Liz Truss accused Labour of ‘caring more about ideology than the protection of children’ today after he proposed gender law was blocked.
The former PM had hoped the Commons would debate her backbench legislation to stop transgender women using female changing rooms and toilets.
It would also prevent them from competing in women’s sport, and stop local authorities recognising children’s attempts to change pronouns.
However, the Bill never reached the floor of the House this afternoon after a filibustering effort by Labour MPs timed it out.
Liz Truss sat in the Commons today hoping that her Bill on women-only spaces would be debated – but it was talked out by Labour MPs
Liz Truss is hoping that MPs will debate her backbench legislation today that would stop transgender women using female changing rooms and toilets
Many Tories are concerned about the issue of preserving women-only spaces
On Friday sittings of the Commons, MPs have until 2.30pm to consider law changes championed by individual parliamentarians – known as Private Member’s Bills.
Once that point is reached, all Bills which have not been considered are rescheduled for a future date and fall to the bottom of the list for debate.
As a result, Ms Truss’s Health and Equality Acts (Amendment) Bill has virtually no chance of making the statute book.
Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch is understood to be sympathetic to the efforts to ‘define sex in law as biological sex’.
But the Cabinet minister was said to regard Ms Truss’s current proposals as ‘unworkable’ and could look to amend them.
A Government aide said: ‘Kemi is very supportive of the aims of Liz’s Bill but it is unworkable in its current form.
‘Nonetheless it can support Kemi’s work on the definition of sex, and colleagues’ work banning puberty blockers, and Liz is keen to help.’
Overnight, Ms Truss said she had been ‘overwhelmed’ by support for her Health and Equality Acts (Amendment) Bill.
Ms Truss said she has received supportive messages from people ‘across the country and indeed all corners of the world who want to see my Bill put into law so that children and women get the protections they need in the face of the extreme agenda being pursued by militant gender ideologues’.
She added: ‘I have had productive discussions with colleagues in Parliament and am very much hoping the Government will back my Bill. This would be hugely positive for the protection of children.’
Tory former home secretary Suella Braverman said she backed the Bill because the current law is ‘unclear’.
She said there is ‘confusion’ about ‘where the line is drawn and where a trans woman is, for all intents and purposes, still to be treated as a biological man’.
Ms Braverman said: ‘That’s why we need to clarify the Equality Act to ensure that sex means biological sex, as proposed by my colleague Liz Truss.’
Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch is understood to be sympathetic to the efforts to ‘define sex in law as biological sex’
Draft guidance for schools and colleges on how best to support pupils questioning their gender was published by the Department for Education in December.
It stated that ‘parents should not be excluded’ from decisions taken by a school or college relating to requests for a child to ‘socially transition’, such as wishes to change names, pronouns and clothing.