Mick Hartley

Baroness Falkner of Margravine to the rescue. Watchdog tells NHS Fife to provide single-sex changing rooms:

​A top UK human rights body has written to “remind” an NHS board at the centre of a single-sex spaces row that changing rooms must include separate facilities for men and women.

Baroness Falkner of Margravine, chairwoman of the ​Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), has intervened in the legal battle involving NHS Fife over the use of female changing facilities by a transgender doctor….

Falkner has written to NHS Fife and Scottish ministers to reiterate their duty to “have an accurate understanding of the operation of the Equality Act as it relates to the provision of single-sex services and spaces”.

In a statement, Falkner said the letter highlighted obligations under the Workplace Regulations (Health, Safety and Welfare) of 1992 which state that changing facilities will not be suitable “unless they include separate facilities for, or separate use of facilities by, men and women where necessary for reasons of propriety”.

A separate letter has also been sent to the Scottish government.

The human rights body revealed it has requested a meeting with Neil Gray, the health secretary, to discuss a forthcoming “guide to transitioning” document which insists transgender staff must be allowed to use their “preferred facilities” including changing rooms and lavatories unless there is a particular “case by case” reason.

The guidance suggests it could be unlawful to prevent a transgender person from using the lavatories or changing facilities of their chosen gender.

​Helen Joyce, director of advocacy at human rights charity Sex Matters, said it had warned SNP ministers earlier this week that the guide “misrepresented the Equality Act and was legally wrong”.

​“It was extraordinary to then see the Scottish first minister stand up in Holyrood on Thursday and refer to the guidance as if these flaws did not exist,” she said.

“The EHRC’s speedy intervention is a clear sign that in defending this error-strewn guidance, John Swinney was committing as serious an error of judgment as when his health minister, Neil Gray, said that the leadership of NHS Fife had his ‘full confidence’.​”

Having to tell the Scots where they've got it wrong. It's becoming quite an industry.