Senior MPs have called on the government to reconsider plans to make it easier for trans people to have their preferred gender legally recognised to ensure that the reforms are not detrimental to women’s rights.

Maria Caulfield, the Conservative party’s former vice-chair for women, said the parliamentary inquiry into transgender rights, which informed the consultation that is due to end on Friday, was “fundamentally flawed” and failed to consider the wider implications of the proposals for women.

The MP for Lewes, who sat on the inquiry, said she was writing to the minister for women and equalities, Penny Mordaunt, to ask her to extend the consultation on the Gender Recognition Act to ensure that women’s voices were heard. Mordaunt’s office declined to comment.

Speaking at a meeting of MPs with women’s rights groups at Portcullis House on Tuesday, Caulfield said the transgender inquiry was focused on the difficulties trans people faced in obtaining legal recognition of their preferred gender and “didn’t really look at the implications for women as a whole. I think that was fundamentally flawed”.

She said MPs should have more time to assess the concerns of women’s groups about the changes, such as how they might affect women-only spaces.

“I very much feel that the female side of the argument hasn’t really had a strong enough voice,” she said. “I don’t want to make legislation if we feel that there’s a group in society who feels that [it] is detrimental to them. I think it’s a fair comment that women’s groups do not feel that they’ve had their voice heard.” Read more via the Guardian