Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch has hit out at Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer for "ignoring constituents" after his party's MPs allegedly prevented a bill to stop children accessing puberty blockers.
The bill - proposed by former Prime Minister Liz Truss - didn't make it into the Commons, and Badenoch took to social media to voice her frustration.
She said: "Just now Labour MPs prevented debate on a new law to protect children and single sex spaces. Instead they used parliamentary time to discuss ferret name choices.
"Keir Starmer is terrified of debate on safeguarding & his MPs actively work to ignore the concerns of constituents."
Badenoch joined ex-PM Liz Truss in voicing anger over Labour's apparent filibustering
PA
The Business Secretary's comments echo those of Truss, who said she was "furious" that Labour MPs "filibustered in Parliament today to prevent debate of [her] Private Member’s Bill."
The cut-off point for consideration of Private Members’ Bills was 2.30pm today, but Truss's Bill was not debated after legislation tabled earlier in the morning ran over.
Conservative MP Sally-Ann Hart also joined in with criticism, saying Labour was delaying the second reading of the ex-PM’s Bill because the party had “no interest in safeguarding children against extreme trans ideology”.
GB News has contacted Labour for comment, but pointed out that there were more Tory MPs than Labour who spoke in the animal welfare debate.
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Kemi Badenoch said Sir Keir Starmer was "terrified of debate" on safeguarding children
PAThis isn't the first time Badenoch has voiced concerns over trans issues - earlier this year, she took aim at a Church of England school for allowing a four-year-old biological male to enrol as a girl.
Speaking to GB News' Camilla Tominey, Badenoch said: "This is why we brought out the guidance at the end of last year. These decisions were made before the government had published that guidance, but this is one of the problems that many schools are dealing with.
"Big campaign groups out there, Stonewall, Mermaids, call themselves charities, but they are out there making materials telling people that you should be doing this for children of that age - I think that is utterly ridiculous."
Weeks later, Badenoch waded into row which broke out after Rishi Sunak joked about Starmer's position on trans issues at PMQs while Brianna Ghey's mother was sitting in the Commons gallery.
She said her identity as a woman was "very biological", adding: "Being a woman is a much stronger part of my identity than being black or Nigerian... It is so real. Bringing a child into the world grounds you in the reality of being a woman."
In an interview with the Times, she suggested she was scornful of "academic feminism with all its buzzwords".
But Badenoch has shot down claims that she was a "Terf" and "transphobic" as "abuse".
She told GB News: "The fact that they're resorting to abuse rather than making the argument shows what those those people are like.
"We want to make sure that genuine trans people are able to live their lives with dignity and in privacy and to have a community, be kind to them.
"We didn't have this problem 20 years ago and when I speak to people who have been transgender for decades, they say that our lives were fine until people decided to take us up as a cause."