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  • 9 months ago
Wetherspoons boss speaks out on gender neutral toilets in pubs after Supreme Court rulingPeston, ITV
Transcript
00:00In the light of the Supreme Court ruling, how will you be, in a sense, both badging your loos within your pubs and how are you going to provide loos for trans people?
00:15It's a vexed issue and I don't know the answer. I'd never been asked it in my 45-year career until it came up as a political issue from nowhere.
00:25I suppose pubs have an advantage and they have a gender-neutral loo anyway, which is the disabled facility in modern pubs.
00:36Some of the older ones don't and they're very difficult and expensive to install, but I'm just not sure of the answer.
00:43How many pubs have you got?
00:44800.
00:45Oh my goodness. It's quite a big logistical problem for you, isn't it?
00:48Well, we're putting in staff loos now, back of house we call it, and it's a 50 million investment.
00:55So, yeah, it could be 100,000 a pub or more just to put in a few staff loos.
01:01Because this is not going to be optional. You're going to have to provide single-sex spaces and provision for trans people.
01:07Well, we'll have to see where the legislation ends up.
01:11I don't know to what extent it's gone through Parliament yet, and people can consider it in more detail.
01:16That's what Parliament's for.
01:18But it doesn't require legislation.
01:20There's going to be some rules issued by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and that's it.
01:25There won't be debate about it.
01:27It'll simply be imposed.
01:28Yeah, well, I think a lot of things need a bit more debate.
01:32A lot of things have been subcontracted to organisations which make the rules up, and then the problems arise thereafter.
01:41So I'd like it to be debated in Parliament.
01:43I'm going to phone up Keir and tell him he's got to do it.
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