Lib Dem gender campaigners will try to prevent trans members from taking party positions reserved for women with a warning that allowing them to do breaches equality laws.
Under current internal rules on diversity quotas, at least 40 per cent of roles on federal bodies have to go to people who 'self–identify as men or nonbinary people, and self–identify as women or non–binary people respectively'.
But activists say the rules enshrined in the party constitution mean that biological women could be blocked from places set aside for them by trans women - biological men.
The pressure group Liberal Voice for Women will seek to alter the rules with a vote at the annual conference in Bournemouth on Saturday to ensure that the quotas simply say that at least 40 per cent of positions should be held by 'men' and 'women'.
It has commissioned legal advice suggesting that the current diversity rules are in breach of the 2010 Equalities Act, with a KC saying it needs to 'put its house in order'.
