LGBT History Month

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dame Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered LGBT history month.

It gives me great pleasure to open this debate. The beginning of this year’s LGBT history month gives the House a timely opportunity to consider the progress that we have made as a country in guaranteeing respect and freedom from discrimination for our diverse communities. It also gives us a chance to look at the progress, and sometimes the lack of progress, in the rest of the world. The all-party parliamentary group on global LGBT rights, which I co-chair with the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn), who is in his place, is especially concerned with that global aspect.

Here in the UK, we have come a long way from the dark days when homosexuality was criminalised and LGBT people were forced by the prejudice in society to live their lives underground, constantly in fear of being discovered, mocked, blackmailed and punished. It gives me great pride to stand in what has been described as the gayest Parliament in the world—perhaps that is the law of unintended consequences. If I had been told on my first day in this place more than 30 years ago that we would have achieved this much progress during my membership of the House, I would scarcely have believed it, although I would have been very happy.

I am particularly proud of the role that the last Labour Government played in ridding the statute book of discriminatory anti-LGBT legislation. We did that not only in the area of outdated sexual offences, but in the workplace and in equal access to the provision of goods and services across our society. The battle to repeal the odious and harmful section 28 was particularly hard fought, but its removal was an essential requisite if we were to begin to rebuild the safety and wellbeing of LGBT+ pupils in our schools, which had been destroyed by that piece of prejudice masquerading as legislation.

This morning, it gave me great pleasure to do an interview about those doughty abseiling lesbians who dropped themselves into the House of Lords 35 years ago today. They waited until the Lords had voted to include section 28 in the Bill; they did allow the debate to go on before they made their protest. They smuggled in a washing line from Clapham market under one of their donkey jackets. People like that who fight for LGBT rights when they are under the most attack are our heroines in the liberation movement.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for her personal role in many of those struggles over so many years. We all stand on the shoulders of that today, but does she share my deep concern that, despite all that fantastic progress, there is a reversion in a number of areas? There is currently a petition before this House suggesting we should go back to the dark days of section 28, we see daily attacks on the trans and non-binary community, and in last year’s figures we saw the sharpest rise in hate crime against people on the basis of their gender identity and sexuality.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I thank my hon. Friend. I am not sure about him standing on my shoulders; I am not sure I could quite cope with that, but I understand absolutely the points he made and, unlike my response to them, they are very serious. They are a serious cause for concern and should concern everybody in this House.

Returning to the transformative work of the last Labour Government in this era, I recall that we needed to invoke the Parliament Act, no less, to equalise the age of consent in the face of massively ferocious opposition and ongoing vetoes from the House of Lords. This was the heavy lifting and it was done because it was the right thing to do. These progressive gains have made our society a better and more supportive place for everyone, and they finally allowed LGBT+ people to be respected and included and to enjoy equal rights before the law.

I see the effect of these gains especially in the increased visibility of LGBT+ people and their willingness to live their authentic lives in the open at last.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the real gains from being able to teach about LGBT people in schools is that young people—when I say “young” I probably mean those under 35 or under 40—in this country have a very low rate of problems with LGB and T people and they find many of the debates we are currently having on the roll-back completely bemusing, because for them it is just normal to have diversity in sexuality and gender?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

It is almost like my hon. Friend can read my mind—which is a slightly worrying prospect—because I am going to come on to make precisely that observation.

These gains have led to the increased visibility of LGBT people and confidence among our community for them to live their lives as they wish, in the open. I also see it in the recent census returns, which show an increased propensity of young people to define themselves as LGBT+ without the stigma that that label would have presented in the past. There are those who regard this as a bad thing and call it a “social contagion,” but I regard it as a welcome freeing of our society from oppressive norms which imprisoned people and narrowed their lives, depriving them of the chance to flourish and live their lives more truthfully.

None of this was easily accomplished. None of it happened automatically as if there was always going to be an inevitable progression from less enlightening times to a more enlightened present day. This progress was not inevitable. It had to be campaigned for; it had to be fought for; it had to be won. And it was won, often in the teeth of fierce opposition from the red-top tabloids and some in the Conservative party who put section 28 on the statute book and blighted the lives of generations of children—although I am glad to see that there has been progress there too, and I genuinely welcome Conservative Members to the ongoing fight to maintain and strengthen the gains we have made, because there is no doubt that there is a backlash, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) pointed out, and a threat that we may go backwards here and in the rest of the world.

In the UK, we are approaching the 20th anniversary of the repeal of section 28, the 10th anniversary of the equal marriage Act and, incidentally, the 25th anniversary of my own coming out, but there are still things on our immediate to-do list. First, the Government must fulfil their pledge to legislate for a comprehensive ban on conversion therapy. That must include all LGBT+ people and not be rendered ineffective by either a religious or a consent loophole. For let us be in no doubt: conversion therapy is torture, it is inherently abusive and damaging, and five years after pledging action it is past time for this Government to act. I hope we can hear from the Minister in his response some indication of precisely how and when the Government will do that. I note the recent announcement of a draft Bill, which is welcome, but as yet there is no detail on when it might be enacted, or what it will actually consist of. As the delay lengthens, vulnerable LGBT+ people are left at risk of this unacceptable abuse.

Secondly, the Government should be tackling the rising tide of anti-LGBT+ hate crime. Currently in the UK, the atmosphere is becoming increasingly hostile, with a 42% increase in reported hate crime targeting sexual orientation and a 56% increase in the targeting of transgender people. Some of this is associated with the backlash I mentioned earlier, to which I will return. Some of it, I am sad to say, has been provoked deliberately by the disgraceful targeting and problematising of transgendered people by some members of the Government and their enablers in the press.

We are currently in the middle of a full-blown hysteria which targets transgender people using many of the tropes and smears which those of us who lived through the ’80s remember only too well being used against gay men and lesbians. Trans people, especially trans women, are disgracefully being portrayed as automatically predatory, inherently dangerous to women and children and somehow responsible for all the violence against women which plagues our society. That is an offensive caricature which does not bear relation to the truth.

The Prime Minister spent his leadership election campaign pledging to save, and I quote him, “our women” from the supposed threat of trans people, and we currently have an Equalities Minister—not the Minister opposite, the right hon. Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew), I hasten to add—who feels able to use the term trans women and predator in the same sentence, as if the two were somehow inherently the same. Although she appears to have lost the battle, it was reported that she wished to exclude trans people completely from the proposed ban on conversion therapy even though they are more likely than anyone else to be subjected to it.

For the record, I believe that the cause of equal rights best advances when the interests of all those who have suffered discrimination in the past advance. We advance together. There is no contradiction between LGBT+ rights and women’s rights that is not adequately covered in the Equality Act 2010. Trans rights which grant them respect and dignity are not a threat to anyone, and I say that as a lifelong feminist and a lesbian.

It is obvious that we are now in the midst of a well-organised global backlash against LGBT+ rights. It is well-funded, ferocious and potentially deadly for LGBT+ people. Its adherents range across the globe, from President Putin to Steve Bannon, from Viktor Orbán to ex-President Trump. Its aim is to reverse progress and, sadly, our own country is by no means immune to these global issues. The Government’s announcement of a review of those countries whose gender recognition certificates they will recognise is ominous, with rumours circulating that the Government are seeking to delist as many as 18 countries whose gender recognition certificates we currently accept. That is so that they can justify their use of section 35 of the Scotland Act 1998 to strike down the recently passed Scottish law on gender recognition. Surely the best way forward would be to have, not that confrontation, but a sensible discussion to find a way through. I urge the Government to reconsider their confrontational stance. I hope the rumours of delisting are not true and that the Minister can reassure us on that point, because such a move would take away existing rights.

Many countries are at risk of going backwards on LGBT+ rights. Russia legislated for a modern version of section 28 and then extended its so-called anti-LGBT+ propaganda laws across society. That follows the vicious persecution of LGBT+ people in Chechnya; legislation has been passed in Hungary, with so-called LGBT-free zones appearing across the country, and anti-LGBT law is also being passed in Ghana, accompanied by open persecution of LGBT+ people.

On that point, I wonder if the Minister might be able in his response to scotch persistent rumours that the Government are in the middle of trying to negotiate a Rwanda-style deal with Ghana. The implications of that for LGBT+ asylum seekers are too horrendous to contemplate, so I hope the Minister will be able to put all our minds at ease that that is not currently on the Government’s agenda.

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

I am very concerned to hear what the hon. Lady has just said; I had not heard that rumour, but many of us are already expressing grave concerns about Rwanda’s record on LGBT rights. Does she agree that this House and the Government in particular would do well to focus more on the terrible abuses of LGBT rights abroad, particularly where people’s lives are at risk in other countries?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I agree with the hon. and learned Lady about the work that the Government should be doing abroad. To be fair to the Government, they do use and are using diplomatic channels, particularly to try to further decriminalisation in those countries that still criminalise LGBT relationships. While I have to give the Minister 10 out of 10 for his tie at the Qatar world cup, I can give only five out of 10 for his Government as a whole for their work across the world, simply because there are such contradictions between doing good, progressive things in some areas and then contemplating really not very progressive things at all in others. I hope that he will be able to reassure us that sending asylum seekers to Ghana is not on his Government’s to-do list.

No fewer than 300 anti-LGBT+ laws have been introduced by the Republicans in the USA, attempting to create a new era of repression that includes, significantly, the rolling back of women’s abortion rights and the overturning of Roe v. Wade. As I have said, in the fight for equality, we advance together or not at all. If we start losing LGBT+ rights, women’s rights will not be far behind.

