The government has denied it has any plans to appoint a “toilet tsar” in its crackdown on gender-neutral toilets after the internet ripped into the rumours.
A report in the print edition of The Daily Telegraph claimed at the weekend that Downing Street was looking for a “lavatories tsar” as part of its Levelling Up scheme.
At the end of a short report on Minister for women and equalities Kemi Badenoch’s plan to cut out gender-neutral toilets, it read: “A lavatories tsar will also be appointed after councils failed to reopen 10 per cent of facilities post-pandemic.”
It was presented as part of Badenoch’s new plans, published on Sunday, which will require all new non-residential builds to separate male and female toilets.
The government claimed this crackdown is meant to “protect single-sex spaces” – a move which has already been criticised for further marginalising members of the trans community.
Badenoch also wrote in The Sunday Telegraph that the government has to “intervene where common sense disappears”, claiming that it was becoming increasingly common for businesses to have gender-neutral loos but no single-sex spaces.
However, the tsar rumour went down the toilet when the government denied the claims on Monday.
Asked if the government was appointing a toilet tsar, the prime minister’s spokesperson said: “No.
“The government remains opposed to this. There are no plans for what has been claimed.”
According to The Independent, No.10 has also said the idea was discussed in parliament after being raised by a Labour MP in October, as an amendment to the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill.
But, it said this was rejected by the government over bureaucracy worries.
The online version of the same Telegraph article does not have any reference to the “Lavatories Tsar” either.
But, it was too late for some quick-witted corners of the internet, who couldn’t believe – amid a cost of living crisis, a major pollution problem at UK shores and ongoing climate woes – the government’s focus was on... toilets. And a toilet tsar.