Kemi Badenoch has claimed that girls at a school who did not have access to single-sex toilets developed urinary tract infections (UTI) because they did not want to use gender-neutral toilets.
The equalities minister has launched a call for input, asking people to report public bodies that fail to provide single-sex spaces or have policies not in accordance with the Equality Act.
She did not name the school or further substantiate the claim.
Citing an example of where organisations have allegedly failed to look at equality law, Badenoch told LBC on Wednesday: “If I were to give an example of a school that had gender-neutral toilets and young girls there didn’t want to use the same toilets as boys so they weren’t going to the toilet at school and got urinary tract infections.
“This is obviously a terrible thing but the school thought they were following guidance because they had used some policy analysis that was by an organisation that wasn’t looking at the equality law.”
She said the government’s call for people to report institutions was not about “trying to catch people out”, but that the government wants to “help people do better”.
Asked for evidence of the UTI claim, Badenoch’s office later pointed to a letter by a Conservative MP last year that claimed gender-neutral toilets at a secondary school in Walsall were responsible for one girl’s UTI.
Eddie Hughes, the MP for Walsall North, wrote to the head teacher of the Walsall Academy to complain that newly rebuilt toilets at the school, with open access and shared washing facilities, had “created anxiety amongst pupils and parents” because of the lack of privacy.
“Unfortunately, in the short time that these toilets have been in place, one female pupil has developed a UTI as she has not felt comfortable using these toilets,” Hughes said.
The academy said traditional toilet blocks were still available nearby for students to use, and that the new block had been designed using feedback from students to improve their safety.
“The students said that they felt safer with the open-plan nature of the toilets, as some had experienced bullying in ‘closed’-style toilets previously. This was also the feedback from the parent group,” a spokesperson said.
The government’s equalities office said businesses and other organisations could provide single- and separate-sex services including toilets, changing rooms, and female-only fitness classes “which exclude transgender people of the opposite biological sex who do not have a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC)” and that in some cases those with such certificates could also be excluded.
But the minister claimed some organisations had been “afraid of backlash if they are seen to get it wrong”, with cases in which organisations believe they are required to allow access to such services to self-identifying transgender people.
Badenoch rejected claims that asking for examples of incorrect guidance on single-sex spaces would invite transphobic comments.
When asked if this would be a consequence of her appeal for examples, she told Sky News: “No, not at all, and it shouldn’t be.
“But this is one of the things that happens every time the government tries to bring clarity into this space, there’s criticism that this is about transphobia and as we saw with the Cass review they actually stop even clinicians from doing the right thing, creating a medical scandal.
“All we are saying is if you think the guidance in your institution is wrong, let us know, we can have a look at it, in particular public institutions and then we can provide clarity.
“That’s not going to create transphobic comments, this is sending an email saying here is the guidance, this is what’s wrong and then we can see if there’s something we can do.”
Badenoch’s call comes after the health secretary, Victoria Atkins, revealed plans to overhaul the NHS constitution to “ensure biological sex is respected”.
The changes will mean patients in England will have the right to be treated on single-sex wards and transgender people will be treated in single rooms.
The government guidelines for how schools in England deal with transgender and young people require schools to maintain separate toilets and changing facilities for each sex after age eight, allows staff and students to ignore pronouns preferred by socially transitioning children, and for sport and PE activities to be segregated by sex if there are safety concerns.
School leaders, including the National Association of Head Teachers, said they are not aware of any cases of UTIs or other distress caused by the adoption of gender-neutral toilets.
Both the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and the Royal College of GPs said they were not aware of similar cases and did not hold any data on it.
The latest NHS data showed that there have been fewer younger girls diagnosed with UTIs. In 2019-20 there were 1,627 primary cases diagnosed among 10- to 14-year-olds, falling to 1,511 in 2022-23.
While open-access toilet blocks have become more common in recent years, in most cases they are still segregated by sex.
