“It is common sense that a man is a man and a woman is a woman.” These are words of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

In his speech to attendees of the Conservative Party Conference on Wednesday, October 4, PM Sunak asserted his stance on gender identity, eliciting an applause from them, but criticism from transgender rights activists.

“Patients should know when hospitals are talking about men or women,” Sunak said during his closing speech at his party’s annual gathering, held this year in Manchester. “And we shouldn’t get bullied into believing that people can be any sex they want to be. They can’t.”

The PM also pledged to introduce a law that will send “sexual and sadistic” killers to life imprisonment.

In April this year, Sunak was also in the headlines after he agreed with a conservative interviewer who suggested that all women – rather than 99% – “haven’t got a penis.”

The ‘controversy’ comes at a time when Health Secretary Steve Barclay is coming up with plans to ban transwomen from accessing National Health Service (NHS) wards.

‘Endangering lives’

India Willoughby, a renown transgender journalist, has since slammed PM Sunak, accusing him of endangering the lives of transgender.

“We now have a British government and a prime minister that has said that it doesn’t recognise trans people,” Willoughby said. “If you don’t acknowledge a group of people exist, then obviously that group of people don’t have rights.”