Non-Domestic Rating (Public Lavatories) Bill

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Report stage & Lords Hansard
Wednesday 17th March 2021 Lords Chamber

I hope the noble Lord, who seemed to be taken with our arguments earlier this week, will take this opportunity and seize the moment to think more radically and widely about what the country needs and how it might be provided. Of course we want this Bill to go through, and we certainly do not want to impede it, but we need to think more creatively about what can be provided.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD) [V]]

My Lords, Amendment 3 seeks to exploit the opportunity—as the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, said—that the Bill gives the Government to find out whether we have enough public lavatories throughout England, particularly for the growing number of disabled and elderly people, and whether this Bill, after a year, will have had the impact we all hope it will have.

I too am grateful to the Minister for arranging a meeting with the British Toilet Association. However, I am afraid, as I think the Minister realised, we learned that things were even worse than we thought, with a great many public lavatories closed, whether through fear of spreading the disease or because cleaning could not be undertaken. I myself have not been out and about for months, as I am in the “extremely vulnerable” category, but my friends tell me there is such a shortage of open public lavatories that there is evidence of people using front gardens to relieve themselves.

In Committee, I asked the Minister whether he would update the House on the Changing Places facilities. Muscular Dystrophy UK, which is co-chair of the Changing Places consortium, has been working with the Government to help identify how best to direct the funding. Could the Minister give us more detail on how this is going? Brilliant though Changing Places is, the country also needs a greater number of more modest disabled loos. We should take this opportunity, as a matter of urgency, to find out just how many open public lavatories we have for everyone.