RISHI Sunak is facing criticism for his comments about transgender people made during his speech to the Conservative Party conference.
While addressing delegates the Prime Minister promised to legislate to ensure that “sadistic” killers spend the rest of their lives in prison.
He claimed that such an opinion shouldn’t be “controversial” and proceeded to list some other viewpoints he felt should not be regarded in that manner – including believing that people cannot “be any sex they want to be”.
He said: “I am clear there are some crimes so heinous that those who perpetrate them should spend the rest of their lives behind bars.
“So I can confirm that we will legislate for sexual and sadistic murders to carry a full life term with no prospect of release.
“We are going to change this country and that means life means life. Now that shouldn’t be a controversial position, the vast majority of hard-working people agree with it.
“And it also shouldn’t be controversial for parents to know what their children are being taught in school about relationships, patients to know when hospitals are talking about men or women.
“And we shouldn’t get bullied into believing that people can be any sex they want to be. A man is a man, a woman is a woman, that’s just common sense.”
Tim Hopkins, the director of the Equality Network – an LGBT+ rights charity in Scotland – said the comments were similar to those made by Margaret Thatcher about gay people in the 1980s.
He told The National: “That comment is highly reminiscent of Margaret Thatcher’s conference speech comment that ‘young people … are being taught they have an inalienable right to be gay’.
“She thought attacking gay people would keep the Tories in power, but in the longer run it just made them look, as Theresa May said, like the ‘nasty party’. The same will happen here.”
It comes after the UK Government laid out a proposed ban on transgender people accessing female-only or male-only wards in hospitals in England.
Health Secretary Steve Barclay said he would update the NHS constitution to enact the measure.
However, there is growing backlash from LGBT+ Conservatives over the party’s rhetoric on gender identity and sexuality.
On Tuesday, a Tory member of the London Assembly - Andrew Boff - was thrown out of the conference for heckling Suella Braverman during her speech.
When Braverman railed against “gender ideology” Boff, a gay man, said: “There’s no such thing as gender ideology”.
While being escorted out of the venue he told reporters: “It is making our Conservative party look transphobic and homophobic."
