Trump's America 'stunned' at NHS nurse's battle over trans colleague using changing rooms

An NHS nurse has told how defeating dangerous radical trans ideology being ignored by Labour was a victory for women and girls across Britain - and a stark warning to other countries.

Speaking at an international summit in Washington DC mum-of-two medic Bethany Hutchison revealed how she was forced to take legal action to expose a simple truth that continues to be denied: that men and women are different.

Mrs Hutchison, 36, was invited to speak at the influential She Leads the Nations Global Summit on Capitol Hill after US lawmakers read her extraordinary battle for dignity and safety in the Express.

She told how a male nurse identifying as a woman was allowed to use female changing rooms by County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust.

She said: "I never expected to be speaking publicly about something so basic yet now so controversial.

"I work for the National Health Service - Britain's government-run healthcare system, trusted by millions, and responsible for nearly all hospital care in the UK.

"And yet it was inside this institution that my colleagues and I experienced something deeply disturbing."

Mrs Hutchison, originally from Washington in Tyne and Wear, told shocked delegates: "Without warning or consultation, a biological male colleague who identified as a woman was granted access to the female changing room, the private space where women undress and prepare for work.

"A national policy required this. Any man who 'identifies' as a woman must be allowed into women's spaces. We raised concerns quietly. We expected discussion. But nothing happened."

The audience of leading US lawmakers including Donald Trump confidant Maria Elvira Salazar, who serves on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Republican politician Mary Miller, John McGuire, a former US Navy SEAL and Virginia Republican, and Christian anti-abortion activist Brandi Swindell, sat stunned as they heard about a case in which Mrs Hutchison and six colleagues working on a day care ward at Darlington Memorial Hospital were forced to take their employer to an employment tribunal.

She said the case had awoken Britain from its slumber over dangerous dogma being peddled across a vast public sector which now employs more than six million workers.

Last month the tribunal ruled a policy allowing men into women's spaces was unlawful and violated the rights of the nurses. It prompted an outpouring of support from all sections of society led by Harry Potter author and vocal women's rights activist J.K. Rowling.

The nurses' watershed ruling came after the Supreme Court issued a judgement last April saying a person's legal sex is the one they were biologically assigned at birth.

However, the fight for women's rights continues as the UK government has yet to bring an updated code of practice drawn up by the Equality and Human Rights Commission to Parliament, despite being in receipt of it since September, saying it was a "300-page long and legally complex document and it is important for service providers that we get this right".

Mrs Hutchison, who flew to the American capital to speak alongside Andrea Williams, Chief Executive of the Christian Legal Centre, said: "We never went looking for conflict. It came to us in a women's changing room.

"Our unions refused to defend us. One union leader publicly called us bigots. So we formed our own union - simply to defend women's dignity and safety. And we won.

"The tribunal ruled that forcing women to share a changing room with a male colleague was unlawful harassment and a violation of our dignity.

"This was not just a victory for us. It was a victory for women and girls across Britain - and a warning to other nations.

"When institutions abandon truth in the name of ideology, women pay the price first. But when women stand together with courage and conviction, cultures can change."