LABOUR MP Tonia Antoniazzi on Monday blasted attempts to shut down debate on the controversial issue of trans women’s access to female-only spaces such as changing rooms, refuges, prisons, and sports. 

“What am I doing being a politician if I can’t ask questions that affect women?” she asked.

“Free speech is the foundation stone of the party to be able to develop robust policies.”

The former Welsh rugby international, who has been MP for Gower since 2017, was speaking to 100 Labour conference delegates at a fringe meeting in Liverpool organised by the Labour Women’s Declaration, a movement set up “to secure women’s sex-based rights as set out in the 2019 Labour manifesto.”

The meeting was advertised in the official conference guide, but organisers said that party officials had refused their application for an exhibition stand at the conference venue. 

This year’s 150 exhibitors include Sainsbury’s, the Falkland Islands, and His Majesty’s Government of Gibraltar, as well as the BBC, GB News and the Morning Star.

Sefton councillor Nina Killen criticised the “erasure of women and girls in health policy and messaging.”

Cllr Killen lambasted the medical journal the Lancet for describing women as “bodies with vaginas,” and NHS Wales for wanting to “empower everyone that bleeds.”

It is important to use “accurate language” or there is a risk of not reaching the target group, said Cllr Killen.

“We’re not birthing parents, cervix-holders, or menstruators. We’re mothers, women and girls.”

Judith Green from Woman’s Place UK said: “We need an end to incoherent policy from Labour.”

“If a space is for single-sex, then it cannot be on the basis of self-ID because that means it’s a mixed-sex space.

“It’s also about how women are treated in this debate. If Labour can’t grasp the nettle, if they cede the ground on honesty, courage, and common sense to the right, the Tory Party will be making hay,” she warned.

Haringey Councillor Emina Ibrahim told the meeting how she was left “shaking in a corner” after she was “spat on and verbally abused” when trying to enter a women’s meeting at a previous Labour conference.

“We need to find a common ground, a common language, that can make everyone feel comfortable.

“There’s a conversation that has to be had, but it’s not by describing those who want to have that conversation as bigots or fascists.

“The constant Twitter wars, the language that is used in person or on the internet, it has to stop. Otherwise, we are going to rip ourselves apart.”

About a dozen trans rights activists staged a protest outside the venue but dispersed peacefully before the meeting finished. 

Earlier, an account called AngryTransOfMerseyside had tweeted the address of the venue alongside the statement: “Information has been shared with us about the venue for tonight’s Labour Women’s Declaration fringe meeting. This is a transphobic group within the Labour Party who have already been denied space within Labour Conference […]. They were protested by trans Labour members and their allies at conference yesterday.”