Pride Month

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Thursday 15th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

I wish to pay my respects and offer my sympathies to Glenda Jackson’s family and friends, as others have done. I think any of us in this place would be proud of her record as an MP, serving her constituents and as a Minister. The fact that she also won two Academy awards and three Emmy awards during a truly illustrious acting career as well is genuinely awe-inspiring. Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, tor enabling me to say that.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate and pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Dame Angela Eagle) and the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) for securing it. I also thank everyone who has contributed to the debate today in such an inspiring way and to those who have shared their personal experiences in particular. I am proud to be surrounded right now by so many trailblazing colleagues who have championed LGBT+ representation in this place and many other places during this Pride month. The speeches we have heard speak to the enormous contribution of the LGBT+ community in Britain that we are here to celebrate. I hope we will all feel joy and inspiration from that contribution at Pride events across the country this month.

Personally, I am really looking forward to being at London Pride again and I was absolutely delighted that Oxford Pride celebrated its 20th birthday this year. It was great to hear from my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) about the history of Brighton Pride and the other amazing Sussex Prides. I was pleased to be at Hastings Pride last year, which was fantastic.

Pride celebrations present an opportunity to reflect on the progress we have made in furthering LGBT+ rights, but we have to be honest and open and say that that progress was incredibly slow. That is why we still celebrate and commemorate those who made it happen. To be the first to stand up and call for change is not easy at the best of times; to do so at a time when LGBT+ people were so demonised and ostracised was much harder.

One of the many awful examples of the way LGBT+ people were treated in the not-too-distant past, as has been mentioned by a number of speakers, is the ban on lesbians, gay men and bi people serving in the armed forces—a ban that endured for decades under Conservative and Labour Governments. Labour lifted the ban in 2000, as a first step towards delivering the justice that those brave servicepeople deserve but, 23 years later, we are looking forward to seeing the publication of the findings of the LGBT veterans independent review.

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

I am sorry that I have not been here for the whole debate, but I caught many of the speeches on the television and enjoyed them all. The independent report was due to be published on 8 June this year, but it is facing a delay. Will my hon. Friend put pressure on the Minister to go back to Government and make sure that the report comes out before the summer recess, so we have a chance to ask questions in this place?

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that important point. I am also grateful to him and many others in the Chamber for the work they have done on that issue, with the amazing organisation Fighting With Pride, which has worked so hard on it. I encourage the Minister to do all he can to ensure that that review is published, because we need to act on it and act urgently. Sadly, that injustice lasted for a long period, so we are talking about some people who are reaching their older years now. They need to see the outcomes of that review. They have been incredibly brave in talking about their experiences and, having heard some of their stories, the manner in which they have responded, despite appalling, traumatic experiences, has been incredible to behold. They need that resolution and support so that they can move forward and have at least a little closure, if not justice, on what happened to them.

The fact that that ban endured for so long reminds us how difficult it was for LGBT+ people. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Gerald Jones) for his reflections on what has changed, in one of many moving speeches we have heard in this debate. He referred to the 1985 vote for a resolution committing to lesbian and gay rights in the Labour party, and I was proud that Labour led the way in delivering a number of moves towards greater LGBT+ equality.

There are many people in this Chamber who pushed for and helped to deliver those changes. My right hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) detailed that record; in the interests of time I will not repeat his word, but I want to be crystal clear in saying when Labour is next in government, as I hope we will be, we will continue to stand up for LGBT+ people and build on that proud history of breaking down barriers for everyone. To any LGBT+ person who is watching this debate I say, “Labour will always have your back.”

It is important to say that because, as so many have reflected, these are worrying times for many LGBT+ people. There have been many reflections on the appalling rise in hate crime. Hate crime motivated by sexual orientation has risen by almost 500% over the past decade; crimes targeting transgender identity are up by over 1,000% and violent offences have increased sixfold across all five strands of hate crime over the same period.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

I need to push a point: when it comes to the Government’s invoking section 35 of the Scotland Act 1998 against the Parliament of Scotland on its Gender Recognition Act, where does the hon. Lady’s Front-Bench team stand?

