A Labour MP has criticised ITV over a news item on Thames Water that featured a transgender woman talking about how higher bills affected her as a mother.
The segment, shared on Twitter, featured Mika Minio-Paluello discussing how the price hikes on water bills affected her and her family.
Minio-Paluelle says: “The idea that we’re going to have even greater water bills at a time of prices already being hiked – and we have to to pay a lot for food – that’s tough if you’re a mum like me already struggling to get the things my kid needs”.
The clip has been viewed 1.7 million times and sparked debate. That included criticism from Labour MP Rosie Duffield, who tweeted: “Dear @itvnews, I am sure this is a lovely, intelligent and decent human being. This was an important piece. This is not, however, a struggling ‘mother’.”
Another Twitter user, sharing the clip, wrote: “ITV News did a piece about the impact of soaring water bills on an everyday mother. So naturally, they got a man to play the part.”
Labour MP Rosie Duffield Slams ITV’s News Report
Others batted back the comments, who argued that ITV featuring a trans person in a small news segment shouldn’t prompt the widespread discussion that it did.
“Just seen a very unpleasant post criticising ITV for interviewing “a man” because they spoke to a trans woman – a Thames Water customer – during a segment on rising bills,” wrote Paris Lees. “Trans people use water and pay bills. Are we not allowed to talk about anything now? Is that the new rule?”
For at least half a decade now, Labour, like many political parties in the West, has struggled with the contentious issue of “self-ID” – the proposed right of people to self-identify as another sex or gender. Some Labour members, voters, and an undetermined number of the party’s MPs think self-ID threatens women’s rights to single-sex spaces. Rosie Duffield, the Labour MP for Canterbury since 2017, is the most prominent critic of the idea within the party. When I met Duffield recently, she had little sense of her party’s policy or who was in charge of crafting it. A Labour MP has slammed the party for leaving her ‘isolated, hounded and harassed’ after she spoke out for women in the trans row.
During years of toxic’ abuse, Rosie Duffield said she felt an ‘absolute lack of support’ from colleagues – including many who privately agree with her.
ITV Faces Criticism from Labour MP Rosie Duffield for News Report Featuring Trans Woman
The Canterbury MP complained that Keir Starmer and the Labour leadership should have listened to her views.
She has repeatedly criticised moves to allow transgender women into female-only spaces and services and competitive sports.
Speaking to the Daily Express, the mother-of-two said her treatment by the party had been ‘pretty galling’.
‘There are many women MPs who agree with me and some men, and very few of them have backed me up or defended me or spoken out about their views, and I find that increasingly disappointing,’ she said.
‘But also increasingly understandable as the toxic atmosphere worsens.’
Ms Duffield said pro-trans campaign groups held too much sway in Labour, with close links to Sir Keir and the ruling NEC.
‘All those people complain among themselves about me to try and get me taken out,’ she said.
‘They are the ones who also decide on those things.
‘So I am very much isolated. It’s not just a perception. I am very isolated.’
Labour MP Rosie Duffield Voices Disapproval of ITV’s Treatment of Trans Woman in News Report
Ms Duffield has formed a cross-party alliance with Tory MP Miriam Cates to fight on gender issues.
The pair told the Express: ‘Women’s rights must be protected at all costs, and we have united across the political divide to ensure they are not wiped out by stealth because people are too afraid to speak out.
‘This is not a party political issue; it’s about protecting the dignity of women and girls by maintaining single-sex spaces, women’s sports and female-only services, such as refuges and rape crisis centres.
‘For too long, a small group of extremist activists have told women to shut up about this issue.’
They insisted: ‘This is not about being anti-trans; it’s about ensuring one person’s interests do not override another’s.’
Domestic abuse is about control and ability and silencing someone. It can take many shapes. A text. A glance. A threat disguised as a promise. The idea is to operate you, to paralyse you.
I have lived through an abusive connection and have spoken about it in Parliament. I was prompt to making that speech earlier this week — the daily trauma that stimulated it, how hard it was to make and, afterwards, the profuse support of my colleagues. That was the Labour Party I joined.
On Tuesday, when two of those colleagues dealt with that sympathy for aggression and named down women in the Chamber, it felt like a very different Labour Party. I defended the need to protect vulnerable women in single-sex spaces and criticised Scotland’s Gender Reform Bill when Ben Bradshaw yelled his dislike at me. Sitting nearby, Lloyd Russell-Moyle moved puce — perhaps less surprising — and started to mock every woman who talked
of their similar cover. Later, when Miriam Cates, a conventional MP and friend, says of her concerns around safeguarding, he summons her of being a bigot before junction over to the Tory side of the Chamber to sit on the side pew very close to her, staring as if to intimidate her.
