Mick Hartley

Unison boss Steve North's dismissive comment on the Darlington Five – "anti-trans bigotry" – has not gone down well:

During her battle with Darlington NHS trust, Lisa Lockey, a nurse, says she has been threatened and intimidated, all because she does not want to undress in front of a man.

But it was criticism from Steve North, president of Unison, after her meeting two weeks ago with the health secretary Wes Streeting, which left her particularly aghast.

North accused Streeting of “pandering to anti-trans bigotry” by sitting down with Lockey and other nurses — one a survivor of sexual assault — who want to make their changing room a space for biological women only.

In light of North’s social media post, Lockey, a working mother who insists she is “standing up for other women”, cancelled her Unison membership, which she has held for 33 years.

She told The Times: “One of the things that really bothers me is the minute any female dares to complain about sharing a changing room with a man, they are instantly labelled as transphobic and a bigot. That’s what [North] did. We aren’t transphobes and we aren’t bigots. It absolutely boiled my blood that he has the audacity to label us that.

“He doesn’t know us. He knows nothing about us. He’s a man — he has no idea how it feels to be a woman in a changing room with a bloke in there. He doesn’t have a clue.”