The United Kingdom's National Health Service announced plans to bring back sex-specific language and spaces to the nationalized health system in an effort to bolster women's rights amid the challenges involved with transgender policy in healthcare.

"As conservatives, we know what a woman is, and the vast majority of NHS staff and patients do, too," Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Steve Barclay said at the Conservative Party Conference on Tuesday evening.

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The NHS in 2021 announced guidance that transgender people could be placed on medical wards for the gender with which they identify. Barclay said this policy "silences the voices of [biological] women" who are uncomfortable with being in the same healthcare spaces as biological males.

"We will change the NHS Constitution following the consultation later this year to make sure we respect the privacy, dignity, and safety of all patients, recognize the importance of different biological needs, and protect the rights of women," Barclay said.

A spokesperson for the British LGBT charity Stonewall told Sky News that the announcement was "a cynical attempt ... to 'look busy'" instead of implementing a robust women's health strategy.

"Besides being unworkable, all it will achieve is to restrict access to healthcare for trans women by making it humiliating and dangerous," the spokesperson said.

The NHS has faced significant hurdles since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, including junior doctors strikes. In August, slightly one month after the NHS's 75th anniversary, nearly 7.6 million Britons were waiting for care, with 380,000 patients waiting more than a year to have routine procedures.

The majority of Barclay's speech was centered on economic reforms to the NHS to modernize care and improve efficiency to address these gaps. In addition to increasing funding for technological updates, Barclay noted that spending money on social justice bureaucracy does not put patients first.

"To deliver the long-term change the NHS needs, we need a relentless focus on patient outcomes, and that means prioritizing front-line resources. It does not mean spending huge sums of taxpayer money on diversity consultants or having bloated internal diversity and inclusion teams," Barclay said.

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The U.K. medical community has moved away from some transgender-related procedures in recent months. In June, NHS released guidance saying that it would no longer prescribe puberty blockers for the purposes of gender transition of minors, citing neurodivergency and mental health concerns as comorbidities for gender dysphoria.

"If we don't get this right now, the long-term consequences could be very serious for the protection of women and future generations," Barclay said.