After all those warnings, I wish to end on a positive note. There has been an increase in nations decriminalising LGBT+ relationships, and equal marriage legislation has progressed across the world, which means 33 countries have such laws, covering 1.3 billion people. I am already taken, Madam Deputy Speaker, but 1.3 billion people is quite a big pool to fish in.

[Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Are you telling her that?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

No, I certainly am not—I am making a general observation, as my hon. Friend knows.

There is progress in the world, but there is also regression. It is up to us all to put our collective shoulder to the wheel in this House and push our country and the world towards progress and liberation.

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[Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the honourable, cheeky wee monkey—the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn). I should point out for the record that I am not on Grindr, but I note that he basically admits that he is, because otherwise how would he be able to look at anybody else’s Grindr account?

I will focus primarily on history, for a very important reason that I think will become clear. On 25 September 1810, six men who had been convicted of what was called an unnatural crime were put in a cart at the Old Bailey and taken to the Haymarket, where they were to be put in the pillory. Some 30,000 to 40,000 people turned up to line the streets to watch them being pilloried. When they got there, they were assailed with mud, dead cats, rotten eggs, potatoes and buckets filled with blood, offal and dung. On the way back, they were chained in the caravan in such a manner that they could not lie down in the cart and could only hide and shelter their heads from the storm by stooping. One of them was whipped repeatedly.

This is what happened on 25 February 1823—200 years ago:

“Yesterday morning, at an early hour, considerable numbers of spectators assembled before the Debtors’ door at Newgate, to witness the execution of William North, convicted in September Sessions of an unnatural crime. The wretched culprit was 54 years of age, and had a wife living. On his trial, he appeared a fine, stout, robust man, and strongly denied his guilt. On his being brought before the Sheriffs yesterday morning, he appeared to have grown at least ten years older… His body had wasted to the mere anatomy of a man, his cheeks had sunk, his eyes had become hollow, and such was his weakness, that he could scarcely stand without support… At five minutes past eight yesterday morning he was pinioned by the executioner in the press room, in the presence of the sheriffs and officers of the gaol. As St. Sepulchre’s church clock struck eight, the culprit, carrying the rope, attended by the executioner, and clergyman, moved in procession with the sheriffs…on to the scaffold. On arriving at the third station, the prison bell tolled, and Dr. Cotton”—

the priest—

“commenced at the same moment reading the funeral service, ‘I am the resurrection and the life,’ of which the wretched man seemed to be totally regardless. On his being assisted up the steps of the scaffold, reason returned; he became aware of the dreadful death to which he was about to be consigned; his looks of terror were frightful; his expression of horror, when the rope was being placed round his neck, made every spectator shudder. It was one of the most trying scenes to the clergymen they ever witnessed—never appeared a man so unprepared, so unresigned to his fate. The signal being given the drop fell and the criminal expired in less than a minute. He never struggled after he fell. The body hung an hour, and was then cut down for internment.”

We have had horrible laws in this country. Sometimes, when we tell children in school this, they find it completely incomprehensible. The hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington referred to the 1533 Buggery Act of Henry VIII, which classified sodomy as an illegal act between man and woman, man and man, or man and beast.

Formal court indictments in this country for many centuries used the same formula:

“The detestable and abominable crime, among Christians not to be named, called buggery”.

Often the court records did not even use the full word “buggery”; they just put “bgry” or “sdmy”, because it was not to be named. When Sir Robert Peel introduced the Offences Against the Person Bill in the Commons in 1828, which included a clause aimed at making it easier to obtain sodomy convictions, he did not even say the phrase

“the crime, amongst Christians not to be named”.

He said it in Latin instead, such was the degree of shame.

We were still executing people for sodomy up until 1835—James Pratt and John Smith were the last two—and the death sentence was still pronounced on men, right up until 1861. Then it was penal servitude for life. When it was said in the House of Lords at one point that that meant being sent off to Tasmania or Botany Bay, somebody pointed out that it was perhaps a bit counterproductive to send lots of homosexual men to a single sex colony on the other side of the world.

Once we got rid of the death penalty, we added other laws on importuning under the Vagrancy Acts, which were introduced after the Napoleonic wars. Anybody caught was called a rogue or a vagabond. Repeat offenders were known as incorrigible rogues—which is how I often think of myself. The 1898 Act added another clause, which was importuning for immoral purposes, under which hundreds and hundreds of men were sentenced right up until 2003. Two men were sentenced to nine months of hard labour and 15 strokes—corporal punishment was a part of it too—in May 1912. The appeal court at that time pronounced

“if ever there was a case for corporal punishment it is for that particular class of offence of which these applicants have been guilty—soliciting men for immoral purposes”.

All they had done was hold hands.

And of course gross indecency was introduced by Henry Labouchère at the very last minute in an amendment in a late-night debate in 1885, under a catch-all clause that applied to events not only in public but in private. It was later interpreted as meaning as an attempt to commit any of those things as well, which meant, for instance, that during the second world war Sir Paul Latham, a Member of Parliament, tried to take his own life when letters of his were found that suggested he wanted to have an affair with another man.

In 1926, a 61-year-old vicar—I am 61 and I used to be a vicar—was sentenced to six months on eight cases of gross indecency, even though the judge recognised that the time might come when such cases would be treated medically. Of course, that is what happened next: it was a sin and then it became a medical condition. If there is one thing I feel more strongly about than any other in the trans debate we are having at the moment, it is that I do not think we should be treating it as a medical condition. I do not think that the allocation of a certificate should be done by a medical practitioner, because that makes people leap through a medical hoop and implies that what is intrinsic to them is somehow a physical disorder. We can, of course, count many instances of versions of so-called therapy that were inflicted on people —medical castration, actual castration and all sorts of different therapies—of whom Alan Turing is the perhaps most renowned instance.

Homosexuality remains a criminal offence in 34 out of 54 countries in the Commonwealth—a pretty bad record for British exports—in large measure because we exported our strict laws around our empire. Homosexual acts still carry the death penalty in Iran, Brunei, Mauritania, Nigeria, Qatar—several of us have been to Qatar and told them this; I think it came as a bit of a shock to those running the World cup when it turned out that more than half the British delegation was gay—Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Somalia and Sudan. Two men were hanged in a prison in the north-western city of Maragheh in Iran in February 2022 after spending six years on death row. Even in the United States of America, the land of the free, Pastor Dillon Orrs of Stedfast Baptist church in Texas believes that homosexuals

“should be sentenced with death. They should be lined up against the wall and shot in the back of the head”.

I entirely agree with the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington that all the advances we have made today are not something we should take for granted. I have said before in this House that, in the 20th century, the most liberal place in the world for gay men was Berlin from 1928 to 1931. By 1936, gay men were being carted off to concentration camps, and we do not even know how many lost their lives under the Nazis. It is one of the reasons I have always felt a very strong alliance with Jewish people, who suffered that same appalling holocaust.

The new French penal code of 1791—in the 18th century, not the 19th—did not even mention sodomy, and nor did Napoleon’s version in 1804, which rapidly spread around the globe. Yet we did not achieve that in this country for nearly two centuries. Most other nations never executed people for homosexuality at all, and those that did abolished the practice long before the 19th century—Germany’s last case was in 1537, Spain’s in 1647, Switzerland’s in 1662, Italy’s in 1668 and France’s in 1750. Only the Netherlands kept going until the 19th century and their last execution was of Jillis Bruggeman in 1803. Yet between 1806 and 1835, 440 men were sentenced to death for sodomy in England and 56 of them were hanged. Peru and Paraguay legalised homosexuality fully in 1924, Uruguay in 1934, Iceland in 1940, Switzerland in 1942, Greece in 1951, Thailand in 1956 and even Hungary in 1961. We only did it partially in 1967. It did not really come until the Labour Government in 1997 that we fully legalised homosexuality and introduced an equal age of consent.

The gays have phenomenal powers, Madam Deputy Speaker. We have been blamed for all sorts of things. In 1978, the drought in California was blamed on that state’s liberal attitudes towards LGBT people. After 11 September 2001, Jerry Falwell said:

“I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle…all of them who have tried to secularize America—I point the finger in their face and say, ‘You helped this happen.’”

Hurricane Sandy, which hit the east coast of America in 2012, was described by a US rabbi as a divine justice for the state of New York legalising gay marriage a year earlier.

At the same time, a press release from Pastor Steven Andrew of the USA Christian Church stated:

“God’s love shows it is urgent to repent, because the Bible teaches homosexuals lose their souls and God destroys LGBT societies”.

In the UK, in 2014, the UK Independence party councillor David Silvester said that floods had happened after David Cameron had acted “arrogantly against the Gospel” by legislating for same-sex marriage. And, of course, most recently Patriarch Kirill blamed gay pride marches for the war in Ukraine.

Madam Deputy Speaker, I am sorry this is slightly different from what others may talk about, but I want to talk about the Bible arguments about homosexuality because this is still a very live debate in many communities up and down the country and it worries me. Some people point to Leviticus:

“You must not lie with a man as with a woman; that is an abomination.”

It is true that that is in Leviticus. But other things thought of as abominations are eating shellfish, touching the skin of a dead pig, which would make lots of sports quite difficult, combining fabrics—I’m looking at you, Madam Deputy Speaker—and sowing crops side by side. I do not know if any of us have done that. Many of those things we see very differently today, but there is a bigger point.

