The father of the murdered teenager Brianna Ghey has demanded Rishi Sunak apologise after the prime minister made a jibe at the expense of transgender people just after being told Brianna’s mother was watching him in the House of Commons.
After the exchanges, at prime minister’s questions, Brianna’s father, Peter Spooner, called Sunak’s comments “absolutely dehumanising”.
“For the prime minister of our country to come out with degrading comments like he did, regardless of them being in relation to discussions in parliament, they are absolutely dehumanising,” he told Sky News. “Identities of people should not be used in that manner, and I personally feel shocked by his comments and feel he should apologise for his remarks.”
A series of Conservative MPs also rounded on Sunak for insensitivity after he pressed ahead with an apparently prepared attack line about transgender people, just after being told by Keir Starmer that Esther Ghey was in the public gallery.
Listing what he called broken Labour promises, the prime minister said: “I think I counted almost 30 in the last year: pensions, planning, peerages, public sector pay, tuition fees, childcare, second referendums, defining a woman – although in fairness that was only 99% of a U-turn.”
The final example, seemingly a reference to a Labour policy reversal on self-identification and Starmer’s comment that “99.9%” of women do not have penises, prompted a furious response from several MPs.
A clearly angry Starmer replied: “Of all the weeks to say that, when Brianna’s mother is in the chamber. Shame. Parading as a man of integrity, when he’s got absolutely no responsibility.”
Sunak ignored several demands from MPs in the Commons that he apologise, saying only that Esther Ghey represented “the very best of humanity in the face of seeing the very worst of humanity, and she deserves all our admiration and praise.”
No 10 defended his words, saying it was “legitimate” to note U-turns by the opposition.
It is understood that while Sunak made the comments after being told that Ghey was watching, she actually arrived in chamber slightly late and so missed that initial exchange.
Brianna, 16, was lured to a park in Cheshire and murdered in February last year. Last Friday, Scarlett Jenkinson and Eddie Ratcliffe, both 16, were jailed for at least 22 and 20 years respectively. Ratcliffe was found to have been partly motivated by hostility to Brianna’s transgender identity.
It emerged later that No 10 was trying to arrange a meeting between Sunak and Brianna’s family, at a time to suit them, to discuss online safety among young people, one of several issues that have come to the fore from her murder.
While some colleagues leapt to Sunak’s defence – the business secretary, Kemi Badenoch, tweeted that it was “shameful of Starmer to link his own inability to be clear on the matter of sex and gender directly to her grief” – several Tory MPs expressed disquiet.
The former minister Jackie Doyle-Price said that while she was an advocate of balancing transgender rights with the protection of single-sex spaces, Sunak’s comment “trivialises something that’s very important” and was “frankly very ill-judged”.
She told Times Radio: “I suspect that when he says that line, he doesn’t think about it like that because it’s being given to him as a line. Let’s just bring it down to its lowest level – you know, boys like talking about penises.”
Dehenna Davison, another former minister, tweeted that it was “disappointing to hear jokes being made at the trans community’s expense”, adding: “Our words in the house resonate right across our society and we all need to remember that.”
She wrote: “Given some of the terrible incidences of transphobia we have seen lately, this need for respect feels more crucial than ever.”
Jamie Wallis, the Conservative backbencher who in 2022 became the UK’s first publicly trans MP, also expressed disappointment at Sunak’s words.
He said in a statement: “I know that from my own interactions with the prime minister that today’s display of insensitivity must have been inadvertent. Today has been a tough day for me, but all I can think about right now is Brianna’s mother. Let us all think of her as we choose how to progress with this debate.”
While Downing Street clearly hopes the row will die down, it has the potential to create more difficulties, with the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, enduring some awkward exchanges in TV interviews intended to be devoted to a Treasury analysis of Labour’s green prosperity plan.
Asked repeatedly why Sunak had made a joke at the expense of trans people, the chancellor told the BBC this was “taking these comments out of context”, before eventually refusing to engage with questions about whether the prime minister should apologise.
A Labour spokesperson said: “We don’t think that the country wants or deserves a prime minister that is happy to use minorities as a punchbag. The comments were really deeply offensive to trans people and he should reflect on his response there and apologise.”
Starmer held a meeting with Esther Ghey in parliament after PMQs. He later tweeted: “I am utterly in awe of her strength and bravery in the face of such unimaginable grief, as she campaigns to make sure no parent has to go through what she did.”
Sunak and his ministers routinely attack Labour’s position on transgender rights. Last year the party changed its policy on a self-identification system that would have let people officially change their gender without a medical diagnosis.
