House of Lords short debate, 1st May NHS: Single-sex Spaces for Staff

[IDareSay]

Worth a read on Hansard and as always available on parliament.tv from 1pm yesterday.

https://hansard.parliament.uk/lords/2025-05-01/debates/75F1B529-7B0E-483A-AC7F-8FF909FEFE8B/NHSSingle-SexSpacesForStaff

Baroness Levitt at it again accusing Kishwer Falkner of misstating the law!
:
"As a result, this afternoon, I speak to your Lordships first as the parent of a trans child. However, I also speak as a proud feminist—something I have been all my life."
"The EHRC interim guidance contains inaccuracies and misstates the law. It has marginalised and frightened the trans community. That should be a matter of real concern to any of us who care about the rights and safety of everyone in our society."

Great contributions from Lord Arbuthnott, and Baronesses Ludford, Jenkin, and Fox.

Very good indeed. Disappointing of course from the Lib Dem speaker who referred to 'cis' women, when there is no such thing. She just about managed to admit that hostility and violence towards men who try to identify as women comes from other men. I can think of no circumstances where we have heard of violence to a TW committed by women. Unless of course you are the delicate flower Beth Upton, who is frightened of a 5 foot 4 nurse when he is 6 foot 2.

Thanks so much for posting this. Really interesting!
It seems that quite a few of the HOL have suddenly been peaked!

"1.15pm Baroness Browning
The words in the Supreme Court judgment, at paragraph 264, say that
“the words ‘sex’, ‘woman’ and ‘man’ … mean (and were always intended to mean) biological sex, biological woman and biological man”.

The fact that the body politic as we have known it for many years was incapable of interpreting its own legislation, with all the toxicity that has gone before us and the pain that has been experienced on both sides of this argument, really is an indictment. That is why I support my noble friend Lord Arbuthnot in saying to the Minister that, now that we have this judgment and now that we, the politicians, have been told by the Supreme Court what we actually did in practice—how dreadful it sounds even to say it—I hope that she will act with all speed to make sure that this judgment is expedited with less pain and less discrimination than we have seen in the past 15 years."

"1.21pm Baroness Jenkin of Kennington
My Lords, until the blink of an eye ago, it would have been considered extraordinary to have a debate about whether staff changing rooms in the NHS should be mixed-sex spaces. Many have been unaware of the challenges, including legal challenges, currently taking place in our health system regarding staff single-sex spaces; we are talking about staff with regard to the Supreme Court case. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Arbuthnot for bringing this debate forward"

Wow Sandie Peggie plus FWS have really been the lightning rod for this. 💪

the pain that has been experienced on both sides of this argument, really is an indictment.

Wow Baroness Browning!

First time I've heard women mentioned and recognised as the other half of the equation.

It is all so Orwellian. The head of my company expressed sadness at the ruling and said how hurtful. Sooooo saying a woman is a woman is hurtful??? I find it so utterly upsetting I cannot talk to anyone irl about it and don't know what steps to take. I was raised a feminist by two activist parents and generally feel confident about different ways to stand up for certain values close to my heart. This is the very closest but how to say 'women are women and men pose a danger?' I mean I can't even write what I want to say because it is all so axiomatic my brain implodes.

The clarity of the last few weeks is refreshing after so many years of obfuscation and circular logic.

Lord Arbuthnot:

"The key issue in all this is that the provision of single-sex spaces is of particular importance to women. This is not surprising, since one woman in four has been raped or sexually assaulted as an adult and 98% of sex crimes are committed by biological men. Victoria McCloud, the retired judge who is trans and says they are taking the Government to the European Court of Human Rights on this issue, says that it is not safe for women to use men’s toilets. It surely follows that it is not safe for biological men to be in women’s toilets."

👏👏👏

I do like it when a debate has to happen with everyone able to speak and not be interrupted. It’s a much better way to discuss a subject.

yep - seems like the “no debate” cherry may have well and truly popped

The fact that she has a trans child is entirely irrelevant, we don’t make law, or we shouldn’t, to suit the personal lives of politicians.

I am so tired of this special pleading that the Supreme court ruling is flawed, or simplistic or similar.

