Labour’s Shadow Chancellor today blasted a Tory MP who she claimed said she “shouldn’t be in the Cabinet” when she had her second child.
Rachel Reeves - who alongside Angela Rayner is one of the party’s most senior women - said every female MP and staffer in Parliament has “put up at some point with sexism and misogyny”.
She told LBC Radio: “I remember a few years ago when I was pregnant with my second child.
“Conservative MPs said that if Labour won the election, I shouldn't be in the Cabinet because I wouldn't be able to concentrate on having a new baby and a big job.
“Nobody says that about fathers in the House of Commons, ‘you can't have a big job and be a dad’. But people do say it about women.”
Ms Reeves was referring to the 2015 general election, when her baby was due five weeks after polling day.
If Ed Miliband’s Labour had won she would have become Work and Pensions Secretary. She said at the time: “My baby's due in June, and I want to cancel the bedroom tax before I go on maternity leave. That would be a great start for when I come back in September.”
But Tory MP Andrew Rosindell told the Daily Mail at the time: “I don't want to say someone who is having a baby is not eligible to be a Cabinet minister.
“But I certainly think perhaps the demands of that particular job will require someone to give it their full attention.
“I don't expect Rachel Reeves to be in the Cabinet after the election because I expect the Conservatives to win, but clearly people need to be put in the positions they can handle.”
At the time PM David Cameron ’s spokesman dismissed the suggestion a pregnant woman could not serve in Cabinet, saying: “Why on earth not?”
Six years later the government changed the law to allow ministers to go on formal maternity leave, as Attorney General Suella Braverman had a baby.
Ms Reeves, a former under-14 UK girls’ chess champion who worked as an economist at the Bank of England and the British Embassy in Washington, did not name the MP she was referring to today.
But she told LBC: ”I don't think there is a single female MP or a single member of staff who's a woman in the House of Commons, who hasn't put up at some point with sexism and misogyny. And I don't say that with any pride.”
She added: “It's always been the case in the last 100 years of women in parliament that there has been a particular focus on women's dress and women's clothes and what they look like.
“But Angela Rayner is a brilliant politician who can give the Prime Minister a run for his money at the despatch box.
“She doesn't have to use her looks or the fact that she's a woman to win a political debate, she does it by force of argument and to suggest otherwise, I just think it's pathetic.”
It came as Boris Johnson said he is determined to "unleash the terrors of the earth" on the Tory MPs responsible for making sexist slurs about Angela Rayner .
The Prime Minister blasted an article published in the Mail on Sunday, in which a Tory claimed Ms Rayner crossed and uncrossed her legs on the Labour front bench during PMQs in a ‘Basic Instinct’ ploy to distract the PM.
Today, Mr Johnson once again dismissed the comments, describing them as "intolerable". But he admitted he was unclear on what sanctions the MP could face if they were ever identified.
The PM said: “I have to say I thought it was the most appalling load of sexist, misogynist tripe.
"I immediately got in touch with Angela and we had a very friendly exchange.”
The press regulator Ipso has already received 5,500 complaints over the article, as of 10am this morning.
