Labour MP ‘should say sorry for shouting at colleague over gender’
A SENIOR Labour politician has told a colleague to apologise to the female MPs he barracked during a highly charged debate on transgender rights.
Pat McFadden, who is serving as shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, said outspoken backbencher Lloyd Russell-Moyle should not have shouted down his colleague Rosie Duffield when she defended singlesex spaces.
He also said Mr Russell-Moyle was wrong to have crossed the floor of the Commons in an apparent attempt to stare down Tory MP Miriam Cates.
At the same time, Mr McFadden denied Ms Duffield’s explosive allegation that Labour has a ‘woman problem’.
His comments will put the party leadership under fresh pressure to discipline Mr Russell-Moyle – who attended a protest last week alongside a trans activist who spent 30 years in prison – over his behaviour.
Speaking to Times Radio yesterday, Mr McFadden said: ‘I thought it was bad, tragic that in a debate about such sensitive issues, with deeply held, sincerely held views, that Rosie didn’t feel that she could express those views without that response in Parliament.’
He said MPs were entitled to disagree with her views but the issue had to be handled sensitively, and added: ‘And that’s not what she experienced in Parliament the other day.’
Asked if it had been correct for Mr Russell-Moyle to sit alongside a Conservative MP during the fraught debate on Scotland’s selfID gender reforms, Mr McFadden said: ‘I cannot think why that MP would have crossed the floor to sit on the Tory side. During that debate, I just don’t know what is going through someone’s mind when they do that.’
Asked if he should be disciplined, he replied: ‘Discipline is an issue for the whips, he certainly shouldn’t have done it. And Rosie should have been able to express her views without a response like that.’
And asked if Mr Russell-Moyle should apologise, Mr McFadden agreed: ‘He certainly shouldn’t have done it... He probably should apologise.’
In a separate interview on GB News, Mr McFadden insisted: ‘We don’t have a woman problem. We’ve got fantastic strong women in the party.’
But he accepted Ms Duffield should not have been shouted down by her own side.
Mr Russell-Moyle issued a statement after the incident admitting he had ‘failed to control’ his ‘passion’ in the debate.
But he said he stood by what he said during the debate – which included accusing Ms Cates of giving ‘one of the worst transphobic dog-whistle speeches I have heard in an awfully long time’.
He has not apologised to Ms Duffield, who in an article last Friday likened being in Labour to being in an ‘abusive relationship’.
‘I don’t know what was in his mind’