SHIPLEY MP Philip Davies said men and women should be treated the same when they commit a crime.

He said a crime was the same regardless who committed it and there was no justification for treating people differently based on their sex.

Speaking during a debate in Parliament on International Men's Day, he said: “The focus solely on women and girls is serious.

"To give one example of how dangerous it can be, a serious case review led to Bradford Council and the police apologising for letting down a 14-year-old boy who was groomed by dozens of men.”

He continued to quote Phil Mitchell of the BLAST Project in Bradford as saying: “I think the fact he was a boy was an issue. If the police had got a call that a girl was planning to sleep with an older man then I think officers would have responded with more urgency.”

Mr Davies has said he would prefer International Men’s Day and International Women’s Day scrapped and to allow men and women to happily co-exist without tension or people stirring up issues with their own agendas.

Mr Davies told the Westminster Hall Debate that men were getting a bad press and men too were victims of abuse, rape and crime.

He said: “It is fair to say that I am often pilloried for arguing that men and women should be treated equally.

"I do not see that there is anything particularly controversial in that, but it never ceases to amaze me how often I am accused of being a misogynist, sexist, or some other term of abuse, merely for saying that men and women should be treated equally before the law.

"That is a principle I was brought up with as a child and maintain today.

“The people who hurl abuse at me clearly do not know me, because I am certainly not going to be bullied or intimidated in that way.

“Those who think the sexes should be treated differently in the eyes of the law are the ones who are truly sexist. They are the ones with the problem. "Men and women are different, but that is perfectly compatible with their rightly being treated the same in the eyes of the law.

“I am delighted that other people are finding the courage to raise issues that affect men too.

"I do not think that anything I have ever said should be seen as controversial in a normal world, but somehow saying that men and women should be treated equally seems to be controversial.”