‘Pagan’ NHS Survey Prompts Questions in Parliament

Health service has ‘lost all sense of perspective‘ says cross-party group of backbenchers.

The controversial questionnaire, which prompted the row

NHS England’s Chief Executive, Simon Stevens, speaking at last week’s London press conference on patient diversity

Customers are often asked to fill in feedback questionnaires about the services or products they use – but one such example at a Brighton hospital has caused outrage and bemusement in equal measure.

‘”Political correctness gone mad” doesn’t even begin to cover it’, fumed a Conservative backbench MP. ‘In the supposed interests of serving all strands of the weird-and-wonderful population of Brighton, people are asked if they are:

• Transgender (and by the way, there’s a typo in that question)
• Lesbian
• Gay
• Bisexual
• Buddhist
• Jain
• Pagan

‘..all of which you’ll notice come before such trifling matters as whether people visiting hospital have a disability or are a carer’.

But there was a swift response from NHS England, which oversees public health patient satisfaction surveys.

In a hastily-arranged press conference at the Department of Health, it said: ‘Britain is a modern, diverse, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-sexual, multi-faith, multi-gender, multi-age, multi-region, multi-height, multi-weight, multi-political society.  It’s not good enough anymore to just ask people if they are in for an operation on their foot, or for a new hip.

‘Context is everything: does their faith require, for example, that runic symbols and pentograms be scrawled in goat’s blood above their bed..?’

The press conference was dramatically cut short when a 50 foot tall wicker effigy accidentally caught fire and collapsed – blocking Whitehall traffic for several hours and delaying the Prime Minister’s attendance at PMQs.