Rishi Sunak’s government has been mocked for introducing a “lavatories tsar”, as ministers announced an attempt to crack down on gender-neutral public toilets.
New shops, public buildings and offices will be ordered to have single-sex loos, as the PM and his equalities minister Kemi Badenoch lean into the “culture war” row with transgender rights groups on the issue.
But the latest ideas risked ridicule – being compared with former Tory PM John Major’s “cones hotline” fiasco of the early 1990s, which focused on minor traffic issue during a major economic recession.
Damian McBride, former adviser to Labour’s Gordon Brown scoffed at Britain becoming the “first country in the world to appoint a dedicated ‘lavatories tsar’,” adding: “I bet you didn’t have that on your Tory summer fightback bingo card.”
James Asser, Labour’s deputy mayor of Newham Council, compared it to Sir John’s much-mocked intiative, which allowed the public to call and ask about traffic cones on roadworks. “Lavatories Tsar? We’re into Cones Hotline territory now,” he tweeted.
Launching her new crackdown, Ms Badenoch said the rise in gender-neutral toilets had removed the “fundamental right” for women and girls to have “privacy, dignity and safety”.
Trans rights groups have argued that gender-neutral toilets can help combat discrimination, since trans people can face difficulties using male or female toilets.
But the Sunak government argues that communal cubicles and hand-washing facilities has created “dignity and privacy concerns” from women who feel “unfairly disadvantaged”.
Pledging to halt the increase in neutral gender facilities, the government is changing regulations so all new non-residential buildings must offer separate single-sex toilets for women and men.
Self-contained, private unisex toilets should be provided in new buildings if there is space – but should not be put in at the expense of single-sex toilets.
“It is important that everybody has privacy and dignity when using public facilities,” said Ms Badenoch. “Yet the move towards ‘gender neutral’ toilets has removed this fundamental right for women and girls.”
Separately, the government has plans to appoint a toilet commissioner – the so-called lavatories tsar – to address the council closure of public facilities.
Some 10 per cent per cent of councils’ public restrooms are thought to have remained shut following the Covid pandemic, while longer-term cuts mean availability has declined 60 per cent since 2011.
As part of the levelling up and regeneration bill, the toilets tsar who will work with panel of advisors to come up with a strategic plan to reverse this decline.
Former government adviser Sam Freedman mocked the Tories for complaining about an “overcentralised state” while having “someone sitting in Whitehall telling councils how many toilets to open”.
The government has previously been accused of using gender-neutral toilets and other trans-related issues to stoke divisions in a war on “wokeism”.
Labour’s Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, told The Independent in June that Mr Sunak was exploiting the trans debate as a “wedge issue in an ugly culture war”.
The PM was also accused of transphobia after a leaked video saw him mocking Lib Dem leader Ed Davey for “trying to convince everybody that women clearly had penises”.
The Lib Dem leader accused the PM of treating trans people like a “punchline” after the clip surfaced. But No 10 insisted the joke was at the expense of Mr Davey, not a minority group.
It comes as the government prepares to finally set out new guidance to schools on trans issues when parliament returns next month.
The delay document is widely expected to tell headteachers to consult parents if their child talks about a desire to socially transition to a different gender, so that they could choose another pronoun or name.