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am grateful for that intervention. I believe the hon. Member will be well aware of where Labour has stood on these matters, as we always stand on these matters: we believe it is incredibly important that LGBT+ people are not used as a political football in any circumstances. We have long called for a resolution to that issue and for the Scottish and UK Governments to work with each other, but I am afraid that they did not do that. We should have seen that, and above all we should have seen trans people treated fairly during this period. I am afraid it is they who have been let down.

I know that some on the Government side—not the Minister, I am sure—may say that the rise in hate crime is down to better recording of hate crime rather than an increase in crime itself. Although we welcome, of course, improvements in police-recorded hate crime, that does not explain the huge soaring of the levels of hate crime against LGBT+ people and other groups. My party will follow the recommendation made by the Law Commission five years ago to strengthen and equalise the law so that every category of hate crime is treated as an aggravated offence. This is not about redefining what hate crime is, as some have wrongly claimed; it is about fixing a basic inequality in the law so that everyone who falls victim to hate crime is treated equally. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) for her powerful words on that subject. The Government should have made that change years ago, and I hope that the Minister will commit to doing so today.

Labour will also seek to build consensus around modernising the Gender Recognition Act to remove indignities for trans people while upholding the Equality Act, its protected characteristics and its provision for single-sex spaces. We will also appoint an international LGBT+ rights envoy to raise awareness and improve rights across the world—rights on which many countries are, unfortunately, going backwards, as Members have reflected. The hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington rightly spoke about Britain’s influence in that matter. We can do more, however, and I praise the Kaleidoscope Trust for all its work in that area.

We have heard again, perhaps understandably, the claim that this is the gayest Parliament in the world. I know that there are gay, lesbian, bi and trans people in Parliaments right across the world, but sadly they are far too often unable to be public about who they are because of the appalling reprisals that they would suffer.

[Charlotte Nichols]

During a recent visit to Kenya with STOPAIDS, charities over there that support people in the LGBT community—they live in a country where that community is illegal—were really impressed and excited about our being allegedly the gayest Parliament in the world. One thing they said to me that I found quite moving was that, even in the gayest Parliament in the world, we are still going backwards in many places on LGBT rights, so it is important that, while we recognise that achievement, we acknowledge that being the gayest Parliament in the world does not mean that we are putting through the best policies for LGBT people here or globally.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that strong warning against any form of complacency. Many speakers have referred to that during the debate. Sadly, there are areas in which we are going backwards. I have just mentioned the unfortunate increased levels of abuse, including physical abuse, that many LGBT+ people have been experiencing. Sadly, that often also takes place in the workplace. Labour is committed to taking action against that. We will bring in a new deal for working people that will require employers to create and maintain workplaces free from LGBT+ harassment, including by third parties—it often comes from customers and service users.

We need to tackle the issues around LGBT+ healthcare as well. We will ensure that we have one of the biggest expansions of the NHS workforce in history so that everyone, including LGBT+ people, can access the treatment that they need on time. We will heed the advice of experts from the British Medical Association and Mind that conversion practices constitute abuse. We need an inclusive ban of such practices in all their forms for all LGBT people, and of course, we can do that while protecting the provision of legitimate counselling and talking therapies. We need a ban that is laser-targeted at coercive conversion practices, not one that can be assailed by strawman arguments about what does and does not constitute conversion therapy. International best practice shows that that is perfectly possible via well-drafted and precise legislation. Of course, the ban must close loopholes allowing anyone to “consent” to conversion practices, as no one can consent to abuse. I was encouraged by the comments made from the Government Benches on that subject. I would appreciate it if the Minister could give us an update on this issue. It is urgent, and I know that many of the campaigners who have worked on it for many years really want to see progress.

We will always seek to bring people together around these issues, discuss them using evidence and make sure that we respect each other in those debates, rather than ramping up rhetoric and using LGBT+ people as political footballs. Pride Month reminds us that division will get us nowhere and that there is power in coming together to demand action and change. I hope the Minister will agree that we cannot continue to see progress stall on LGBT+ rights in Britain.

I hope we can stand here in Pride Months to come and celebrate LGBT+ people walking safely through our streets, freely going about their lives without fear of harassment, hate crime, conversion practices or other forms of unequal and prejudiced treatment. For too long, progress has been blocked by division and delay, but the British people are fair-minded; they want to see LGBT+ people treated with dignity, equality and respect. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey said in her powerful speech, a diverse society is a strong society.