Letter to Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care

Following the publication of Review of data, statistics and research on sex and gender by Professor Alice Sullivan we sent the following letter to the Neil Gray, Cabinet Secretary for Health and Dr Gregor Smith, Chief Medical Officer, calling for them to accept the recommendations of the report and cease the NHS practice of allowing the sex marker on CHI numbers to be changed.

View letter as a PDF

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Update: 09 May 2025
I have no idea why, when we write to a Cabinet Secretary, we receive a response from an anonymous person in the “gender identity” policy team. There is no assurance the minister has even seen our correspondence and the respondent is, by definition, biased and cannot give a considered and impartial response.

The Scottish Government’s own Code of Practice makes it clear information about a person’s sex is NOT held on the historical medical record. If the Government wrongly believes it is and it is important for clinicians to have access to that information, it begs the question why the relevant sex data is not just kept on the CHI number!