Sunak: ‘A man is a man and a woman is a woman’

The Prime Minister has pledged to put an end to Britons being “bullied into believing that people can be any sex they want to be. They can’t”.

Rishi Sunak told the Conservative Party Conference: “A man is a man and a woman is a woman. That’s just common sense”.

His remarks followed announcements earlier in the week that men who claim to be women will no longer be admitted to female-only hospital wards, while sex offenders will no longer be able to “evade sanctions and criminal record checks” by posing as women.

Transparency

In his hour-long address to the party conference in Manchester, Mr Sunak said it “shouldn’t be controversial for parents to know what their children are being taught in school about relationships.

“Patients should know when hospitals are talking about men or women.”

Earlier, Health Secretary Steve Barclay had announced that the NHS constitution will be revised following a consultation later this year “to make sure we respect the privacy, dignity, and safety of all patients, recognise the importance of different biological needs and protect the rights of women”.

Since 2021, NHS guidance has allowed patients to be placed in a single-sex ward in line with their ‘gender identity’ rather than biological sex.

Biology matters

But Mr Barclay said that patients’ voices cannot be ignored, “especially women’s voices when it comes to the importance of biological sex in healthcare. If we do not get this right now the long-term consequences could be very serious for the protection of women and future generations.”

He also explained that he ordered “a reversal of unacceptable changes to the NHS website that erase references to women for conditions such as cervical cancer” and that he “stopped the NHS ordering staff to declare pronouns to each new patient”.

Maya Forstater, Executive Director of Sex Matters, commented: “Staff trans activists have been wreaking havoc across the health sector, from the removal of sex-based language in women’s health to insisting that the identity of NHS workers trumps patients’ rights to single-sex care.

“Undoing the damage will take years of concerted effort but will bring huge benefits for all patients and staff, most especially women.”

‘Poison’

Also addressing the conference, Home Secretary Suella Braverman announced new legislation to “end the scandal of rapists and paedophiles changing their names to evade sanctions and criminal record checks”.

Currently, it is a criminal offence if sex offenders fail to notify their local police force within three days of changing their name. But under the proposed law, Government agencies would alert the Disclosure and Barring Service if such offenders attempted to change their name and they would face prosecution.

She said: “Under the banner of diversity, equity and inclusion, official policies have been embedded that distort the whole purpose” of public institutions, and “the evidence demonstrates that if you don’t challenge this poison things just get worse. Whole institutions become captured”.

Denial

Science Minister Michelle Donelan has pledged to address such issues by launching a review into how public bodies and institutions collect data on ‘gender identity’ and biological sex.

Donelan criticised Scotland’s Chief Statistician for issuing guidance stating that data on biological sex can only be collected in exceptional circumstances, while highlighting that the Office for National Statistics had to be taken to court over census guidance claiming that a person can change their biological sex.

She stated: “So to those who think that they have the right to impose this utter nonsense on science, let this message today go out from this conference hall: we are safeguarding scientific research from the denial of biology and the steady creep of political correctness.”

The review is expected to publish “robust guidance” within six months.