LGBTI Citizens Worldwide

Lord Paddick Excerpts

Thursday 17th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Scriven for securing this very important debate. In considering the treatment of LGBTI citizens worldwide, it is important that we remember our own history. We have been where other countries are now. Therefore, it is possible for other countries to make the same progress that we have. As my noble friend Lady Barker said, it was not long ago that we had legislation similar to that which we are complaining about in other countries, such as Section 28.

I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, not just for his lifelong work on HIV and AIDS, but for his work against prejudice and discrimination of all kinds.

I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Black of Brentwood, for introducing the very important issue of the link between the prevalence of HIV and criminalisation. I hope noble Lords will not mind if I appear somewhat self-indulgent in talking about some of my own experiences, but I think it is important for people to read about others’ experiences to help with the normalisation process.

Nineteen fifty-eight was a notable year. It was the year the Life Peerages Act was passed, and most of us would not be here if it was not for that. It was also the year that my twin brother was born. I am just testing to make sure that noble Lords are awake. It was also the year that the Homosexual Law Reform Society was formed to campaign for the implementation of the Wolfenden report.

While we have to go back to 1835 to find the last people in the UK to be executed for sodomy, when I was born same-sex activity between men was still a criminal offence. In England and Wales, homosexual activity between two men over the age of 21, provided no one else was present, was decriminalised in 1967, so by the time I had my first sexual encounter with another human being in 1979—another male police officer—I was not committing a criminal offence. However, that is only half the story. As the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, said, the problem in Russia is not just that anti-gay legislation was passed by unanimous vote of the Federal Assembly, but that 75% of Russian public opinion is also anti-gay.

My police officer colleague and I were petrified of being found out. He would talk to me only when I was in my room late at night, when there was nobody else around. He would not even look at me if we encountered each other when other police officers were present. Fearing the adverse reaction of my colleagues and the end of any further career progression if I was found out, it took me a while to officially acknowledge to the police service that I was gay—20 years. Because of social pressure, not least from my family, and the honestly-held belief that a relationship with a man was impossible because of the social conditions that prevailed at the time, and wanting a relationship more than anything else, I dated women. I was engaged three times and married Mary in 1983. It was only when work problems became so great that I could not deal with them and with “living a lie”, as some would have it, that I cracked under the pressure and told my wife. Mary said, “If you had told me you were leaving me for another woman I would never have forgiven you, but I realise that you need something I cannot give you”, and she has been amazingly supportive ever since.

The pressure of having to use gender-neutral terms at work to disguise your sexuality when talking about what you and your partner did at the weekend, and being in constant fear of being seen in the wrong part of town or in the wrong bar or club, is draining and inhibiting. In many countries that is what LGBTI people have to put up with today. It is a constant fear of being yourself. Even when I eventually decided to be publicly open about my sexuality, it was not easy. Having debated with a Mail on Sunday columnist at the Oxford Union, and having got on very well with him—at least, so I thought—he subsequently called me in my office at Brixton Police Station, where I was the police commander. “As you know”, he explained, “we keep files on people and I just wanted to check a few things. The first question I have for you is: is it true that you are homosexual?”. A few months later, Mary called. A journalist had tried to doorstep her to ask questions about me. It was only a matter of time before they tracked down one of my disgruntled male ex-partners. A front page and eight inside pages of the Mail on Sunday were filled with a mixture of lies and intimate details of the five years we had lived together—everything from where I bought my suits, what moisturiser I used and what my HIV status was. Eighteen months later, my claim that the newspaper had breached my privacy was settled out of court, although the newspaper claimed it settled because it had libelled me.

The points I make with these anecdotes are that, despite those difficulties, I have had a very easy ride compared with LGBTI citizens in many other countries, and that changing the law, although important, is only half the battle—arguably, the easier half. The other reason is that it is important for people living overseas to know what is happening here and the progress that we have made.

In January 2009, I did something that I never believed I would be able to do. The real significance of what was happening did not really strike me until the judge in the courthouse in Oslo, Norway, said, “We are gathered here to witness the marriage of Brian and Petter”. They conducted the ceremony in English; the Norwegians are very obliging. I married a man but when we got on the plane to fly back to London the next day and landed in England, we were not, in the eyes of the law, married here. Our marriage was recognised as only a civil partnership until last year. We did not feel that our relationship was equal until last year. As the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Finsbury, mentioned, my husband and I are still not legally married in Northern Ireland and same-sex couples cannot marry there, which is unacceptable.

Using the very helpful House of Lords Library Note for this debate, it is easy for my husband and me to avoid going on holiday to the 75 UN member states where same-sex acts are not legal, not least the six that still implement the death penalty for those acts, but LGBTI people who live in those countries invariably cannot avoid being there. Not only can they not give expression to their true feelings but, as the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, said, the law encourages those who wish to violently attack those who differ from them. People are not being allowed to be themselves and their rights under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Articles 2, 5, 7, 9, 12 and 18, are being breached.

Life for me has been difficult because I am gay and, even now in the centre of London, one of the most diverse and liberal cities in the world, I am still being subjected to homophobic abuse. I cannot go into further details because the case is sub judice. This is nothing compared to what LGBTI people in many other countries have to contend with, as my noble friend Lord Scriven so graphically described in recalling what happened at Istanbul Pride. Parts of this country are at least leading by example on equality for LGBTI people. However, what are the Government doing to raise these breaches of human rights against LGBTI people in other parts of the world?

I respectfully suggest that, rather than seeking to restrain the human rights of those in the UK through a UK Bill of Rights and repeatedly refusing to implement judgments of the European Court of Human Rights, this Government should divert their resources into championing the human rights of LGBTI people across the world.