A Labour frontbencher has risked deepening Labour’s gender chaos by suggesting pre-op trans women should use women’s toilets.
Shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson argued that female facilities were the right place for people with gender recognition certificates.
GRCs currently require doctors to sign off and two years’ evidence of living in a different gender – although Labour proposals could see that downgraded to a two-year ‘cooling off’ period.
However, there is no requirement for people to have had reassignment surgery, or be planning to do so.
Speaking on Times Radio, Ms Phillipson insisted that single-sex provision was important for women’s ‘dignity and safety’.
But she stressed that there needed to be ‘provision for trans people’.
Presenter Kait Borsay confronted Ms Phillipson with a scenario, asking: ‘I am someone who is biologically a male, but I have changed my gender.
‘I’ve got a certificate to prove it, and I’m now a trans woman. Where would I go to the toilet? The men’s toilet or the women’s toilets?’
Ms Phillipson replied: ‘So you don’t police how people use toilets in that sense, but I would expect that if you were someone that had gone through that formal process of recognition, that you are, to all intents and purposes, for legal purposes, regarded as being in a different gender regardless of the sex into which you were born.’
Borsay said: ‘So where do I go? The men’s toilets or the women’s toilets?’
Ms Phillipson said: ‘I would think that in those cases people would be using female toilets.’
Told that wasn’t ‘protecting a woman’s space’, Ms Phillipson said: ‘I’m talking about people who have gone through a process… quite an extensive process.’
Meanwhile, it has emerged that Labour would introduce a full ban on conversion ‘therapy’ if it wins the election.
The party is supporting a full ban on such techniques to suppress a person’s sexuality or gender identity, which critics say amounts to abuse.
The move comes despite fears that legislation could inadvertently prevent parents and therapists from talking to children about gender identity.
Speaking at a Sun hustings last night, Sir Keir said protecting single-sex spaces was ‘very, very important’.
Sir Keir also insisted he is ready to meet JK Rowling, who has condemned the party for ‘abandoning’ women.
The Labour leader said: ‘She’s made some really important points. I’d welcome that discussion because I do think that we’ve made huge progress on women’s rights under Labour governments… ‘