Let's see them say, Clause xxx page yyy could be interpreted to mean either this or that. I haven't seen that yet. I have only seen poor transwoman. weep, weep.

Hereditary peers really know how important biological sex is. Otherwise an elder daughter could claim to be a man (no surgery necessary) and inherit the title. Or the opposite, a lord who in subsequently a transwoman, should really give the title back, as ‘she’ isn’t eligible to inherit. And as trans women claim they have always been women they took the title by deception.

*Really think they does need sorting out and the eldest CHILD inherits regardless of sex, which is now the case for the royal line of succession.

JamesWebbSpaceTelescope

Funnily enough, I made exactly the same point on a different thread. Assuming it was 'gender' would have made it look as though the male Lords wanted to have their cake and eat it. Male when it suited them, and ladies otherwise. The law on this was always coherent and now it's been confirmed.

I said upthread that I knew of no transwoman discriminated by a woman. I forgot that there was Brianna Ghey - a trans girl murdered by another boy and girl. But reading about those sounds as though they had severe mental health issues and were an exceptional case.

But otherwise if there is any discrimination it comes from other men. Not our problem to sort out boys. I have had enough of keeping silent to appease you.

The Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom who requested the debate was prior to ennoblement James Arbuthnot MP who did so much to highlight the cases of wrongfully convicted Sub-Postmasters caught up in the Post Office Scandal..

Scarlett Jenkinson killed Ghey because she wanted to experience killing someone. It was only the boy, Ratcliffe, who was found to have been partially motivated by a dislike of transgender people.

If I remember, poor Ghey wasn't even their first choice of victim, just the one they managed to get hold of on the day. Although all the victims appear to have been vulnerable in different ways.

"Victoria McCloud, the retired judge who is trans and says they are taking the Government to the European Court of Human Rights on this issue, says that it is not safe for women to use men’s toilets. It surely follows that it is not safe for biological men to be in women’s toilets."

OK with the final point, but when he says "it is not safe for women to use men’s toilets" he really means "it is not safe for men pretending to be women to use men’s toilets".

Describing him as a "retired judge" is a bit disingenuous. An ex-judge would be more accurate as he was allowed to quietly resign as an alternative to being fired for his totally inappropriate vocal partisan support for so-called "trans" rights. He had become an embarrassment to the judicial establishment.

The double standards seriously need to be unpicked in a courtroom.

I nearly choked at the poster here a few days ago insisting they couldn't use male toilets because of the male gaze and it was humiliating .....

perfectly happy to inflict that as a man on every woman in every space he walks into though.

These things only ever matter when happening to men.

Having heard her declare her interest in the HoL last week “as the parent of a trans child”, I find it so interesting that Baroness Levitt chose to volunteer additional information to this committee:

two years ago, our son started his transition journey—at least, that is when we became aware of it. As a result, this afternoon, I speak to your Lordships first as the parent of a trans child

She didn’t need to say any of that extra detail aside from “as the parent of a trans child”, but deliberately chose to add that (1) this is a relatively recent development for her family and (2) seems to be implying that some of the transition occurred without her knowledge. It was obviously scripted in the context of the introduction to her speech rather than an off-the-cuff comment.

I don’t know whether it’s because this debate has a medical and gender critical context, but I did wonder whether she wanted to distance herself from her child’s decision to transition (as if it was a fait accompli by the time she found out, which may well be true).

Obviously, she’s entitled to her privacy, but that’s what makes it so interesting that she would volunteer such intimate personal information about her relationship with her child and how it all went down.

To me, it feels like she must have had a really good reason for choosing to put her child’s situation (and preferred pronouns, which indicate their biological sex) into the public domain like that, but aside from distancing herself from her child’s decision-making, I’m not sure what would be an important enough reason to disclose all of that personal stuff about her child to the whole world.

“Alison Frances Josephine Levitt, Baroness Levitt, KC, is a British barrister. She was the principal legal advisor to the director of public prosecutions from 2009 to 2014, working under Keir Starmer, and served as a circuit judge from 2021 to 2024. She was appointed to the House of Lords as a life peer in 2025.” Wikipedia

I read somewhere that she was the lawyer appointed by Starmer to produce the report which ‘cleared’ him of involvement in the decision not to prosecute Savile.

Interesting connection.