Conversion Therapy Prohibition (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity) Bill [HL]

Baroness Featherstone Excerpts

Friday 9th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Featherstone (LD)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Winston.

If my family, the state or the Church were to insist that I be homosexual, but I am not homosexual, that would be not only ridiculous but clearly detrimental to both my physical and mental well-being. But that is, effectively, what conversion therapy seeks to do in reverse, and what the Bill seeks to stop: practices that work to cure, change or remove an individual’s rights over their own feelings and sense of themselves. An intervention, the purpose of which is to make LGBT people averse to their own natural feelings, is dangerous and cruel.

During the coalition, I was a Home Office Minister and Equalities Minister for two years under Theresa May. During that period, I was both the originator and architect of the same-sex marriage law, and I also produced the first transgender action plan in the United Kingdom. I worked extensively with both the LGB and T communities, as well as the religious communities. I have some issues with some of the religions, which in my view have quite a lot to answer for. I had an article published in the Telegraph in which I wrote, accurately, that the Church did not own marriage. The torrent of emails I received the next day were a salutary example, not of love, charity and hope, but of the hatred and vitriol that the LGBT community bear on a daily basis. All manner of hideous bile against homosexuality rained down on me: how I was undermining marriage and how people would marry dogs, tables, their relatives or multiple human beings, among many other absurd missives. My message in the article about love, acceptance and compassion, and my plea not to polarise the debate, clearly never landed.

The great organised religions of the world went into overdrive. Cardinal Keith O’Brien said on the “Today” programme:

“If marriage can be redefined so that it no longer means a man and a woman but two men or two women, why stop there? Why not allow three men or a woman and two men to constitute a marriage?”


Within a year, he had to resign after allegations of inappropriate sexual activities alleged by three priests and one former priest. There were many leading religious institutions and religious leaders who said the most hideous, vile and unkind things about homosexuality.

I bring this to the Chamber because, although this is a measured debate and my noble friend has introduced it in a measured way, in the secret recesses of our land and other lands conversion therapy can be a hideous process. I received multiple death threats. However, since same-sex marriage came into being, I have to say that the world is still turning—apparently.

I worked very closely with the trans community to produce the first trans action plan ever in this country. At that time—this was 14 years ago—trans was barely heard about. It had not yet become a punchbag as part of the culture wars, and the action plan was largely focused on access to medical care because there was so little in place for that community. I have never met a community so vulnerable and up against what must be one of the hardest situations to find yourself in. It is a community that needs to be supported, not vilified.

Because the changes that may be made during gender transition are so serious, it is right for us to ensure that care is taken, particularly when a child presents as gender dysphoric. There is no legal surgery in this country before the age of 18, but it may be the case that puberty blockers are beneficial for a boy who is definitely trans and who will later become female, so that he does not have to later face the issues of having gone through puberty and having developed the masculine features which later will be so challenging for him in his new identity.

There is a genuine and great need for services to support young people who are expressing gender dysphoria. It is a great shame that the Tavistock clinic failed in its duty—and fail it clearly did. However, the desperate need remains, and the current provisions are nowhere near good enough. Developmental psychotherapists who can work with children who need proper support absolutely must be available. With something as fundamental as your very being, that means sessions every week over whatever period is needed. Such a developmental psychotherapist, or other appropriate care support, is there not to advocate for or against anything but to hold that child safe until they find their own way forward, without bias, prejudice or pre-conceived rights or wrongs, and without the influence of religion, societal norms or anything else—just the best interests of the individual, their well-being and mental health.

I am so glad that my noble friend Lady Burt won the ballot and was able to bring forward this important Bill to stop the hideous and dangerous practice of conversion therapy.

Income Equality and Sustainability

Baroness Featherstone Excerpts

Wednesday 6th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Featherstone (LD)]

My Lords, I hope that everyone now sees that we need to introduce policies that better balance what is good for “me” with what is best for “us”—the aspiration for the common good as opposed to only individual advancement. The cynic in me thinks it will not be a nanosecond before people forget their gratitude to those on the front line—before they vote for a party that offers tax cuts rather than tax rises to pay those in care homes and other front-line jobs a better rate of pay.

