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 idea has risked ridicule, being compared with John Major’s “cones hotline” fiasco in the early 1990s, when the then Tory prime minister was mocked for his focus on minor traffic issues during a major economic recession.
Damian McBride, a 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 Major’s much-mocked initiative, which allowed the public to call and report rogue traffic cones on motorways. “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” of 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 have led to “dignity and privacy concerns” among women who feel “unfairly disadvantaged”.
Pledging to halt the increase in gender-neutral facilities, the government is changing regulations to specify that all new non-residential buildings must offer separate single-sex toilets for women and men.
Sign for a non-binary gender neutral toilet
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 closure of public facilities by councils.
Some 10 per cent of council-run public restrooms are thought to have remained shut following the Covid pandemic, while longer-term cuts mean availability has declined by 60 per cent since 2011.
As part of the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill, the Lavatories Tsar will work with a panel of advisers 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”.
Rishi Sunak accused of waging ‘ugly culture war’
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 Rishi 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 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 set out new guidance to schools on trans issues when parliament returns next month.
The delayed document is widely expected to tell headteachers to consult parents if their child talks about a desire to transition socially to a different gender.