First of all, the Bible is a bundle of books that were written by different people at a variety of different times. There have been lots of rows about which books should be in and which books should not be in. Different versions of Christianity have rowed about that. A man told me once that the Bible was written by King James in 1605 and we should all get used to it. Ignorance is a blessing sometimes, I suppose, but the truth is that the Bible is a translation. Often, it is a translation of a translation, and it may be a translation of a translation of a translation. It has to be read very closely. If I were to ask you, Madam Deputy Speaker, how many commandments there are, you would probably say 10. But if I asked you to delineate which the 10 are, you would find it difficult because different versions of Christianity lay them out in different ways. That is one of the reasons why we have a different view about what craven images constitute and why Orthodox churches do not have three-dimensional imagery. For that matter, if I asked you, Madam Deputy Speaker—I know this is not a quiz for you—who were the 12 disciples, you would find it difficult because there are different versions of the names of the 12 and you would have thought that that was an important thing to get right.

My point here is that the Bible has to be read carefully. We cannot just pick little bits because they fit what we like. We have to read it in its context and then hold that up against the context of today. I do not think the story of Sodom is about homosexuality at all. It is about rape. It is probably also about how you should behave towards foreigners and strangers coming into your community—even if they were angels, so it is obviously a slightly different story.

We obviously do not today sanction selling daughters into slavery, which is a good thing, but Leviticus does. Likewise, we do not sanction slavery at all, yet most of the Bible thinks that slavery is a perfectly acceptable system. Jesus actually said that there are two commandments:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind”,

And:

“You shall love your neighbour as yourself.”

Some might think, “Oh, neighbour just means my next-door neighbour,” but of course that is not what it means, because Jesus tells whole parables, including that of the good Samaritan, about how your neighbour is all sorts of people you might not think of as your neighbour. Incidentally, the point about the good Samaritan is not that he is rich, but that he is a good neighbour to someone who is not actually his neighbour.

All of that is to say that I just hope every Christian person who cares about their faith will look again at this question of same-sex love, because if they read the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and the form of solemnisation of matrimony, they will see that three reasons are given for matrimony, namely

“the procreation of children…a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication…the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity.”

Is that not what every single marriage and relationship of love between two people is all about? You cannot do either of the other two things unless you have the third, too. I just hope that every Christian person in the land will think long and hard about where the Church goes in the near future.

We look around the world and we see so many people still living under the conditions of 200 years ago that I referred to at the beginning of my contribution. I hope that one of the things we can give back to the world, having been one of the nations that gave the toughest laws on homosexuality to many other countries, is to be the country that gives hope, liberation and a sense of joy.

If I may, I will just end with RuPaul, because it is always best to end with RuPaul. RuPaul says:

“If you can’t love yourself, how you gonna love somebody else?”,

and it is true. I think one of the things that has become possible for so many gay men, lesbians, trans and non-binary people over the past 30 or 40 years is that they have felt able to love themselves, even though they were brought up to hate themselves. When I was a child, all the teaching at school was, “It’s moral delinquency, a perversion, a medical condition—it’s something to be erased.” “Out, damned spot” was the feeling. So many people tried to overcome it by marrying, because they wanted to inflict it on somebody else, or they crammed themselves into a straitjacket of their own life, which meant that they never managed to have any joy or give joy to other people.

I knew so many priests in the Church of England when I was training who had devoted their lives to the Church. If they went on holiday to Sitges or somewhere like that, they would probably have a fumble somewhere. They might have an occasional lover. They could never bring them into the vicarage or rectory. Then, when they got to 60, they would become terribly, terribly bitter, because they felt they were not able to share their life with somebody else. They were not able to be honest and open. They were not able to know the love and the fullness of life that the Christian faith is meant to be all about. Then, they became quite nasty people sometimes. I just hope that the future will be very different from what we were brought up with. Frankly, there are almost too many of us in this House these days—and yes, it is great.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

Shame!

[Sir Chris Bryant]

There are not enough of you lot! [Laughter.] It is a great joy that things have changed dramatically, but there is still so much more to change.

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[Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)]

I just want to say “Thank you so much” to the Backbench Business Committee, the hon. Members who proposed the debate and all hon. Members on both sides of the House for their speeches on the important issue of LGBTQ+ History Month. It is so important for the visibility that it affords people across our community. For all those who are anxious about who they are, it can be affirming and even life changing to celebrate the history of people like them—people like us—and to see out and proud and politically active people making a difference in the world.

It is a privilege to stand alongside and follow trailblazers, including Members present such as my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Dame Angela Eagle), who is a dear friend of mine. Is she right hon.—did I get it wrong?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

No.

[Olivia Blake]

That is an absolute travesty—we should sort that out.

My hon. Friend has led the way through such tricky times and through such prejudice. She has been a champion and was the visibility that we needed through my childhood and that of many others. That was really courageous. I was seven in 1997. I came out at 14 and went back in the closet. “Gay” was the biggest insult that could be said in the playground, and “lesbo” was used as well. It was not a safe space to come out, so I went back into the closet until my early 20s, when I went to university and had the freedom to be who I truly am.

As a bi woman, it is interesting to see and hear even Members of this House trying to erase my identity on radio programmes such as “Woman’s Hour”, accusing people who happen to be bisexual, who fall in love with someone of the same gender and who happen to have that happiness recognised in a marriage, of cosplaying. I am not cosplaying. I am bisexual. I have loved men, I have loved women and I think that should be celebrated.

This is a debate about love. It is also a debate about hate—they are two sides of the same coin when it comes to the LGBTQ+ community. We will always have to resist, and it is that resistance that allows children, young people, older people and people going into care homes in their 70s to be out and proud. It is a constant battle and, as many have said, we must be vigilant.

We could all do with remembering that it is not just in other countries that people are losing their lives to prejudice, whether through lynching—unfortunately, that happens in some countries—or regressive laws. Society continues to peddle hate, to peddle fear and to tell people, “Hate yourself. Do not love yourself. You are not valid. You are not welcome in our society. You should change and hide yourself to be in our society.”

In 2021, Just Like Us, the LGBT+ young people’s charity, surveyed 2,934 pupils aged 11 to 18. More than 1,000—1,140—pupils identified as LGBT+. It found that 68% of LGBT+ young people had experienced suicidal thoughts, compared with 29% of young people who were not LGBT+. For lesbians, it was 74% and for transgender, 77%. They were most likely to experience suicidal thoughts and feelings. Nearly a third of LGBT young people have self-harmed, compared with only 9% of non-LGBT young people. Of the black LGBT young people surveyed, 89% had experienced suicidal thoughts and feelings, compared with 67% of the wider LGBT+ young people surveyed. Those statistics should absolutely shame us. I think that we can sometimes feel that we have reached equality and that we can be who we want to be, but those statistics paint another picture. That is why it is so important that we can talk about LGBT+ experiences in our schools and colleges.

When I did sex education at school, someone rolled out the VCR—that is showing my age. For kids watching at home, that was a tape that we put in a machine to play a video. We were separated from the boys in our class and put in a hall. Someone had started their period, so it was felt that we needed to know about what being a woman was and what being a woman meant. The video had this poor actress on an escalator. She got on, and the video said, “Being a woman: there are ups”—the woman went up the escalator—“and there are downs”, and she went down the escalator. That sticks with me and is the only thing that I remember about the video, because the rest of it was not relevant to me and my identity. It was very prescriptive. It was all about, “This is what happens to make a baby. There you go—job’s a good’un. Don’t do it before you’re ready”. Obviously there was no mention of condoms, because that would be ridiculous. That was of its time in the ’90s and the early ’00s. Section 28 was still in force and there were whisperings about which teachers might be gay, but they were not able to talk to us about it. They could not say, “Yes, I am, and I am proud of it.” That was really harmful.

People make assumptions about sexuality and what it means. People—even within our community—still see bisexual people as a threat to lesbian or gay areas. We are told, “Pick a side.” We are considered hyper-sexualised, not real and living in a fantasy land. That is absolutely not the truth for every member of every category in LGBTQ.

Some people may say, “Why does that acronym keep on getting bigger and longer? Why is it growing?” I am glad that it is growing, and I hope that in 50 years’ time when openly gay, lesbian, bi, transgender, queer and non-binary people and whoever else stand up here, they can look back, quote our speeches from today and say, “How horrifying that in 2023 politicians were standing up and saying this.” I hope they challenge us and that we continue to develop our understanding, acceptance and tolerance of people.

We need to recognise that, behind every LGBTQ+ person, there is a family. I am pleased that that family is now mostly made up of relatives: the people who have brought that person up, loved them and supported them. However, there is still a family around every LGBTQ+ person, and they might not be people they are related to, because there are still young people who have to flee from prejudice in their own homes. At 16, 17 or 18, they still have to leave home and leave the people who are meant to love and protect them to get to a place of safety and escape persecution and conversion therapy. As has been said, that is torture.

I wonder how the many of us in this House who are parents, aunts, uncles or grandparents of trans children must feel having to tolerate the discussion of how there are failings in the way we love our family members, how we are creating a threat to society and how we are allowing our medically ill loved ones to act in a way they should not. I just think it is absolutely abhorrent. Actually, I say to anyone who is supporting a trans young person—or anyone who is trans themselves, or non-binary, lesbian or gay—“You’re welcome, and please continue to stand in solidarity with the person you love, whether that is through a relationship or as a relative or a friend.”

Love is so, so important—it feeds each of us, and it is as important as water and food to the human condition—and the dehumanising nature of the debates we have seen over recent years has led me to be very concerned about where we are at the moment. We have heard far too often even our children being painted as predators, perverts and somehow a danger to others for just being who they are. However, this debate reminds us that LGBTQ+ people are everywhere, and have been throughout our history, as was eloquently put across by the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn).

