​Northern Ireland's health minister backs single sex spaces in hospitals - saying staff concerns 'must now be addressed'

Mike Nesbitt has said that a growing number of staff in the health service are raising concerns about the issue, not out of prejudice against transgender people, but rather “genuinely held anxieties that women’s safe places and privacy should be protected”.

Earlier this month, the News Letter revealed that Northern Ireland’s health trusts had policies which allow for males who identify as females to use women’s facilities.

However, those policies are now on ice as Mr Nesbitt’s department conducts “a region-wide review of the existing policy position” – with the development or introduction of any further guidance from health trusts “completely suspended” until it is finished.

In Scotland, a high-profile workplace tribunal is ongoing after nurse Sandie Peggie was suspended from her job after objecting to sharing changing facilities with a male doctor who identifies as a woman.

Mike Nesbitt’s proposals are contained within a letter from the minister to Ulster Unionist colleague Doug Beattie – who had sought clarity on the department’s position.

Mr Nesbitt said: “As Minister of Health I am fully committed to equality of opportunity and to creating an environment where everyone is treated with respect. This includes supporting our transgender staff, as well as all others”.

The letter said: “a growing number of healthcare workers and their loved ones are coming forward to express concern regarding the existing policy position.

“Whilst I fully believe that transgender staff should be treated with fairness and dignity, and afforded the rights to which they are entitled under law, equally as Minister I feel the genuinely held wishes and concerns within the wider workforce must also now be addressed.

“I do also share your unease that under the existing wide-ranging policies transgender staff are free to use the restrooms and facilities belonging to the gender with which they identify. Those concerns, which I have had repeated directly to me by a number of staff even in recent days, are not based on any sort of bias or prejudice, but rather on genuinely held anxieties that women’s safe places and privacy should be protected.

“Whilst I appreciate there is a balance to be struck, I do not think it would be unreasonable, nor do I believe it would be unlawful, to make certain shared spaces such as ladies’ changing rooms and ladies’ toilets female only as a matter of policy”.

The health minister said he hopes to implement a “new, region wide agreed position that treats trans people with respect, but which also respects the important right of women to access safe spaces”.

The move poses a problem for Sinn Fein and Alliance ministers on the Executive, who are already facing criticism from LGBTQ+ lobby groups over approving a ban on puberty blockers, following medical advice. The drugs are the beginning of a medical pathway for children confused about their gender, and often lead on to cross sex hormones and radical surgical intervention in adulthood.

The parties have been stung by criticism from the small but vocal organisations, and have faced bans from a number of Pride parades this summer.

Sinn Fein and Alliance support ‘self-id’ – whereby anyone can be treated as the sex of their choice, based on how they feel themselves and regardless of biological sex, surgical interventions or possession of a gender recognition certificate, which changes legal sex in certain circumstances.

In recent months, representatives of both parties have studiously avoided answering questions about how many genders there are or whether men who identify as women should be involved in women’s sports.

Two weeks ago the First Minister Michelle O’Neill told the DUP’s Jonathan Buckley that she was not going to address a question about males in female sport – saying that it was about “trying to marginalise one section of the community over another”. SF also support the Republic’s self-id laws, which go much further than anything in NI.