Business of the House

Philip Davies Excerpts

Thursday 18th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

I pay tribute to the hon. Lady, who has been tireless in looking into this issue and raising it in this place. Some of my constituents have suffered due to this appalling contaminated blood problem, and she is absolutely right to raise it. If she wants to write to me, I can take up the matter directly with the Cabinet Office on her behalf.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

David Thompson started wearing women’s clothes and a wig and changed his name to Karen White so that he could be moved to a female prison. Unbelievably he was, from where he sexually abused four female prisoners. His conviction was confirmed in the courts last week. Please may we have a debate on how we can stop this madness, which created four unnecessary female victims of crime? If it is not stopped, we will create further unnecessary victims of crime. This is putting women at risk, so please may we have a debate to find out how we can stop it from ever happening again?

[Andrea Leadsom]

My hon. Friend raises an incredibly important issue. The subject of the abuse of legal gender recognition processes has been raised a number of times in several different ways. The Government want to make the legal gender recognition process less intrusive and bureaucratic for transgender people, but at the same time to ensure that we protect women from abuse. As I understand it, the consultation is ongoing until tomorrow and I encourage my hon. Friend to feed his concerns into that.