Patrick Christys: NHS trusts shouldn't spend a penny on virtue signalling with LGBT friendly rainbow crossings

NHS trusts have wasted tens of thousands of pounds worth of taxpayer’s cash on LGBT friendly rainbow pedestrian crossings.

In yet another epic symbol of virtue signalling nonsense several hospital trusts saw fit to splurge our money on rainbows instead of healthcare.

Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust in Wiltshire spent £11,000 on four rainbow crossings in 2020-21 and South West Yorkshire paid £5,000 for nine crossings.

More than 20 Trusts have spent £46,000 on the rainbow crossings since 2019.Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Trust in Nottinghamshire, which spent £2,780 repainting a crossing in 2021, said it was the ‘latest addition to the trust’s equality, diversity and inclusivity agenda’.

What about the ‘saving lives agenda’?However, North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust showed a bit of common sense. It said it chose not to install rainbow crossings because they were ‘not deemed value for money’.

Absolutely right, how can a rainbow crossing be considered a good use of public money? I don’t imagine that a gay man having a heart attack will feel any better as a result of seeing the rainbow flag splashed across the road as he’s wheeled into hospital.

And I don’t know whether or not to be even more angry about this one - Belfast Health and Social Care Trust spent £2,824 on two rainbow crossings in the past year, both of which have now been removed.

So they paid to paint them on, and then presumably paid to have them removed! We keep hearing about how the NHS is under resourced but I tell you who’s not under-resourced - the NHS Trust chiefs.

New official figures show the health service has an astonishing 2,788 “very senior managers” across all trusts earning at least £110,000 each and costing the taxpayer £395million a year.

Professor Clive Kay, chief executive of King’s College Hospital Foundation Trust– which runs three sites in South London and Kent – earned from £295,000 to £300,000 in 2019/20.

The Trust had half a billion of debt written off by government Then there is Dr Bruno Holthof, chief of Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, rated by the CQC 
as “requiring improvement”.

He earned between £293,000 and £298,000, including £8,000 taxable expensesThe top 10 chiefs’ pay figures make uncomfortable reading compared to NHS lower- paid workers – including nurses earning around £33,000 and porters and cleaners on around £19,000.

And on top of all that expenditure on, as far as I can tell, bang average chiefs, NHS bosses have approved spending of up to £42 million on management consultants to teach them how to reduce waiting times.

I’ve got an idea, stop focusing on rainbow road crossings and devote all your energy to patient care. Shockingly, some of these rainbows were actually painted during the pandemic, when the NHS was at its most overstretched.

I don’t really understand all this virtue-signalling nonsense. It appears to me that companies, businesses and organisations feel as though unless they visibly display a rainbow then people will think they’re homophobic. If they don’t take the knee they must be racist. Can’t we all just start by assuming that we’re not all homophobic and we’re not all racists?

There are record waiting lists for NHS treatment, people are dying while they wait for healthcare and we have NHS staff being paid six figure sums to think about rainbows. It turns out there are some rainbows with pots of gold at the end of them.

In my opinion, NHS trusts should not be spending a penny of our cash on virtue signalling, they’re wasting our money while people die on their watch