Sir Keir Starmer has urged MPs to “lower the temperature” of the transgender debate as he refused to accept he had changed his stance.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch used Prime Minister’s Questions to press Sir Keir on previous comments he has made about transgender women.
The prime minister has previously said “transwomen are women”, but after the Supreme Court ruled last week the definition of a “woman” is a “biological woman”, he said on Tuesday that “a woman is an adult female”.
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Ms Badenoch asked if the PM now accepts his previous comments were “wrong” to which Sir Keir repeated he welcomes the ruling as “it brings clarity”.
He said his and the government’s approach is “to support and implement the Supreme Court ruling” and said they will “continue to protect single-sex spaces” but will also ensure trans people “are treated with respect”.
“I do think this is the time now to lower the temperature, to move forward, and to conduct this debate with the care and compassion that it deserves,” he said.
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“And I think that should unite the whole House.”
Sir Keir also refused to apologise to Rosie Duffield, a former Labour MP who left the party to become an independent and who Sir Keir said was “not right” in 2021 to say only women have a cervix.
Ms Duffield was in the chamber when Sir Keir said he “always” approaches the trans/women issue “on the basis that we should treat everyone with dignity and respect, whatever their different views”.
The Tory leader had asked him to apologise to Ms Duffield, “the very brave member for Canterbury, for hounding her out of the Labour Party simply for telling the truth”.
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Ms Badenoch said Sir Keir “doesn’t have the balls” to express his views on the issue, hitting out at him for taking six days to react to it.
But the PM dismissed her, saying the line “sounded better when she did it in the mirror earlier” and said it does not matter what she says “because nobody believes she’s going to lead them into the next election anyway”.
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Just before PMQs, Health Secretary Wes Streeting insisted Sir Keir’s cabinet is “united in our position of the Equalities Act on the Supreme Court ruling and on making sure that the law is upheld”.
He also told The Sun that trans women are “not the same as biological women” but he would “always respect people’s identities and I have no trouble whatsoever referring to trans women by their names, referring to them as women as shorthand, or using pronouns like she and her”.
The health secretary said he “takes criticism on the chin” for previously arguing that people should “get over” concerns, admitting “there are lots of complexities”.
