UUP leader Jon Burrows MLA has attacked what he says is interim PACE guidance for the PSNI issued by Justice Minister Naomi Long, arguing it shifts responsibility onto frontline officers and lacks the clear, workable rules needed for sensitive search procedures.

Burrows contends the direction asks police to try to locate a female officer willing to search male detainees who identify as women, reverting to biological sex only if no volunteer can be found — a process he says creates uncertainty in high-pressure settings and fails to protect staff.

Jon Burrows MLA said: "Naomi Long's department has once again put the burden of accommodating gender identity onto ordinary officers and staff, rather than giving them clear, workable rules. It's a clear dereliction of duty. "Asking the PSNI to hunt for a female officer willing to search a biological male, and only falling back on biological sex when that search proves impossible, is not clarity. It's confusion dressed up as compassion. Officers need certainty when they're carrying out searches, not a hierarchy of preferences to navigate in real time, often in pressured custody situations.

"The Supreme Court was clear that sex means biological sex. Interim guidance that only reaches that position as a last resort, and still requires officers to weigh a detainee's self-declared 'predominant lifestyle,' does not reflect that clarity. It puts frontline officers in an invidious position and risks the dignity and safety of female police officers.

"It must be made abundantly clear that no female officer will ever be pressured into searching for a biological male.

"Having served as a police officer, I know how much officers rely on straightforward rules for something as sensitive as a search.

"This latest intervention from the Justice Minister follows her refusal to guarantee that biological men can never be placed in women's prisons in Northern Ireland."