NHS: Single-sex Spaces for Staff

Baroness Burt of Solihull Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)]

My Lords, we are in a mess. We all care about trans people, and we all care about biological women and all the problems that women have suffered over the years. But even as we speak, senior legal officials and estates and facilities managers are racing to draw up proposals for how hospitals, community care centres and GP practices should operate their facilities according to the rules of the Supreme Court. We could, as an interim, ask trans people simply to use a disabled toilet, but all services need to think more deeply about the needs of trans people and cis women—their human rights must be upheld.

What about changing facilities? This was the basis of the much-publicised Darlington case, which was referred to by the noble Lord earlier. That may be trickier and more expensive to solve, where changing facilities have to be allocated by biological sex. From my knowledge of trans friends—who, in the main, just want to quietly get on with their lives as women—the requirement to open changing facilities, and therefore to out themselves, would fill them with distress. That is before you start talking about confronting rights to privacy and dignity. Much has been made of the fear that trans people are experiencing. We do not want to create situations that embarrass, humiliate, out, and create fear in trans people. Their dignity, privacy and human rights must be protected.

There is a little pub just down the road from where we live that has three toilets, labelled “men”, “women” and “inclusive”. Everyone, I hope, will feel comfortable using the “inclusive” option—I know I do. It has the advantage that no one has to out themselves just to go to the loo. There is also the situation of non-binary people, where sometimes it is hard to distinguish the sex of the person. Many trans women accomplish their transition with aplomb and spend their lives as women. I have a friend whom I knew for 10 years before I found out that she was trans—it did not make a blind bit of difference, obviously—but what would happen to them if they were forced to use a men’s toilet? It does not bear thinking about.

I ask that we keep these things in proportion, because half of 1% of people in this country—men or women—is trans. Perhaps we could bear that in mind.