NHS: Single-sex Spaces for Staff

Baroness Browning Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Browning (Con)]

My Lords, the fact that we are here today to discuss this subject, against the background of the Supreme Court’s ruling, is a total indictment of the body politic in this Parliament. I served on the then Equality Bill back in 2010, in the Commons. The words in the Supreme Court judgment, at paragraph 264, say that

“the words ‘sex’, ‘woman’ and ‘man’ … mean (and were always intended to mean) biological sex, biological woman and biological man”.

The fact that the body politic as we have known it for many years was incapable of interpreting its own legislation, with all the toxicity that has gone before us and the pain that has been experienced on both sides of this argument, really is an indictment. That is why I support my noble friend Lord Arbuthnot in saying to the Minister that, now that we have this judgment and now that we, the politicians, have been told by the Supreme Court what we actually did in practice—how dreadful it sounds even to say it—I hope that she will act with all speed to make sure that this judgment is expedited with less pain and less discrimination than we have seen in the past 15 years.

Many years ago, back in the 1970s, I worked in an emergency operating theatre. I have been in theatre when we have resected the overlarge liver of a person who needed and wanted to change their sex. As a Member of Parliament, I dealt with many constituency cases, particularly of trans men who had chosen to change into women. I know about and fully support what has happened in prisons and in women’s changing rooms, particularly women’s changing rooms in hospitals, and the way women feel about it—as a woman, I share that feeling—but, when we talk about compassion, my gosh is compassion going to be needed now to make the changes so that this legislation now applies.

That is the responsibility of the Government. I do hope that we are not going to hear them say, “Oh well, health authorities and hospitals can make their own decisions. It is not a matter for Ministers”. Because of the damage that has been caused by our inability, as politicians, to implement our own legislation, we owe this to all the people out there—particularly women but also trans people. People who make that decision are not all rapists. In my experience, the people I have had to deal with sometimes have really quite heart-rending problems and carry those with them, whatever their choice, for the rest of their life, with a level of anxiety that we have to understand. I hope that the Government understand it.