LGBTI Citizens Worldwide

Baroness Barker Excerpts

Thursday 17th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, I too thank my noble friend Lord Scriven for allowing us to talk about this important matter today. I declare my interest as one of the founding vice-presidents of the all-party group—and the only girl, I am sad to say; it is always the way with these things that we girls are in the minority. However, we are among a lot of very supportive men, I have to say.

I have been thinking about this debate all summer. In preparing for it, I arrived at the same point as the noble Lord, Lord Fowler: what do we do? That is why our all-party group was set up. As my noble friend Lord Scriven said, many of us have had the great good fortune to be born in the time and place that we were and live in relative safety. We look around the world and we wonder what to do.

One of the first things that we have to do is congratulate ourselves on what has been achieved over the last 25 years, but not to become cocky and think that life is perfect. It is not; there is much yet to be done. We still have a National Health Service, great though it is, which, by and large, ignores the needs of lesbian and trans women. We have trans children in our schools who are being treated in the most appalling manner by teachers who refuse to look at the good practice of organisations such as Cornwall County Council, the police or other schools, and subject children to unnecessary distress and violence. We have a long way to go.

Perhaps our biggest failure in this country is that we permit our religious organisations to treat LGBT people in ways that would be deemed completely unacceptable if they were to behave that way to anybody else. When countries around the world look at the ways in which our religious organisations can behave towards us, that somewhat undermines our position.

In my preparation over the summer, I went back and read Section 28. When you look at it, you see that all the elements of the repressive legislation that pop up around the world are there: demonise gay people; make out that they are a threat to children; ensure that no public money goes towards them; and couch it all in terms that the general population can see as being protective. It is absolutely right and great that we have the political consensus that we have now achieved, but I want to say to the Government that we got rid of Section 28 because it was a blight on our political and economic life in this country. I think that the present Government, building on the work that was done under the coalition Government, who were pioneering and wonderful, are in a unique position to talk to conservative Governments around the world about why discrimination is wrong politically, economically as well as morally. I hope that this Conservative Government will take on that challenge and I think they should be judged on that basis.

The LGBT community in this country is acutely aware of the extent to which it was important for us to come under the European Convention on Human Rights and to have the Human Rights Act, which was a powerful measure for making sure that our aspirations for equality became a reality.

Let us consider countries across the European Union, and accession countries trying to become members of the European Union and live up to those commonly agreed standards of human rights, and contrast them with Turkey, for example, where there are abuses of LGBT people and cases of honour killings which have never been examined. Look at some of what is going on in places such as Ukraine and Russia. Over the summer, I watched one of the many excellent BBC3 documentaries—I will regret BBC3 going off the air; I think that it is a wonderful channel even though I am not in its demographic. I want to pay tribute to Reggie Yates and his production crew, who made a wonderful series of programmes where they went to Russia. If anybody believes for one moment the utter nonsense spouted by President Putin, I urge them to watch those programmes. It was absolutely chilling to see the extent to which people were harassed.

I say to the Minister that when talking to other people across the world, our willingness to subscribe to common standards in the field of human rights is important. I ask her for an assurance that if the Government go ahead with the establishment of a British charter of human rights, it will be set at a level which is additional to the protections we have enjoyed so far and is not of a lesser standard.

Many people have talked about the way that DfID’s aid programmes are changing—for reasons which we all understand—but one thing I have noticed in my very limited travels around the world is the extent to which organisations, particularly in middle-income countries, are concerned about the work they do with marginalised groups who their own Governments do not wish to support. They are really worried about the disappearance of aid from our Government. I commend to the Minister the work of one organisation, Micro Rainbow International, which works on issues of LGBT and poverty. It has recognised that if you do not have your own economic independence—particularly if you are a lesbian—it is extremely difficult, sometimes dangerous, to try to extract yourself from family or community situations which are oppressive. It has noticed that if gay people, and in particular lesbians, are encouraged to start successful businesses and become employers in their communities, not only are they safe but their standing and status go up. I encourage the Minister, if she has not done so already, to look at some of that organisation’s work and to see whether it would be possible to scale up its work across the world so that we can ensure that people have economic security, which then enables them to have personal and physical security.

Others in this debate have spoken about the work of government and how the Government should go about achieving the objectives which were set out under the previous Government with DfID. I remain open to, but not yet fully convinced about, the need for us to have a special envoy. What I am much more interested in is seeing different departments of government taking LGBT issues into the heart of what they do. I would like to think that when the Government next go on a big trade delegation to some countries we might include some gay businessmen but also some of those international companies which are based here in London and have diversity and inclusion at the very heart of their successful business strategies. That might speak to some of the critics in other countries.

I want to advocate two things. The first is that we listen to very brave people such as Frank Mugisha in Uganda, who lives in daily fear for his life, and that we listen to LGBT people when they tell us that aid conditionality does not work and is dangerous for them. Secondly, we should equip all our embassies and consulates to work to the best standards that we have in some of our embassies and consulates, not only to offer protection to people who face oppression but to give security to the small groups which often work under the most oppressive regimes. The noble Lord, Lord Fowler, and I met an extraordinary young man from Ethiopia who explained that, because of the way in which all internet traffic is monitored in Ethiopia, it is difficult even for people to meet online for the simple purposes of giving health information to one another.

We will have a Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Malta. I ask the Minister what specific messages this Government will be giving at that meeting.

As good as it is to be who we are and to live in our country, let us not kid ourselves that there are not still people who really do not like gay people and who give us our rights under sufferance. However, they have to admit that a country which is big enough and strong enough to do what we have done will be much more prosperous and successful in the long run. I doubt that we will ever overcome the great forces in countries such as Uganda which are ranged against us, but we might begin through smart economics to change hearts and minds.