The whole idea of being in the closet hinges on the mismatch between someone’s internal emotional life and how they appear to other people, and the mismatch can often be dramatic. Being in the closet is something I have experienced, and it is horrible—not being able to be your true self is really difficult. For some bisexual people, being in a heterosexual relationship is enough for people to say they are not really bisexual—that can be both ways, with people saying either, “They’re actually a lesbian” or “They’re actually straight”—or even that they are appropriating gay culture. It is a denial of their internal emotional life: a “prove it” culture that colludes with the worst kind of homophobia to say, “If you’re not going to be gay in the way we say you should be gay, get back in the closet.” At its worst, it stops many from ever coming out at all. This does not only happen to people in the B category of LGBTQ+. The tension between the internal experience of what and who you are and the way the world expects you to be is rife across the whole spectrum of the Pride progress flag: “Be gay, but not like that; be lesbian, but not like that; be—especially—trans, but not like that”.

I know some people find the word “queer” difficult. It rakes up old or maybe even recent memories of being abused, just as “gay” and “lesbian” were used against us in the playground. I realise the pain and hurt that that word may make people feel, but there is something about it that flips the “but not like that” attitude. Queer culture exists, and we live messy lives, feel messy feelings and express ourselves in numerous and various ways—exciting ways—in great spaces that are the most welcoming I know. For those who use the word, queerness celebrates the way that people’s experiences of themselves do not ever quite fit with the labels and stereotypes. I celebrate that, because stereotypes can be toxic, as we have heard with the risk of suicide for younger LGBTQ+ people.

That is especially so when we look at public policy. Look at the way we treat LGBTQ+ asylum seekers. We changed the law about the evidence that they need to provide to claim asylum for being LGBTQ+ to the satisfaction of the people making judgments on their sexuality, but border officials may have no experience, lived experience, understanding or, for that matter, even training about what being LGBTQ+ is. People have often been hiding their entire life for fear of persecution just for who they are. It could even be that the way they express their sexuality—for example, the language they use to talk about it—is specific to their culture, and is not even recognised in the interview room. Their future wellbeing is held to ransom by the extent to which they conform to the received stereotypes of the interviewer.

The debate on trans rights is similar. Trans people are caught in the crossfire of being expected to conform to gender stereotypes by medical professionals and policy makers, but when they do, they are told that they are just replicating and internalising damaging gendered expectations and are therefore anti-feminist. Non- binary people do not even fit into that framework of understanding, and they are not even acknowledged as existing. Well, I see you: I see non-binary people and I recognise non-binary people. Their experience is absolutely valid and is beautiful. I am so proud that we are getting to a point where we can get outside these boxes.

This approach to the public discussion of LGBTQ+ people must end. Instead, we should respect and take seriously the actual lived experience of all LGBTQ+ people, not dismiss them as illegitimate, appropriationative —that is not a word; well, it is now—or suspicious. That means taking the Government’s consultation on the Gender Recognition Act 2004 seriously, and listening to the people who go through the process of getting a gender recognition certificate. Their testimony is harrowing. They talk about being dehumanised and humiliated for simply trying to get the world to acknowledge their existence and who they are. That process must be transformed, and it needs to be de-medicalised. We need to get rid of the medieval spousal permission rules, of course, but that cannot be all we do. We must end all aspects of the process that reinforce the outdated and old-fashioned expectations of how men and women should behave.

It also means brushing up on the law. The Equality Act 2010 is a beautiful piece of legislation that allows people to stand with pride, dignity, respect and honesty and makes me proud to be a Labour MP. It has been a huge leap forward in fighting discrimination and tackling bigotry, allowing young people now to come out proudly to communities and be accepted for who they are.

The term “gender recognition certificate” appears once in that Act, in a point about getting married. GRCs are not related to how the Act defines a transgender person or what it says about trans people’s access to single-sex services. Today in the UK, we do not need a GRC to access a public toilet, changing room or any other single-sex service, just as we do not need our birth certificate to access them either. It is a red herring to say that we cannot have GRA reform because of the Equality Act. The only way the two are related is that both are about making life better for people who are marginalised and discriminated against. They are a way of recognising as a state that people exist, rather than pushing them back into a Narnia-like wardrobe that will have endless people in it if we continue down this road of trying to deny their existence.

We are not going anywhere as the LGBT+ community. We are proud, we are here and we are staying. For years, we have been told to get back in the closet because we are troublesome, we are perverts, we are a risk to children and we are somehow troublesome to society, rather than just enjoying our lives and loving who we can in a legitimate way. While the history of LGBTQ+ people in the UK shows that we have come a long way, the fact that our existence continues to be challenged within those stereotypes is a shame.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Equalities (Stuart Andrew)]

I thank the hon. Member for Wallasey (Dame Angela Eagle) and my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) for securing this debate and for their really important work with the all-party parliamentary group. It is a real pleasure to close today’s debate: not only has it has been moving—at times very moving—and funny, but it has been the House at its best. ve-line3The tone that all hon. Members have set in their contributions today has been a fitting tribute to an important date in our calendar.

As we have heard, LGBT people have existed throughout history, long before the first Pride march wound its way through the streets of London in 1972. I put on record my thanks to and my admiration for a former Member of this House, Eric Ollerenshaw, who was one of the participants in that Pride march back in those very difficult days.

LGBT people have existed at every level of society in all periods of our long and rich history, but much of that history, including the numerous achievements and experiences of people whom we would today call LGBT, is sadly lost to history. Although, the chat-up lines of bygone days, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington alluded, made me blush for a moment.

On our journey from partial decriminalisation in 1967 to the modern day, we have seen increasing visibility and acceptance of LGBT people. Today, we rightly celebrate their contribution to a modern United Kingdom. Gone are the days, thankfully, when LGBT people had to live secret lives for fear of imprisonment or death, which was no better articulated than by the many examples given by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant).

Today, LGBT people are able to be themselves, whether they are openly serving in our armed forces, working in the NHS as doctors and nurses, teaching in our schools or working in any other workplace. In fact, when I first stood for election to this House, it was noticeable that people were more interested not in the fact I am gay but in the fact that my partner works for Marks & Spencer and I can get a 20% discount.

We should also be proud that this Parliament has the most LGBT parliamentarians, or did until recently, of any democracy in the world. I place on record my thanks to those who made that possible by being open when it was challenging to be so, including Lord Smith of Finsbury. They paved the way for others, like me, to follow.

As we look back, as a community and as a nation, we have much to be proud of. This year marks a decade since the introduction of same-sex marriage in England and Wales, a process since repeated in Scotland and Northern Ireland. It is great that, since then, tens of thousands of LGBT couples have taken the opportunity to stand in front of friends and family to declare their love and commitment to one another, safe in the knowledge that their relationship, their family, is no less recognised or valid than any other.

However, as great as our accomplishments may have been, challenges remain. Harassment, discrimination and violence against LGBT people continue to exist in our society, and the Government and I are clear that everyone should be free to be themselves, without fear of harm. I say that as someone who, some years ago, was knocked unconscious in a queer-bashing episode. The episode itself was hard enough, but it was being locked up at home afterwards that I found really challenging. For me, tackling that sort of prejudice will be a key priority in this role.

That is why we will publish a draft Bill to ban conversion practices, also referred to as conversion therapy. It is important that we end practices that falsely claim to cure or change LGBT people to something that is considered far more preferable. Let me make it perfectly clear that such practices are harmful and do not work. Being LGBT is no less valid or fulfilling a life than any other. We only have to see films such as “Prayers for Bobby”, which gives a true account of what actually happens when people are forced into conversion practices. Rather than changing someone’s innate feelings, such practices leave victims with lasting mental and emotional trauma and have no place in society.

We also know that, sadly, these practices continue across the UK, which is why the Government will publish draft legislation in this parliamentary Session to ban this targeted threat to our LGBT citizens. This ban will include targeted efforts to change someone from being or to being transgender. This Bill will go through pre-legislative scrutiny, and my officials and I look forward to progressing it in the coming months.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

The sympathy of the whole House is with the Minister for his sad and difficult experience of gay bashing. What kind of timetable do the Government envisage for this Bill, because draft legislation can hang around for a very long time? Will he take this opportunity to confirm from the Dispatch Box that the Bill will not have loopholes that allow people to consent to conversion?

[Stuart Andrew]

The allocation of parliamentary time is not within my gift, but I assure the hon. Lady that we are working extremely hard to get this done as quickly as possible. Many of the points that she has raised explain why we will go through pre-legislative scrutiny process.

In the meantime, that is why we funded in October a conversion therapy victim support service, providing expert advice and assistance in a safe and confidential environment. I urge anyone who has been a victim or is undergoing any experience of conversion practices of any kind to get in touch with that service through its website or helpline.

As I touched on a moment ago, too many people sadly experience violence and discrimination because of who they are. In the UK, the police and the courts have considered the aggravating factors when determining sentences, but we know that we must do more. For me, that will also start with education. We cannot deal just with the symptoms—violent acts. We must educate people about the importance of treating everyone with dignity and respect. That is why, since 2020, age-appropriate sex and relationship education in primary and secondary schools across England has quite rightly included LGBT families and relationships. Not only does that reflect the reality of modern society, teaching our young people that families come in many forms; it is also vital for our LGBT youth, so that they know that they are not alone, that they are valued, and that they can lead full, open and happy lives. That will, I hope, reduce many of the awful suicides that the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) quite rightly mentioned.

