Non-Domestic Rating (Lists) (No. 2) Bill

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 18th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Randerson (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I wish to concentrate solely on the Non-Domestic Rating (Public Lavatories) Bill and, in doing so, express my regret that these two Bills have been harnessed together. They may sound similar, but their impact is very different. I declare an interest as a member of an, as yet, informal campaign group trying to improve the quality of public toilets through the introduction of a toilet hygiene rating scheme.

I will start with a quote:

“The main results from the enquiry are 1) the quite inadequate free provision for women. This is perhaps the most outstanding defect at present existing in London in relation to this important matter.”


The inquiry referred to was undertaken in 1928 by the London County Council. This inequality was made worse by the Public Health Act 1936, which allowed providers of public toilets to charge women but not men for using facilities. That particular injustice stopped in 2008, but the inequalities in provision for women continue. Indeed, official advice from the Health and Safety Executive on workplace toilets still embodies this discrimination, setting in print a recommendation for a ratio of male to female facilities which greatly favours men.

It is a biological fact that it takes a woman approximately twice as long to use a toilet as a man. In addition, an average woman has approximately 480 periods in her lifetime, each lasting three to seven days. Some 14 million people in the UK are estimated to have some kind of bladder dysfunction. Women are more prone to this than men, because of the impact of childbirth. I share with very many women a lifelong sense of injustice that we are continually disadvantaged in this way. When did you ever see a queue outside the gents’ toilets? Modern changes of attitude recognise the argument for gender-neutral facilities, but sadly these are sometimes being provided only with the loss of facilities for women. Women from some faith and cultural backgrounds find it simply impossible to share facilities with men.

Of course, this is not the only shortcoming in our public toilets. There are still far too few changing places toilets, as my noble friend Lady Thomas referred to, with both the space and the high standard of hygiene required for severely disabled people and their carers. There are too few well-appointed toilets for disabled people generally. I also want to make a complaint on behalf of fathers. Far too many sets of public conveniences assume that all childcare is done by women, so baby-changing facilities are in the women’s toilets. Men on their own with children often face an impossible dilemma on where to change their child’s nappy.

I have campaigned on these issues since the 1980s and clearly I have failed, because the number of public toilets has dwindled. When the public complain that their cleanliness and condition are poor, local authorities facing financial problems find that the easy solution—the only solution—is to shut them down.

The Covid crisis has heightened awareness of these issues. First, we all became aware of the need for the highest standards of cleanliness. Combined with pressures on staffing, this posed a dilemma for local authorities, which too often simply shut them up completely. Over the years, as the number of council-run facilities has dwindled, we have increasingly relied on toilets in shops, pubs and cafés, but these have been shut for large parts of the last year. This led to some pretty horrifying situations, which hit the headlines when the Prime Minister suddenly decreed that we could all drive as far as we wanted for our exercise. It was midsummer and the weather was lovely. Hundreds of thousands of people set off for the coast without considering whether there were toilets for them to use during their day out. That incident revealed that good, clean public toilets are an important part of our tourist industry.

This legislation is obviously a good, sensible provision, and I support it, but it is not going to solve any of the problems I have outlined. I note that the estimated cost will be £6 million in England and £450,000 in Wales, which will hardly make up the financial deficit which has reduced the availability of good public toilets over the years. The Minister outlined other initiatives that the Government are taking to improve public toilet provision. We clearly need many more of them. The community toilet scheme that he mentioned started in Wales well over a decade ago, so it is good to see England catching up with this excellent initiative. It is now time for stricter requirements and standards. I note that the provisions of the Bill will not apply to toilets which are part of a larger unit; for example, in a public library. Why not, if they are open for public use? My local public library has the only public toilets for at least a mile and a half in all directions. That restriction seems unnecessary.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

Can the noble Baroness bring her comments to a close shortly please?

[Baroness Randerson (LD) [V]]

It is definitely not in the spirit of the Minister’s speech, which emphasised how imaginative the Government have been in approaching this issue.