It is both the Government and we the people who need to change: we shop on credit, we drink, we numb ourselves by sitting in front of one screen or another. Church attendance is dropping and teachers’ authority is diminishing. We have had the scandal of MPs’ expenses, banks defrauding us, the Catholic Church and paedophiles, and sportspeople cheating. The media feed the frenzy of this downward spiral, cataloguing the cataclysm. Governments lie and cheat. This really has been a decline and fall.

We should be looking at policies to reduce stress and inequality, with less emphasis on status and more on co-operation and friendship. Status is based on pecking order, coercion and privileged access to scarce resources, while friendship is based on a more egalitarian basis of social obligations and reciprocity.

In the grand sweep of policy, there are obviously big picture items—tackling poverty, reducing social exclusion, increasing income equality, cutting crime, building more homes and saving our planet with radical action, individually and with policies. We all—Governments and the people—have a responsibility for behaviour change. This is social liberalism.

Contaminated Blood

Baroness Featherstone Excerpts

Monday 29th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for that very constructive response, and I endorse what he said about the all-party group. The Haemophilia Society has also been very active in this area for many years. I expect the chair to be announced in days rather than weeks; that is how I interpret the “very shortly” commitment that was given in another place.

It will fall to the chairman to determine the terms of reference. Before he does so he will, as the noble Lord suggested, want to consult the affected community on those terms of reference. Once he has done so, and has made a recommendation to the Minister for the Cabinet Office, I anticipate that there will be another Statement to the House setting out the scope of the inquiry. The noble Lord asked a final question about whether the terms of reference will include what happened afterwards, as well as what happened before. As I said, we expect the chair to consult on the terms of reference, and I am sure he will take on board the point that the noble Lord has just made in drawing up the terms of reference that he will submit to the Government.

[Baroness Featherstone (LD)]

My Lords, sadly, I have to declare an interest. Some noble Lords will know that my nephew died; he was a victim of the contaminated blood scandal. Concerns have been voiced over the timing of this inquiry, and I want some assurances from the noble Lord. He mentioned the Haemophilia Society, but I do not know how aware he is of some disquiet and concern among the haemophiliac community about the society. Can he assure me that the Haemophilia Society will have no special status in this? A vast number of victims feel that the Haemophilia Society contributed to the scandal, rather than alleviated it. That does not reflect on the noble Baroness who is now president of the Haemophilia Society. This scandal has gone on for 40 years, but it is still very important that those who are affected do not feel that the Haemophilia Society has the special ear of the chair or the Government. I want also an assurance that the terms of reference will be broad enough to catch the harms that were done, and that the victims will have the ability to input to those terms of reference.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, and I am very sorry to hear that she lost a nephew as a result of this tragic sequence of events. I looked at the Haemophilia Society website earlier today, and I did pick up the controversy that she has just referred to. I think it will be an important, but not exclusive, witness and giver of evidence to the terms of reference, and I am sure that the chair will be aware of the anxieties that the noble Baroness has just referred to. We want to ensure that all those who want to give evidence are able so to do. I hope that the chair will take the advice of many of those who gave evidence that there should be a regional dimension to this inquiry. People should not have to come to London if they want to give evidence.

Intergenerational Fairness in Government Policy

Baroness Featherstone Excerpts

Thursday 26th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Featherstone (LD)]

My Lords, first, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Smith on bringing this important debate to the Floor of this House. It is a pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate, and I too will speak on climate change in due course.

I first came to this House to stand at the Bar to listen to the debate on same-sex marriage, and I believe that, unlike some parts of our population, this House is considerate of the generations to come. In that debate I heard a number of your Lordships say that they were not necessarily totally convinced themselves but, following discussions with their children and grandchildren, who had said that they would never speak to them again if they voted the wrong way, they had changed their mind. It was that consideration for the generations to come and the sort of world that would be created that I noted.

Since coming to this House myself, I have not been able to help but notice that there seems more of an acceptance that remaining in the EU might not be such a bad thing because of the great act of self-harm that leaving may be for future generations, who, in the same way, may not forgive their parents and grandparents for what is to come. Therefore, I think that your Lordships consider intergenerational fairness in a way that the population in general does not.

