Labour Party flip-flops on single-sex NHS wards

Labour manifesto, 1997: “work towards the elimination of mixed-sex wards”

Labour health minister Lord Darzi (a practising surgeon), yesterday: “The only way we’re going to have single-sex wards within the NHS is to build the whole of the NHS into single rooms. That is an aspiration that cannot be met.”

Norman Lamb, Liberal Democrat Shadow Secretary of State for Health, isn’t too impressed: “This is an astonishing admission of failure on an issue of crucial importance to patients. The Government has flip-flopped on this manifesto commitment for over 10 years. We now have a clinician blowing the gaff on a political commitment which appears to have no substance.”