The hon. Member for Rhondda spoke about faith. I have also talked in this place about faith and my personal battles. Faith is not the preserve of heterosexuals. That is something that I have sometimes had to reconcile myself to, but I have come to the conclusion that he is my God, too.

We have learned a lot along the way, and as global leaders on LGBT rights, it is also incumbent on us to support other countries, as hon. Members have said. That is why at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, the UK announced just under £3 million to support civil society organisations in the Commonwealth to amend discriminatory laws and practices. It is why, since 2018, the UK has invested £11 million in the promotion of such rights across the Commonwealth. And it is why, in 2022, Lord Herbert, the Prime Minister’s special envoy on LGBT rights, was delighted to join Ukrainian LGBT organisations and activists for the joint Warsaw-Kyiv Pride in Poland. We continue to consider how the specific needs of LGBT people are met as part of the humanitarian response to the illegal invasion.

We are also working to encourage British overseas territories that have not put in place arrangements to protect LGBT people to do so. Nine of the overseas territories now have legal recognition and protection for LGBT people, and six have also introduced legislation on civil partnerships or have legalised same-sex marriage. We regularly engage with all the British overseas territories to ensure that their legislation is compliant with their international human rights obligations.

I will touch on health before concluding. We want to ensure that all our citizens, including LGBT people, are healthy and able to reach their full potential. I am pleased to say that the numbers of new cases of mpox—formerly known as monkey pox—have been steadily falling since the end of July. We have seen a negative growth rate in cases indicating mpox, and the UK is now in a declining epidemic. I am assured that the UK Health Security Agency is working closely with partners to increase awareness of the signs and symptoms, and of how people can seek vaccinations, information and help if they have concerns. We have provided more than £200,000 to fund an outreach programme to encourage hard-to-reach demographics to take up their first or second vaccines, and we will announce those bids very soon.

On our ongoing efforts to eradicate HIV and AIDS, I am really proud that we have committed to trying to achieve a target of zero new HIV transmissions and zero AIDS and HIV-related deaths in England by 2030. This is an important fight. I am pleased to see that the milestone ambition of an 80% reduction by 2025 is on track.

[Stuart Andrew]

I am more than happy for my hon. Friend to steal my lines, because it means I have the chance to repeat the message and hammer it home. He is absolutely right: testing is an important part of this, and we are pleased that the opt-out HIV testing has resulted in more diagnoses. I will continue to have those conversations with Department of Health and Social Care colleagues.

While I am on this point, I want to take the opportunity to thank Ian Green, who has stepped down as chief executive of the Terrence Higgins Trust after almost seven years, and to congratulate Richard Angell, who has today been announced as the new CEO. I wish him the very best of luck in the role as he continues the trust’s inspirational work.

Finally, I want to talk about our transgender friends. I am glad that many Members have talked about trying to take the toxicity out of this debate. Mature discussion is how we will get to a compassionate and sensible solution, I am sure. We are taking meaningful action to address many of the problems of the long waiting list. We are doing that by establishing a more modern, flexible care model to support transgender people. We are working to tackle the long waiting lists and are establishing new pilot gender clinics, the first of which was opened in 2021. In addition, we have established four new community-based clinics in Manchester, Cheshire and Merseyside, and London and east of England.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

The Minister is being very generous in giving way.

On the issue of transgender people, could he say something about the Government’s intentions with respect to the delisting of up to 18 countries that issue gender certificates via legal declaration rather than by following a medicalised model? It was announced in a written ministerial statement that the Government have launched a review.

[Stuart Andrew]

I thank the hon. Lady, and I apologise that I forgot to mention this point. The Government will be updating the list of approved countries and territories. That power was part of the original Gender Recognition Act 2004, to ensure that the integrity of the Act was not compromised. The list was last updated in 2011 and needs to be updated again, as a commitment was made to keep the list under review. We are thoroughly researching each overseas system in question at the moment and will announce the countries that will be removed from the list via an affirmative statutory instrument in due course.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

The Minister has just confirmed that there will be a removal of countries that are on the list. Are those the 18 that currently do legal declaration rather than a medicalised model? Are we looking at a huge change that will take away rights from transgender people in this country?

[Stuart Andrew]

As I say, these lists are being looked at carefully at the moment, and none of this will be about retrospective stuff for transgender people in this country.

In conclusion, this debate has been really powerful. It has celebrated the accomplishments and contribution of LGBT people to this country since decriminalisation, which was extraordinary in itself at the time and something about which we should be immensely proud and glad. As Minister for Equalities, it is my privilege to work at building on the achievements of the past and furthering LGBT equality in the future, both at home and abroad.

Of the many commitments that I have outlined that advance LGBT protections and equality to the next stage, the publication of a trans-inclusive Bill to ban conversion practices is key, not only to protect LGBT people from harm, but to prevent efforts to invalidate our existence. I look forward to working with hon. Members on both sides of the House to deliver this landmark legislation for our community, and the many other important commitments that I have outlined. I join the hon. Member for Rhondda in quoting Ru Paul about love, because at the end of the day, that is what this is all about—simply, love.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

It gives me great pleasure to wind up this extremely enjoyable and profound debate about LGBT History Month, which has demonstrated that there is much on which we can agree across the House and that there is much still to be done across the globe and in our society. It has also flagged up a couple of things that I worry about, not least the potential ongoing battles over GRA reform, which I had hoped we could avoid—the delisting issue is definitely a worry. I look forward to working with the Minister to achieve an inclusive and effective ban on conversion therapy sooner rather than later.

I have enjoyed, and hope to continue to enjoy, the work that the all-party parliamentary group is doing to assist those across the globe where LGBT communities still suffer from oppressive laws. We will continue to do all that we can to assist the Government and their diplomatic forces to minimise that. We have had some of the most profound and important speeches that I have heard in a debate. We have had some pretty good jokes and a bit of spicy stuff, which I will not repeat, in case Madam Deputy Speaker worries about it.

At the beginning of LGBT History Month, I leave the thoughts of the House with my predecessor, the first out lesbian Member of the House, Maureen Colquhoun, who was a doughty battler for the rights of lesbians and women. She was a feminist and a campaigner, and she was well ahead of her time in this House in the 1970s. She was fearless, committed and brilliant. We lost her last year, but as she was the first out lesbian MP—she was outed in the columns of the Daily Mail in terrible circumstances; what a surprise—we owe her a great deal. Those of us who are lesbians in this House have followed her trailblazing and we remember her today.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered LGBT history month.

50 Years of Pride in the UK

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)]

As one of the co-chairs of the all-party group on global lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT+) rights, let me begin by wishing my constituents and everyone across the UK a very happy Pride as we approach London Pride this weekend. It is important to recognise how far we have come over the past 50 years, and it is pleasure to follow the excellent opening remarks from the hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley). It is poignant that this debate follows the one on Iran’s nuclear weapons programme, because this shines a light on how far we have come as a country; when there are still countries around the world today where being LGBT+ is punishable by death, we are lucky to live in a country such as the UK that protects our rights in law. Of course that does not mean that there is not still progress to be made and things that need to be done.

I have been incredibly lucky as a young openly gay man growing up in the UK. I was very supported by my family and my school was miles ahead of its time; Carshalton Boys Sports College had a fantastic, inclusive, relationship and sex education curriculum before it was mandatory. I have had nothing but excellent experiences in every workplace I have been in, so I have been one of the lucky ones, but that is not the case for every young person growing up who is LGBT+ in the UK today. That is why Pride still matters to this day and why it is so important to continue shining a light on those issues, because there are still people who think that they may be better off dead than being openly who they are. As long as that is the case, we must continue to celebrate, to be visible and to raise these issues.

[Dame Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

On people who still struggle with their sexual orientation, did the hon. Gentleman happen to see the documentary Dame Kelly Holmes has just broadcast, where she demonstrates with great heartache the problems that were caused in her life by the ban on gay people serving in the military, the misery that that has caused her, despite all her fantastic achievements, and how she is now striving to overcome it? Will he join me in wishing her all the best as she is now out and proud?

[Elliot Colburn]

I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for her intervention and I will absolutely join her in congratulating Dame Kelly Holmes on her bravery. Indeed, sport is one of the areas where we continue to see struggle for the LGBT community. We still see homophobia, biphobia and transphobia; they are very pertinent in sport, which is why it is important to continue to raise those issues.

My first Pride was back in 2012, which coincided with this place deciding on whether two people of the same sex could get married. It was a new experience for me. I did not know anyone else who was going, so I went along on my own, which I do not think I would have the confidence to do now. The experience of my first Pride really struck me and stayed with me. What it highlighted to me was that I have been lucky but only because of the brave people who came before me and gave up so much to fight for the rights that I enjoy today. I am lucky enough to come to this place and say, “I am an openly gay man and I have had a pretty decent life so far.” I thank everyone who came before us.

There is always more to do. That was touched on by the hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East, particularly in relation to conversion practices. I do not want to go over too much of the ground that I know has already been covered. The Minister was present in the debate that we led in Westminster Hall just a few weeks ago. I do not want to repeat all the arguments that were made there. I will just stress that conversion practices are still taking place in the UK today. The need to ban conversion practices is not symbolic; it is needed to protect people from undergoing harmful practices simply because of who they are. That surely cannot be acceptable in 21st century Britain, which is why it is so important to do so and, indeed, to make sure that such a ban is inclusive of gender identity as well.

