UK Labour leader: ‘it is not right’ to say that only women have cervixes

"Is it transphobic to say 'only women have a cervix?'" Andrew Marr asked, in regards to a previous comment Labour MP Rosie Duffield made.

"Well, it is something that shouldn't be said," replied Starmer. "It is not right."

"So Rosie Duffield should not have said that. Can you explain to people watching, why she should not have said that?"

"Well Andrew, I don't think that we can just go through various things that people say, Rosie Duffield — I spoke to Rosie earlier this week and told her conference is a safe place for her to come, and it is a safe place for her to come. And I spoke to others to make exactly the same principle.

"We do everybody a disservice when we reduce what is a really important issue to these exchanges on particular things that are said," Starmer continued. "The trans community are the most marginalized and abused of many, many communities and we need to make progress on the Gender Recognition Act."

"I'm very concerned that this debate must be conducted in a proper way where proper views are expressed in a way that is respectful," he added.

Starmer's comment received backlash from health secretary Sajid Javid, who said the comment is a "total denial of scientific fact," noting "And he wants to run the NHS."

According to the Independent, Duffield received a number of online threats from those that said her comment was discriminatory, resulting in the MP avoiding the Labour Party's annual conference in Brighton this week.

"Rosie deserves our full support and protection against that and she would get that. If she had come to conference we would have risk-assessed and made sure that she had every bit of support that she needed to be here," said deputy leader Angela Rayner.

"Anybody who abuses Rosie Duffield who is a member of the Labour Party would go through our formal complaints procedure and I would expect a robust response on it," she continued.