A SWINDON doctor has hit out at “inappropriate” plans to ask patients about their sexual orientation.

NHS England have published new guidance advising health and social care organisations to record whether their patients regard themselves as heterosexual, gay, bisexual or transsexual.

The move is intended to ensure that health services comply with equalities laws, the quango said.

NHS England expect that all health and social care organisations would be recording their patients’ sexual orientation by April 2019.

But Dr Peter Swinyard, a Toothill GP and chairman of the Family Doctor Association, has called the plans “inappropriate and intrusive”.

“This sounds like it came from a sandwich-filled meeting in Leeds and everyone there thought it would be a good idea,” Dr Swinyard said. “But ideas that come from meetings like that usually aren’t.

“We are skilled at doing an incredible amount in an incredibly short time but we don’t need extra pressures like this.

“Ten minutes is not a long time and if we get into discussions about sexual orientation, we will lose a lot of consultation time, to the detriment of patients.”

However, he said that he would ask about his patients’ sexual orientation when it was “relevant” to their care.

Dr Swinyard said: “There are people who quite rightly say that people who are LGBT have higher instances of depression and other issues so we may ask that question if it’s relevant in certain cases.

“However, doing a massive data collection exercise like this isn’t in the interest of anyone from the heterosexual community or the LGBT community.

“This is a public health matter and though I’m not saying it shouldn’t be done, it’s not appropriate to ask GPs to do it.

“It’s putting a barrier up between doctor and patient which we don’t need.”

He suggested that NHS England were “back-pedalling” on plans that were “initially presented as mandatory”.

The new guidance has been produced with charity the LGBT Foundation. According to research by the charity, 90-95 per cent of people say they would be happy disclosing their sexual orientation if they could understand why it was being collected.

In the document, NHS England said: “We recommend that sexual orientation monitoring occurs at every face-to-face contact with the patient, where no record of the data already exists.

“The patient will retain the right not to disclose the information, but this response will become part of the record.”

NHS England added that asking for a patient’s sexual orientation might not be “relevant” if they require urgent care.

Doctors at Great Western Hospital are among those that could soon be asked to compile their patient’s sexual orientation.

A GWH spokesman said: “We are proud of our commitment to upholding equality and diversity, and fully supportive of any new initiative that helps to ensure all patients - regardless of their age, gender, race or sexual orientation - are treated fairly and in a way that gives them easy access to the healthcare they need.

“We look forward to hearing more from NHS England in coming weeks.”

Paul Vater, chief operating officer at Swindon Clinical Commissioning Group said: “We are aware of the new NHS England guidance and will ensure that we monitor compliance from all our health care providers as this is implemented”.