I pay tribute to colleagues who, sadly, could not make it to today’s debate, but I know would have wanted to if their diaries had allowed. I am thinking in particular of my hon. Friends the Members for Redcar (Jacob Young), for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr Mullan), for Darlington (Peter Gibson), my right hon. Friends the Members for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell), and for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), my hon. Friends the Members for Southport (Damien Moore), for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison) and many others. I am sorry if I have not mentioned all of them. I particularly pay tribute to the bravery of my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Dr Wallis), the first ever openly trans Member of Parliament. I do not want to steal their story away from them; that is for them to tell. But I just wanted to put that on the record.

That leads me very neatly into my next point, which is on the current public discourse on trans issues. Again, the Minister was present in Westminster Hall when we had a debate on the reform of the Gender Recognition Act 2004. I do not intend to go over the specifics of that again, but I completely agree with the hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East about the current public discourse and the toxicity of the debate that has arisen around trans issues in the UK and, indeed, in much of the world at the moment. We have a responsibility to try to take the heat out of that discussion and try to calm things down and actually talk about the real issues—what is actually needed.

Much of the public discourse at the moment is completely nonsensical. It is driven in the most awful way. Again, the hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East—I am embarrassing her by referencing her far too often—hit the nail on the head. Much of what is said about the trans community today could almost be copied and pasted from the text books of history: things that were said about openly gay men, lesbians and bisexual people in the past, particularly around the threat they posed to the safety of women, to the safety of children, and to the rights to practise religion freely. Much of that is completely nonsensical. I really hope that, in this place, we can start setting a better example for the public discourse that we need to have and really take the heat out of it. I think the debate we had in Westminster Hall on reforming the Gender Recognition Act was a good one and got to the heart of some of the issues. Serving with colleagues on the Women and Equalities Committee during our inquiry into the GRA, I was struck, when we were taking evidence both from those in favour of reform and from those opposed to it, by how much agreement there was between the two sides.

Both sides agreed that there needed to be much better healthcare support for trans people in the UK, ranging from mental health support all the way through to more physical interventions. It was agreed that many of the structures that exist in both legislation and institutions do not currently work for the trans community or for anyone else. They agreed that there was a lot of confusion, and that implementation of exemptions within the Equality Act 2012 and the GRA, for example, was confusing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dame Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

It is a real pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn), my co-chair on the all-party parliamentary group on global LGBT+ rights. I look forward to working with him over the coming period to try to ensure that a lot of the legal protections and acceptance that we have seen develop in our own country can be exported to other places around the world so that our LGBT+ friends across the globe can enjoy the same kinds of rights that we are here celebrating today.

We are here to celebrate an incredible journey towards the legal recognition and equal treatment for LGBT+ people that has been achieved in the UK in the past 50 years. This change is progressive and life-affirming, but it did not just happen. It did not just descend as an inevitability because time and history were moving on. It was campaigned for and won in the teeth of the most intense bigotry, ridicule, hostility, violence and intimidation. It has made our society better, safer, stronger and more respectful as a place to live and thrive than it was before. That is a tremendous achievement and it is what, essentially, we are here to celebrate on this 50th anniversary. It was won because LGBT+ people and their allies fought for it because they did not accept the status quo that they were born into and grew up in. They realised it was wrong, they wanted it to change, they had a vision of how it could change, and they went out and campaigned for that change.

But we know that LGBT+ rights are fragile and progress towards equality must never, ever be taken for granted. Look at the horrific attacks on Pride celebrations in Oslo just a few days ago if you think that Pride and LGBT+ people are accepted and respected as we would like to see across the developed world, let alone the rest of the world. Listen to the homophobic rantings of President Putin in Russia or Viktor Orbán in Hungary, scapegoating LGBT+ people for their own political advantage. Consider the Trump-enabler Steve Bannon’s comments as he celebrated Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He said that he supported that attack because the Russians were not “woke” and knew “which bathroom to use”. When one thinks about those phrases and how they are weaponised across different countries, it is possible to discern that there are connections between people who are campaigning to get us back in the closet, to get women back in the kitchen, to get us to know our place, and to turn our society backwards. We have to beware of those connections.

Women in the USA are now experiencing the shocking reality of a bonfire of the rights that they thought were established and permanent with the reversal of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court. In the USA, some of those fundamentalist justices now have their eyes fixed firmly on same-sex marriage, the legality—for goodness’ sake—of same-sex relations, and even the use of contraception. This means that all the progress that we have been celebrating, and perhaps in our more complacent moments thinking could never be reversed, has just been reversed in front of the eyes of half the population of America. We must never forget that those same reactionary forces are lurking here in the UK working to achieve the same goal, often with generous fundamentalist funding from various nefarious organisations.

Before I warn more about backlash and the dangers that progress will be reversed, I want to take this opportunity to celebrate just how far LGBT+ people have come since that first Pride march wended its way from Trafalgar Square to Hyde Park 50 years ago. Unlike most of the people in the Chamber today, I was alive when that was happening, although I was not on the march. That would have been slightly too precocious of me, given that I was born in 1961—you do the maths.

The first Pride was organised by the Gay Liberation Front and attended by 2,000 people, as the hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley) said in her opening remarks. They were spat at, and they faced abuse on the streets for daring not to be ashamed of who they were, because repression and dissemination work best when people internalise the shame that those who want to keep them repressed try to put upon them. That is why the concept of Pride—of being proud and open and out about who you are—is such a powerful one. Again, it is the 50th anniversary of Pride in this country that this debate is celebrating.

That first Pride was a very different occasion from the carnival attended by 1.5 million people when we last had a Pride in London, pre-covid in 2019. I sincerely hope that this weekend’s 50th anniversary will resemble the 2019 carnival, rather than the first one. LGBT+ people have come a long way together with our allies, and we should all be proud of the progress we have achieved. Male homosexuality was only decriminalised by that pioneering Wilson Labour Government in 1967. Until then, jail awaited anyone who tried to be open about their sexual orientation. Many police forces carried out campaigns of entrapment, and gay men were regularly blackmailed, beaten up and prosecuted for being gay. Lesbians were not even mentioned in the law, and though their status was unclear, they too felt that they had to hide away.

When young people today hear about this oppressive history, they can scarcely believe it, so much have we managed to change by working together. That is the nature of the progress that we have achieved. Indeed, I watched Dame Kelly Holmes’s documentary yesterday. She went to see some LGBT Olympian boxers training together, and they did not even realise that when Dame Kelly joined the Army, she could have been dismissed in disgrace for her sexual orientation. They were astonished. This is massive change within only a few generations, and we should all be proud of achieving that.

The march to legal equality had many setbacks, not least the arrival of the odious section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988, which put back the cause of equality for years and caused untold misery for many of the most vulnerable people in our society at the most vulnerable time in their lives. Even now, it leaves a legacy of unaddressed bullying in our schools, which some teachers worry about confronting. The decision of the Thatcher Government to write into the law of the land the ridicule of LGBT+ relationships as “pretended”, and to ban what they called the “promotion of homosexuality”, led directly to the formation of Stonewall in 1988. It was the beginning of a more focused attempt to push for basic human rights to apply to LGBT+ people. Meanwhile, trade unions organised to support LGBT+ people facing discrimination at work and incorporated the fight for equality into their workplace bargaining.

Today is the first day of the TUC LGBT conference, and I wish them luck from this Chamber and send greetings for the work they are doing, but the TUC published a poll of HR professionals today, which demonstrated that one in five of UK workplaces does not have any policies in place to support LGBT staff at work, and only half of managers said they had a policy prohibiting discrimination, bullying and harassment against their LGBT workers in their workplace. Although we have changed the law, we still have much to do to ensure that all employers treat their LGBT+ employees with the respect they deserve and that employees are properly protected from bullying at work.

There are fantastically good examples of great progress, but there are also some places where there has been no progress. We ought to support the TUC and the LGBT TUC, who are doing their best to change this reality in the workplace.

All the work I have mentioned helped drive real change and increased understanding of issues that had remained hidden for too long. The increasing willingness of LGBT+ people to come out brought these matters into the open, and there was a softening attitude to LGBT people among the public. As someone who became a Minister in the 1997 to 2010 Labour Governments, it was clear to me that public opinion on this issue had moved faster than the previous Government’s attitudes.

Throughout the 1980s, hostility to LGBT+ people was used explicitly by the Government in their political propaganda to portray the Labour party as loony lefties—that is the phrase that was always thrown at us. That effort was enthusiastically supported and highlighted by the Tory-supporting red-top tabloids in lurid and bullying headlines, which are still imprinted on my brain today. You know, it worked, Mr Deputy Speaker. I remember vividly canvassing in Battersea for the now Lord Dubs in the 1987 general election, only to have doors shut in my face after being told that Labour only stood for—the House will have to excuse me for using this language, but I think it is important in the context—the blacks and the queers. That is how well the weaponisation of this stuff, which all centred around section 28, worked.

For some of us, the so-called war on woke began at least 40 years ago. It has been waged, often unrelentingly and always irresponsibly, ever since. The hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) talked about wedge issues. He was absolutely right to call that out, because it is an example of the weaponisation of people’s vulnerabilities and personal characteristics to bully them, to other them and to make them feel that they do not belong in our society. It is that which we have to confront.

