQ inclusion—and especially trans inclusion programmes. 

After approving more funding for the project several months ago, whistleblowers tell VICE News that NHS England suddenly “u-turned and ghosted” those involved. Services have now been “wound down,” and some staff are struggling to work while NHS England refuses to communicate with them about what has changed. 

Responding to these claims, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said, “taxpayers rightly expect value for money, which is why we expect the NHS and all of the department’s arms-length bodies to continuously review whether their diversity and inclusion roles are good value, and to always consider ways to improve.”

VICE News understands that many people working directly on the project have not been told it will be ending. Those familiar with the plans said hospitals can expect to be briefed on the project closure “within the next few weeks.”

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“The funding cut is especially interesting timing considering it’s February, which in the UK is LGBT History Month, and this year’s theme is medicine,” a whistleblower told VICE News.

While the highly-successful programme was commissioned by the NHS, it was being led by a group of LGBTQ charities, including the LGBT Foundation and Stonewall. Stonewall confirmed to VICE News that the scheme’s funding was cut and the charity stopped being involved as a “main partner” last September. The LGBT Foundation did not comment. 

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