The well-being of future generations depends on the actions that we take today. Each generation has a responsibility to pass on this earth in at least as good a condition as the one that we inherited from our forebears. There can be no more intergenerational harm than that which will be done by climate change. If we do not hold the rise in temperature to 1.5 degrees, or at the very least to under 2 degrees, future generations will suffer the consequences. It is our duty to hand on to our children their share of the planet’s natural resources and to ensure that our profligate use does not damage their futures. If we do not, future generations will suffer the detrimental effects that they are left to survive, together with the higher costs that will be forced on them by having to adapt to a future where the extremes of weather which we have all seen to date will be as nothing compared to what will come.

Climate change raises serious issues of justice between the present generation and future generations. We will feel the effect in the United Kingdom, of course, but, while we will suffer here, it will be as nothing compared with the ravages that will take hold elsewhere, mostly in the parts of the world where the poorest and most vulnerable live.

When I was a Minister in DfID, I experienced the effects that climate change are already having. I felt the desertification under my feet in Darfur and I saw for myself what too much water in Asia and too little water in Africa can do. It is no use thinking that we will be okay because we are not in the front line of climate change: there will be not only wars over water but, as my noble friend said, flows of migration escaping famine, drought and floods that will make the streams of refugees we have seen fleeing conflict as nothing.

Climate change will make the already stark inequalities in our world much worse than they already are. Not only are the societal impacts clear but the economic consequences of dislocation will be catastrophic. Our natural world will suffer horrendous loss—the loss of existing species, both flora and fauna, and the loss of diversity, which will consequentially mean that future generations do not have options: they will lose the range of options that we currently enjoy in addressing the needs of our own era. So we have a clear duty and responsibility to the future. It is clear that, if we do not take radical action, weather will become more extreme. Coastal areas, even in the United Kingdom, will flood and precipitation patterns will change.

However, we are not powerless in this. We, and the world, can take radical action. The Paris agreement, which has been referred to, saw the world come together and sign up to keeping the rise in temperature to 2 degrees or less. The signing of that agreement was a glorious moment in time: thinking of future generations, accepting responsibility for our own actions and the consequences thereof, and taking real action to turn the tide. But there has been no change of pace since we signed the agreement.

When I came into post as energy and climate change spokesperson, what struck me most was that there was no sense of urgency, but this is urgent. We need to have zero carbon by 2050 to meet our Paris agreement commitment. That is Liberal Democrat policy. We recently published a report, A Vision for Britain: Clean, Green and Carbon Free, in case noble Lords wish to read it. It is possible to get there but, to do so, we have to go further and faster than this country’s current commitment to an 80% reduction in emissions by 2050. We have to aim to reduce greenhouse gases by 80% by 2040, if not earlier.

As I said, to get there, we have to go further and faster, forging ahead on every front. We have to have more investment in renewables and in innovative technology. We definitely have to have carbon capture and storage, otherwise we have no hope of making it. We need a major programme on energy efficiency, and there we should think of future generations, because currently we are just wasting energy, generally allowing it to exit through the roofs of our homes. We need to accelerate the deployment of renewables. We need a new governance structure, a rapid rollout of storage technologies and an integrated electricity systems operator. We have to reduce demand. We have to address aviation and shipping, optimise supply chains, tackle industry, ensure a circular economy, have support for low-carbon heat and low-carbon transport, and afforestation. We also need close co-operation with the EU—I wish.

And what about our peatlands? They are not even counted in our emissions. What about community energy, housing standards, as mentioned earlier today in Questions, and onshore wind? What about heat pumps and tidal lagoons? For goodness’ sake, let us give the go-ahead to Swansea Bay as the first of many tidal lagoons. What about biogas? And what about climate risk in terms of the financial exposure of our great corporations? All that has to be done—that is the scary thing. Every single bit of it has to be done to the max, and it can be done only with political will. If are to deliver on our pledge to future generations, we have a long way to go, but what we are proposing at the moment does not go far enough. However, we owe it to the future. We have been a profligate generation but we are also the generation that can save the future if we act now.