The fact that public opinion had moved beyond the ossified attitudes of many in the Thatcher and Major Governments created an opportunity for rapid legal reform to drive social progress when we returned to Government. We took that opportunity because we had a huge progressive majority in the House of Commons and public opinion was further ahead than even us in deciding that this change needed to be made. We lifted the ban on LGBT+ people serving in the armed forces—only after a court case, but that was how it was thought best to achieve it; we equalised the age of consent; we repealed section 28; we allowed unmarried couples, including same-sex couples, to adopt; we removed discrimination against LGBT+ people from the sexual offences statutes; and we legislated for civil partnerships, finally allowing same-sex couples to marry and to enjoy the same legal protections that were available in heterosexual marriage.

The House of Lords was then—it is not now—an implacable opponent of this crucial reform agenda. It delayed and opposed progress. It was especially stubborn in its refusal to contemplate the repeal of section 28 and the equalisation of the age of consent. We tried for three years to repeal section 28 and nearly lost three local government Bills in the confrontations we had with the Lords before we succeeded. We managed to achieve the equalisation of the age of consent only by using the Parliament Acts, as the House of Lords simply would not pass it.

All of this was done in the face of huge hostility in the tabloid press, which ran banner headlines about gay mafias running the country and Labour obsessing about gay rights. All we wished to do, as a Government, was to accord equal rights and freedom from discrimination in law to LGBT+ people, whom we wished to see treated as human beings in our society—equal and equally respected. The battle was hard and difficult, but it was worth it because we won.

When I first came into this House, I certainly never imagined that 30 years later, I would be sitting in one of the gayest Parliaments in the world. [Hon. Members: “The gayest.”] It is the gayest Parliament in the world. I often think that, particularly late at night when we are waiting for the votes that never seem to come. The fact that we are here in numbers, and across parties, means that we can work together to preserve the gains made and improve the situation for LGBT+ people in our country and internationally.

I end my contribution to this celebration of 50 years of Pride with a warning. LGBT communities are facing a backlash in the UK. Hate crime against the community is rising disproportionately. According to Galop, the LGBT+ anti-abuse charity, two thirds of us experienced violence or abuse last year, with nearly a third of that consisting of physical violence, and four in 10 trans people have suffered a hate crime this year. Much of that goes unreported in official crime statistics, but it all has a detrimental psychological effect on the individual victims.

The Government started with a positive agenda for LGBT+ rights, but that has now stalled. We look to the Minister to get it going again and ensure that it ends up at the destination that we all hope for, and I know he intends. Perhaps some in the Government are falling victim to that same temptation to pursue a divisive war on woke with a special focus on trans people. I know that he is not in that group of people, and I wish him all power in making his arguments. I hope that he can prevent that happening or getting any worse, because it singles out people who are already marginalised by portraying them as a threat or holding them up to ridicule.

All this official bullying has a familiar ring to it for those who were around in the 1980s, as I was. It is as reprehensible and destructive now as it was then, and it has to be defeated. We learned that the much-delayed yet long-promised ban on conversion therapy will now exclude trans people, and will contain a consent loophole that means it is not a ban at all. I have been a Minister, so I know how pragmatic the Minister will have to be to get the legislation on the statute book. Again, we will work cross-party to make that ban as effective, thorough and applicable across the board as we can. I hope that the Government will relent on the fact that there is currently no place in that ban for trans people. With that battle going on, it is no wonder that the UK has fallen from 1st place to 14th place in the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association Europe’s ranking of gay friendly European countries. I want to see us back in first place.

Sadly, it seems that the Government have chosen to use LGBT people as a useful wedge issue as the general election approaches. I hope that whoever makes those decisions will step back from doing that and think about the damage it does. Those of us who support LGBT people will do everything in our power to make certain that it does not work and does not succeed.

Despite those setbacks, working towards true equality and full human dignity for LGBT people remains an important priority cross-party for all those who wish to live in a fairer and more inclusive society. That is what I will be marching for at the 50th anniversary of Pride, and I expect to see Mr Deputy Speaker—in some T-shirt no doubt—and all other hon. Members present along the way. We hope the weather holds out. We will be marching with pride for what we have achieved, with confidence that there is more to do, and with determination that we will do it.

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[Luke Pollard]

I have been watching the notifications on the Annunciator about who is speaking in that debate, and I really hope that that Chamber is experiencing the same uplifting warmth and generosity that we are in here, but I suspect that it is not. That is why we need to make sure we keep challenging.

Equality campaigns are not a military confrontation. We do not defeat the opposing side through their utter destruction and annihilation. We win an equality campaign by turning the people who oppose us so that they share our beliefs. We do that not with a big stick but with kindness, understanding and listening—but, my word, we will need a lot of kindness, understanding and listening if we are to win those fights. But win them we must, and that is why the culture of comfortable complacency must be challenged.

It is not for young LGBT people in our country to say that they are lucky to be here. It is not that they have been born by accident in a place: they are here and able to be themselves because of the work that was done in the past and that is being done today. This is not just something in our history books. The struggle is not something that is only in the past tense. That is something we must communicate to others as well. Telling our story means explaining where we are now, how we got here and where we are going—and that it matters. We need to recognise that, if we do not tackle that comfortable complacency, the attention will move to another group. It is targeting trans and non-binary people now, but who will be next? Which group will be targeted next?

There has always been hate against LGBTQ+ communities, and not just from those wearing fascist emblems and insignia. We need to recognise that hate turns up now wearing different clothes. It turns up wearing common sense, it is plain English, it is something about chipping away, not taking everyone on at the same time. Those forces on the right and far right of politics, and sometimes those with a perverted sense of religious values, have seen an Achilles heel in our democracy. They have seen the way in which they can roll back our rights by creating division within our alliances, our coalitions and our big families. Hate dressed up as common sense, fearful spectres, stereotypes and division must not pollute those big families, because at the heart of that big LGBT family are love, value and understanding. We must not lose sight of that.

This is not just about those who have a plan to divide us. It is also about those useful idiots who are content with breaking consensus, dividing communities and turning a blind eye to the violence that their actions encourage in order to get one step forward, a tactical gain, a partisan advantage or a few extra votes here or there by creating a wedge issue on which they can squeeze people and headlines that will bash a group so that they can avoid attention elsewhere. In Britain we know these people as those behind the culture wars. Every party has individuals like that within their movements, as the hon. Member for Livingston (Hannah Bardell) said.

We must each of us commit to engage and discuss this. It is hard sometimes, but we must do so to make sure that we are getting there, because as we have seen in America, we should be in no doubt that those who want to take us back have a plan. It is a long-term plan and will take many years for them to achieve it, but there is a plan and a direction of travel. The assumption that things only get better and that those who campaigned do not need to go as hard any more is part of their plan. That comfortable complacency is something they rely on.

We are seeing trans people being attacked in America, and the proponents of those arguments are now coming for a woman’s right to choose what happens to her body. Although we have a different set-up here in the UK, the US Supreme Court’s ruling on Roe v. Wade has the same consequences on this side of the pond: an attack on women’s rights, on bodily autonomy and on an individual’s choice of what happens to them. So totemic is that decision, it is not just American women who will feel the ruling’s consequences. When they come after a woman’s right to choose what happens to her body, who is next? We are already seeing it in Florida with “Don’t Say Gay,” with rainbows being painted over, with the status of LGBT-safe classrooms being removed and with LGBT young people being marginalised by their allies being afraid to say something. It is the return of section 28, and we need to be very conscious of that. Once it happens there, next it will be equal marriage and the other rights that LGBT citizens currently enjoy.

There are songs by Katy Perry and One Direction that are older than my right to marry my boyfriend. Hell, we all probably have spices in our kitchen cabinets that are older than the right to equal marriage in this country. This is a young right, a new right, and we know that young and new rights can sometimes be the easiest to sweep away. Let us commit ourselves not only to clearing out our kitchen cabinets every now and then—

[Dame Angela Eagle]

Get your spice cupboard sorted out.

[Luke Pollard]

Indeed, let us sort out our spice cupboards. We must make sure that we embed these rights, protect them, talk about them, value them and defend them.

I have spoken about the villains, so I will briefly talk about the heroes. These heroes do not wear capes. They are the allies and supporters of the LGBT community who create safe spaces for young gay kids to come out, they are the guys down the pub who have quiet words with their mates when their language gets too tasty, and they are the teachers who create spaces where LGBT bullying is not acceptable and is called out, but who also explain why so that it never happens again. They are not only politicians and celebrities; they are the army of ordinary citizens who know that love is love, that being different is not a crime and that our society is better and stronger when we can all be our authentic selves.

If we are to win and if equality is to triumph, it needs to be visible. Those in the public eye, like me and every Member who has spoken in this debate, need to shake ourselves of any notion of comfortable complacency. We need to amplify the voices of LGBT communities because, for all the pitfalls and perils we currently face, equality should be a one-way street. Things should only get better, but that will happen only if we have the determination to say “no U-turns ahead.” That requires constant campaigning, which is why visibility matters.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I am sure you were watching Glastonbury at the weekend when Olly Alexander, the undefeated king of queer pop, said

“any attack on any human being’s bodily autonomy is literally an attack on all of us. It doesn’t matter who you are, this affects us all.”

Olly is right. Trans, straight, gay, bi, male, female, queer and non-binary—they are all different and all equal. It affects us all. That is why we have to spread the positive message that progressive rights are hard fought for and can be easily lost. Solidarity in fighting for other people’s rights is a key part of protecting our own.

