Badenoch suggests transgender people use disabled toilets

Kemi Badenoch has suggested transgender people can use disabled toilets after a Supreme Court ruling on gender.

The court declared that the words “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act refer to a biological woman and biological sex.

The ruling has been interpreted to mean that transgender women, who are biologically male but identify as women, can be excluded from women-only spaces like toilets and changing rooms.

‘Complex’

This has raised the question of which toilets they should use, which Conservative Party leader Mrs Badenoch said was “not as complex a situation as it’s often made out to be.”

“The thing that has created the biggest problem isn’t trans people, it is predatory men who used lax rules to say, oh, actually, I’m a woman now, I’m going to women’s loos,” she told ITV’s Good Morning Britain.

She was asked if transgender people should have separate toilet facilities.

“Most, if not all, organisations have a way of dealing with this. Not having gender neutral loos is one of the easiest things that you can do.

“Almost all businesses I see have disabled loos. They are unisex, different from gender neutral. Trans people can use those. But if you are providing a single sex space, it has to be a single sex space.”

She said she had put out regulations around toilets two years ago and that “lots of people laughed at the time”.

Watchdog

Cabinet Office minister Pat McFadden has said the “logical consequence of the judgment” and the new guidance is that people will have to use toilets, changing rooms and other facilities of their biological sex.

But “there isn’t going to be toilet police”, he told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.

He said the Government will need to look to new guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) aimed at clearing up questions about what the Supreme Court judgment will mean in practice.

Transgender women “should not be permitted to use the women’s facilities” in workplaces or public-facing services like shops and hospitals, the EHRC said.

The same applies to transgender men, who are biologically female, using men’s toilets.

The watchdog also insisted that transgender people “should not be put in a position where there are no facilities for them to use”.

The watchdog is working on a more detailed code of practice following the Supreme Court ruling, which it said it aims to provide to the Government for ministerial approval by June.