Dominic Raab called out on BBC News after claiming misogyny applies to men as well as women

Dominic Raab faced an awkward encounter during a live TV interview this morning when he was called out for suggesting misogyny applies to both men and women.

Speaking on BBC Breakfast, the Justice Secretary said: “Misogyny is absolutely wrong, whether it’s a man against a woman, or a woman against a man.”

But BBC host Sally Nugent interjected and read out the definition of misogyny: “The dictionary definition of misogyny is hatred against, directed towards, women.”

Later on in the programme, she offered Mr Raab the opportunity to clarify what he meant, reading back his comments and asking: “Is that what you meant to say?.”

The Justice Secretary then continued to restate Boris Johnson’s position that misogyny should not be made a hate crime and did not address his earlier remark.

“What I meant is if we are talking about things below the level of public order offences of harassment, intimidation, which are rightly criminalised,” he said.

“If we are talking about effectively insults with a sexist basis I don’t think that criminalising those sorts of things will deal with the problem that we have got at the heart of the Sarah Everard case, which is a question partly around the police but also the broader question and the fear women face that their cases don’t get to court and don’t end up with a conviction.

“And therefore just criminalising insulting language even if it’s misogynistic doesn’t deal with the intimidation and the violence and the much higher level of offence and damage and harm that we really ought to be laser light focused in on.”

Misogyny is defined as the “feeling of hating women, or the belief that men are much better than women” by the Cambridge Dictionary. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as “hatred of, aversion to, or prejudice against women”.

The BBC host then read-out what the dictionary definition of misogyny is, which prompted a brief pause in the interview before Mr Raab continued to double down on the message misogyny should not be made a hate crime.

He did not ackowledge that he earlier referred to misogyny as relating to both men and women.

The Justice Secretary made the comments when discussing the new inquiry into how a Metropolitan Police officer was able to abduct and murder Sarah Everard, as announced by Home Secretary Priti Patel yesterday.

The probe will look at how Wayne Couzens was able to work in the police despite previous allegations about sexual misconduct, and then consider wider issues around the culture of the Met and other forces.