A few weeks ago I spoke in the Westminster Hall debate on the case for banning trans conversion practices, in which I spoke about my love of “Heartstopper.” Since then, I have been inundated with messages from young people telling me their story and what the series means to them. We need to recognise that this “Heartstopper” generation of young people is not just a cultural phenomenon. It is a political force, too.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I thank the Minister for giving way on that point and for his contribution to this debate in general. Given that trans-inclusivity is likely to be carried either in this House or in the House of Lords when the Bill comes in, would the Government consider drafting such a clause so that, if such a decision is made, we can make certain that parliamentary draftspeople have done the appropriate job in what is a difficult drafting area? That would be a very positive thing that the Minister might be able to commit to today.

[Mike Freer]

The hon. Lady is tempting me down a path that I cannot go down. I am sure colleagues are well aware of how amendments get drafted, but the Minister for Women and Equalities and I have made recommendations on how we believe we can get to a more inclusive conversion practices ban, while addressing the concerns that have been raised elsewhere.

On hate crime and policing, we are also working with the Minister for Crime and Policing to ensure that police services are fully aware of all the complexities of addressing the issues of drug and alcohol abuse, and how that may present itself in crime, so that our police forces are entirely sensitive to all the factors that might lead to certain behaviour. We have talked about the issues of survival sex, and I would again link that to the work we will be doing on LGBT homelessness.

The shadow Minister was a little bit harsh about the action plan—that is the name of the game—but I am not going to be bothered about whether I have this document or that box ticked. I am focusing on practical steps to make genuine changes to people’s lives.

On education, £4 million has gone into boosting the anti-bullying campaign, whether that is homophobic bullying, biphobic bullying or transphobic bullying. The whole bullying piece has been funded to a better degree to ensure that schools are well equipped to deal with all the issues that our teachers may have to deal with. We will also ensure that our sex education programme is fully inclusive, and that guidance has been issued.

One problem we face when dealing with these issues is a lack of data. We have made a call for evidence, and we are encouraging partners and the private sector to do more work to get accurate data about the make-up of their workforces, client banks and customers, so that we can base our decisions on real data, rather than assumptions. That is the right thing to do.

We spoke about the armed forces. Many years ago it is true that the Ministry of Defence did not cover itself in glory—that is being polite—but the MOD of today is transformed in terms of the work it is doing to address those historical injustices, by restoring medals, expunging dismissals, and with the work currently being done to consider the wider implications of such treatment. That is a welcome step, and I pay tribute to my colleagues in the MOD. We must also mention the work on looking at historical convictions in civil society. The disregards and pardon schemes are still there, but we must do more to ensure people are aware of that. Too few people are coming forward to look at their previous convictions and see whether we can get them expunged.

I know we were disappointed that we had to cancel the conference, Mr Deputy Speaker, but that does not mean that the work we are doing on the international stage is abated. We continue to spend money, and funds are available to help NGOs to challenge legal discrimination in many countries, especially in the Commonwealth. That is often a powerful way of changing the law. Lord Herbert is leading that work overseas with the full backing of the Foreign Secretary, and both domestically and internationally the Government are working on practical steps to improve the lives of LGBT+ people.

Gender Recognition Act

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Monday 21st February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Dame Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your inestimable chairmanship, Sir George.

I will speak to the actual issue that this petition is about, which is quite narrow and one that I think we ought to all, in our compassionate selves, be in favour of. The issue is how one gets official recognition through the issuing of a gender recognition certificate, which enables trans people to change their birth certificate to the sex that they wish to be—that they regard themselves as—and access certain pension rights without suddenly finding when they have lived their lives in the gender they wish, but do not have a gender certificate, and there are inconsistencies between their birth certificate and their own identity. This is about respect and dignity for trans people’s lives and the decision they have made to switch the gender that they live in.

The hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) made an extremely good speech to open the debate. As he hinted at, the current system is onerous, humiliating and intrusive. It is sometimes impossible for people to interact with it, especially if they transitioned many years ago. Trans people have to get two doctors to agree that they effectively suffer from a mental illness; they then have to demonstrate to a panel, which they do not know and from which there is no feedback, that they have lived in their acquired gender for two years. For two years, they have to collect masses of documents such as bills, which can run into thousands of pages, to prove to the panel making the judgment that they ought to be issued with this certificate. They then have to produce other legal documents, all of which cost money, to make a submission to the panel.

I have talked to trans people who have been refused gender recognition certificates without receiving any feedback from the panel as to why. Trans people have to wait at least two years after they began to live in their acquired gender before applying for the certificate; they then have to collect all those things. They often have to pay doctors, because they cannot get access to those kinds of services on the NHS, much less access to the medical services they need for surgery or hormone replacement therapy, often, without going private. They then do not get any feedback on why they have been refused. That is not the kind of process that any decent, civilised society would put anybody through.

As the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington said in his opening remarks, we have a very narrow issue on gender recognition certificates. There is a reason why between only 1% and 5% of trans people have successfully applied for such certificates: it is simply almost impossible for them to do so while keeping their mental health stable.

[Nadia Whittome]

My hon. Friend is making an extremely powerful speech that is rooted in people’s real life experiences. Does she agree that the GRA needs to be reformed to not only make the process quicker and more straightforward and remove the need for medical reports, but offer legal recognition for non-binary people and those under the age of 18?

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[Dame Angela Eagle]

I strongly agree with my hon. Friend’s observations. When the Gender Recognition Act was passed in 2004, it was groundbreaking, world-leading legislation. It is now very out of date.

The Act makes no mention whatsoever of non-binary people: if someone wants a gender recognition certificate, they have to pick a gender. However, as we are increasingly coming to realise, many people regard themselves as non-binary and do not want to make that binary choice. They do not regard themselves as either a man or a woman in the binary sense that we all grew up with. We need to ensure that we can facilitate their ability to navigate through bureaucracies and to have a presence, dignity and respect in our state that accords with their feelings and views of themselves.

That is all we are talking about. This debate is not about any of the other issues, although I am more than happy to debate them in terms. If people want to compare nasty threats they have received on social media and in other places, I could do a pretty good job. I empathise with anyone that has had to put up with that rubbish. It is not a way to deal with things. I hope we can keep our heads and have a civilised debate here.

I am extremely saddened that, since the Government said they were going to make this modest change in 2018, we have had a hold-up for this length of time. Meanwhile, trans people have been kept on tenterhooks and there have been attacks on trans people. We have seen the othering of trans people, with tropes now appearing about what trans people are—that they are a danger. I remember the same tropes being directed at LGBT people in the 1980s: “you can’t trust them around children,” “they’re weird,” and “they are violent and a threat”. While all that has gone on, the Government have not acted.

I am very disappointed that the Equalities Department has not acted on this and that it finally produced a response, 21 months after the original consultation, that said effectively, “Cut the cost of a certificate that is almost impossible to get from £140 to £5,” and talked about digitalisation, but does absolutely nothing about a process that is humiliating, intrusive, difficult to deal with, and ought to be abandoned.

Is gender recognition a threat to others in our society? I would say no. We have seen the reform of gender recognition certificates and processes throughout the world; after leading in the world, we are now falling far behind due to our failure to reform that process. That is why the Scottish and Welsh Governments want to reform it, and why we should want to reform it: just to make it easier for already vulnerable people who desperately require that kind of official declaration—so that they can have access to pensions, for example.

All we need to do is get on with this modest reform, and we need to do it now. I hope that we will hear from the Government Minister that we will have a much better approach to the reform of the GRA than we have had to date.

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[Dame Angela Eagle]

I thank the Minister for giving way on that point, and I agree with his approach of using kindness. The Government have said that they will not take away the requirement for a diagnosis of gender dysphoria—a mental illness—given by two doctors. How on earth, given what he has said today, can that be a kind process?

[Mike Freer]

I think the hon. Lady jumped to the bottom of the page, because the Government recognise that the reference to “disorder” in the Act is outdated and dehumanising, and it will be removed.

I want to ensure that we remember the people involved. Many Members have talked about the people who are impacted by our debate, and again the conversation has become too toxic. Bizarrely, I have been described as a misogynistic self-hating gay because I support trans rights. The ability to have a rational conversation about some of these issues has passed too many people by. We have a responsibility to ensure that we make our decisions based on fact.

I am sorry that I am digressing, but I do feel quite passionately. I must correct this completely wrong view that a trans woman can be placed in a prison of her choice. That is simply not true. Three years ago, the Ministry of Justice changed the rules, and now a prisoner will be placed in the estate that is most suited to their position—what their status is on the transition journey, their treatment and what their physicality is like. It is not just simply: “Hello, I’m a woman and I’d like to be in a woman’s prison, please.” That simply is not true. It is important not to minimise the concerns that people have about what has happened in the past, but it is equally right that we make sure that we base our arguments on fact.

Draft Trade etc. in Dual-Use items and Firearms etc. (amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2019 General Committees

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gale. The Minister’s answers to the admirably and forensically prepared questions of my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South will clearly be important, but I want to ask something slightly more overarching.

The draft regulations relate to complex but important EU regulations on export controls for all kinds of goods, including firearms and technology, that we would not want in the hands of non-democratic state actors. They will disentangle us from an EU regime of long standing. My hon. Friend asked important questions about how we intend to continue working with our EU partners, despite being disentangled, to ensure that we do not become a conduit for dubious activities as a result of loopholes in our systems.

With reference to the regulation that addresses the UN protocol on ammunition, I assume that the Minister can tell us a little about how his Department deals with the issues in non-EU contexts. I hope he will reassure us that if we are disentangled from the EU’s structures, his Department will have enough people and resources in place to ensure, first, that we have a regime robust enough to guarantee that we do not create loopholes that might attract prospective smugglers, and secondly that the Department can deal with what will undoubtedly be an increased workload in an appropriate way that does not put us at risk.