Holyrood has found itself at the centre of a furious woman’s rights row because bosses removed the ability to view MSPs by gender after they logged a biological man as female.

Previously, Members of the Scottish Parliament could be searched by their sex on the official website, something campaigners said helped track progress towards equal representation.

But Holyrood bosses have sparked a major row after removing the feature following complaints that transgender MSPs were recorded as their desired sex rather than their biological one.

Susan Smith, of campaign group For Women Scotland, said: ‘Women’s representation must be visible. Women count in society and in politics and the only way to measure progress is to count the number of women elected.

‘It will be impossible to gauge if women are properly represented if robust data is not collected and available.

‘Once again, it seems, women are only allowed visibility if they cave to the demands of trans identified men who want to be included in the cohort.’

Before the election, elected members could be searched by the two genders – male and female.

But after Scottish Greens Iris Duane, who identifies as a woman but is biologically male, and the party’s non-binary ‘transgender Tamil immigrant’ Q Manivannan were elected on May 7, the list was expanded to include a ‘non-binary’ option.

While the latter was featured under the new option, Glasgow list MSP Duane was listed in the female category.

Campaigners said this fell foul of the landmark Supreme Court ruling which stated that under the Equality Act sex is down to biology and not the whims of self-identification or gender certification.

And For Women Scotland, who secured that courtroom victory against the Scottish Government, warned the Holyrood system skewed the statistics for how many men and women had been elected as MSPs.

But on Monday, the campaign group found that the search function had been removed from the Parliament’s website.

It means constituents can no longer search how many women - or men - have been elected to this Parliament.

However, the categories have also been scrapped from previous sessions.

Policy analysis group Murray Blackburn Mackenzie warned the decision ‘obscures female representation’.

Dr Kath Murray said: ‘There is no conceivable reason as to why the Parliament should have stopped presenting data on MSPs by sex, nor any coherent reason as to why it needs revising.

‘The removal of this data not only obscures female representation within the Parliament but raises serious questions about what appears to be eleventh-hour decision-making behind closed doors.’

And MSP Rachel Hamilton, deputy leader of the Scottish Conservatives, said: ‘It’s completely unacceptable that the recording of biological women has vanished from Holyrood’s website.

‘Women are rightly questioning whether the Scottish Parliament is correctly following the law as set out in the Equality Act and a clear ruling from the Supreme Court last year.’

While Holyrood has removed the option to search by gender, constituents wanting to do so for Westminster are able to.

The UK Parliament allows public to view a list of all elected representatives or to choose just to view female or male MPs.

There is no non-binary option.

A Scottish Parliament spokesman said: ‘As part of the Inclusive Parliament Review, our systems and processes are currently under review.

‘The online filter function on our website is a legacy system and we have taken steps to remove it.

‘The review will also consider what personal information on members we need to publish and in what format.’