Rosie Duffield

I thank the right hon. Gentleman so much for raising that important point. Just for speaking up, I, a left-wing member of the Labour party, have been called a Reform member and all kinds of names, and it has been suggested that I join a right-wing party, yet an awful lot of the articles I read agreeing with me are in the Morning Star. People do not really listen to the ideology behind our beliefs and why we speak up for the rights of working women, which is what the Labour party was founded to do. We have a duty in this place to ensure that people who hold gender critical beliefs are given the respect they are entitled to. We need to find a workable solution that respects everyone’s beliefs and protected characteristics. I finish by paying tribute to the brave and incredible women—and some men—who know that only women have a cervix and who have stood up to those hounding them at great personal and financial risk to themselves: Maya Forstater, Allison Bailey, Jo Phoenix, Rachel Meade, Roz Adams, Denise Fahmy, Eleanor Frances, Almut Gadow, Laura Favaro, Amelia Sparrow, Jenny Lindsay, Kathleen Stock, Rosie Kay, Selina Todd, Rosa Freedman, Lizzy Pitt and my dearest TERF friends Jo Rowling, Suzanne Moore and supreme shero pioneer Julie Bindel. Those women are just the tip of the iceberg. I was elected on a manifesto pledge to make the country work for working people. These are working people who are being persecuted for their legal and respectable beliefs. They continue to be let down by cowardly leadership. I have been hounded, harassed, sidelined and briefed against by a party now in government. It is time the Government got to grips with this issue, perhaps by following the lead of the incredibly brave women I have referenced here and the unsung foot soldiers who fight for women’s rights in the workplace the world over.