Ministry of Justice officials warned that talk about 'protecting women' could be transphobic: Thousands of staff received email for ‘transgender awareness week’ containing list of banned terms such as 'gender critical'

Some staff inside the Government have expressed disquiet. An MoJ staff member told The Telegraph: “When I first read the attachment in the email, I could not quite believe it – the worst thing was that I was unable to raise it safely at work for fear of being labelled a transphobe.

“It came across as very aggressive and antagonistic towards anyone who believes in biological reality. I feel upset and powerless.”

A second MoJ source told The Telegraph: “Nonsense like this undermines decent progress on creating a genuinely fair and respectful environment in prisons.”

The list of words also flags “adult human female”, a phrase that it claims “manipulates people into supporting bigotry while creating hostility towards trans people and their allies”.

The document goes on to say “same-sex attracted” is a “coded term refusing to recognise trans women as women and trans men as men” and aims “to cause division among the LGBT+ community, by claiming attraction is solely based on genitalia”.