I welcome the debate and am pleased to have signed the well-worded motion. I will concentrate briefly on three themes, the first of which is the safety of women and girls. The United Nations special rapporteur has already been quoted, but I add to Tess White’s comments that female athletes are also more vulnerable to sustaining serious physical injuries when female-only sports spaces are open to men. We know that male puberty develops significant physical advantage. Put simply, male bodies are bigger, faster and stronger than female bodies. That advantage is not removed if testosterone is lessened over a short timeframe, such as 12 months.

The physical differences between men and women are easiest to demonstrate by comparing performance levels in athletics. We have two former 400m runners in the Parliament, most notably former Olympian athlete Brian Whittle, but also cabinet secretary Neil Gray. In their event, we find that elite and club-level men run 400m approximately on average five seconds faster than women—that is a very considerable difference, although I suspect that both Brian Whittle and Neil Gray would beat me by a lot more than five seconds. Thankfully, World Athletics is now studying the issue, but multiple other bodies will also need to recognise that that performance difference is true for all sports where physical attributes are significant.

My second theme is fairness. It is ironic that male sport has long recognised that fair competition can work only if there is differentiation between age, weight and other factors. I have no experience of sport at an elite level, but I have considerable experience of giving up many hours to hone my skills in music. I can only begin to fathom the anger, disappointment and distress that many female athletes feel about being asked to compete against men who identify as women. Fair competition is fundamental in sport. It allows the best to be their best, and if the basis is changed where women cannot be their best, there will be no women’s sport.

Despite the motion being well written, there is one part with which I disagree—where it refers to “inclusion policies”. I do not think that it is correct to characterise what has been happening as an inclusion policy. It is at least as much an exclusion policy, denying many female athletes in a wide range of sports the opportunity to compete.

My final theme is the wider cultural problem that has been created in recent years by the policy capture of the debate around sex and gender, which has already been alluded to. It has even got to the stage where some elected politicians feel that they cannot openly debate the issues. Cultural oppression needs challenging, and I am therefore delighted that the motion recognises that.

Coming to a close, I think that the fundamental issue is that sex is a far more meaningful and scientifically exact determinant of who should be allowed to take part in women’s sport than gender. If the situation is not challenged, the consequence will be that participation in sports will become even less attractive to women, which will undermine much of the good work of recent years. When biological men are given access to female-only changing rooms and take part in women’s team sports, they violate the rights of women, remove fairness and pose an increased risk of harm. Is it not about time that we whole-heartedly and unequivocally support the rights of women? Surely that is what a truly progressive Parliament should do.