Workington MP Mark Jenkinson is joining the Women and Equalities select committee.
The Conservative MP announced that he was “delighted” to become a committee member alongside MP Jamie Wallis, who is the UK’s first openly transgender MP.
The cross-party parliamentary group holds the government to account on equality law and policy, including the Equality Act 2010 and the and cross Government activity on equalities. It also scrutinises the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
Talking about his new role, Mr Jenkinson said: “I’m a father of two daughters and I take women’s rights very seriously and the risk to women’s rights posed through some of the policy issues that we’re dealing with now such as access to female only spaces for people who weren’t born female. It’s those issues I have an interest in as a policy and law maker, but also as a father.”
The Workington MP joins another man, an openly transgender MP and eight women on the 11-strong committee which covers issues around sex, age, race, religion or belief, sexual orientation, disability, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity, marriage or civil partnership status.
Mr Jenkinson added: “It is called the Women and Equalities select committee and that has to mean equality for everybody including white heterosexual men. White working class boys have some of the worst outcomes in the UK’s education sector for example, so I think some of that putting people into boxes and looking at it from a single perspective is what leads us into poor policy making.”
In the past, Mr Jenkinson has been criticised for his views on gender, but insists he is gender critical and not transphobic.
He said: “My decision making is rooted in biological reality, that there are two sexes and that everyone follows one of those two development pathways and that there are innate characteristics in each of those sexes that are significantly different in various areas and might lead to vulnerabilities and the need for protection such as in female only spaces. This should not be a surprise, it is the settled science, that each of us fall into pathways that is where our characteristics are formed not in the notion that we can feel as the opposite sex.”
Next week, as part of the committee, the MP will be examining the fairness of the UK asylum process, looking at the experiences of people seeking asylum who have a range of protected characteristics as defined in the UK’s Equality Act.
