Sexual Offences (Pardons Etc) Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and John Nicolson

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 21st October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

I think that media portrayals have been a double-edged sword, to be honest. I am slightly sick of the fact that quite often the gay character in a crime drama will be the murderer, for example. Larry Grayson and John Inman have already been mentioned. John Inman always maintained that his character in “Are You Being Served?” was not gay, and it is true that the campest people I know are all heterosexual men. But, yes, it did matter when Michael Cashman’s character kissed another man in “EastEnders”. That was a change-making moment, and I think that British society might have moved on faster because of our broadcasters, partly through Mrs Thatcher’s creation of Channel 4, which was given the role of being edgy and different. Those factors made it possible for us to make great strides very fast. It does not always work like that, however. I am still mystified why Australia, which seems to be the campest nation on Earth—it is obsessed with Abba—still does not have any form of legalised gay relationships. I very much hope that that is going to change soon, and I shall say more about that in a moment.

I remember the rows, during my time as an MP, when the House of Lords refused to vote for an equal age of consent or to get rid of section 28. We had to use the Parliament Acts to push that measure through. More recently, however, more Conservative Members of the House of Lords voted for same-sex marriage than did Conservative Members of this House. There has been a phenomenal change, and I delight in that fact.

I remember a row in this House about whether we should ban discrimination against gay couples in the provision of goods and services, including adoption services. I was struck by the Catholic Church’s argument at the time that it was fine for an individual gay person to adopt a child but not for a gay couple to do so. In the Church’s mind, a settled relationship was a more dangerous place for a child than being with a single gay person. I just did not understand that logic. The truth of the matter is that many of the most difficult-to-place kids are placed with gay and lesbian couples. I am glad that, in the end, this House and House of Lords wholeheartedly endorsed the idea that there should be no discrimination in the provision of goods and services.

Not everything is perfect, however. Bullying in many different forms is still a fundamental problem in schools, for example, and it is very difficult to eradicate. As the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire said, one aspect of that bullying is related to sexuality. The word “gay” is all too often used pejoratively, and schools sometimes have difficulty in dealing with these issues. My husband Jared is a trustee of a charity called Diversity Role Models, which goes into schools to help them to talk through these issues. It is a phenomenal shame that we still do not have proper sex and relationship education in every school in this land without any school being able to opt out. Such education can result in most kids delaying their first sexual experience, which helps to cut the level of teenage pregnancy. It is better for everyone all round when there is proper sex and relationship education.

I cannot remember whether I am slightly older or slightly younger than the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire—

[John Nicolson]

Older.

[Chris Bryant]

I see that the hon. Gentleman is in his usual magnanimous mood. Being slightly older, then, I have even more experience and wisdom to impart to him.

I remember that one of my first experiences on coming to London was meeting a couple called Christopher and Illtyd, who had lived together in a one-bedroom flat since the 1950s. Just after I first met them, one of them was attacked on the way home, sustaining many injuries, some of which they worried would be permanent. The guy had insisted on coming into the house and had burgled them at knifepoint. What was striking about their story was that they could go neither to the hospital nor to the police because they were two men living in a one-bedroom flat and that was a criminal offence under the law of the land. They knew that they would not get justice despite what had happened to them. There are countless thousands of others to whom that situation applied.

I remember a case involving two of my friends at university. I was sort of straight at the time—[Interruption.] I am a practising homosexual now, and one day I will be quite good at it. Incidentally, I was also a sort of Conservative at the time, but we will not go into all that—many, many sins. My friends—two 19-year-old men—got into trouble with the university police because they had had sex and that was a criminal offence at the time because they were under 21. A college room was not a private place under the law and the two were sent down, receiving a criminal conviction and never finishing their degrees.

Until the Sexual Offences Act 2003, importuning was illegal in this country. Importuning is a strange word. It was used by the police for many convictions right up until 2003. If a man met somebody in a bar whom they did not know before and went home with them, that was importuning and he could be sent down for it. If the police could not secure a conviction for something else, they often relied on importuning to bring a charge.

Many people hid their sexuality for the simple reason that they were terrified of being sacked or not being promoted. I pay tribute to John Major, who I think was the first Foreign Secretary to say that people would not be sacked just for being gay in the Foreign Office. A number of people were subject to blackmail even in very ordinary jobs and in their local communities. They did not have to know state secrets; they just had to be frightened of being exposed as being a criminal and potentially sent to prison. The number of suicides has remained stubbornly high, and I will refer to one later on.

Historically, the UK since its foundation in 1801, Great Britain since 1707 and England before that have had the toughest laws in the world on homosexuality—much tougher than in France under the Napoleonic code, which made no reference to any of this. Some of our former colonies still have some of the worst laws, with capital punishment surviving in places.

Broadcasting

Debate between Chris Bryant and John Nicolson

Tuesday 18th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[John Nicolson]

That is precisely the point I made to the director-general. I asked him whether he had tested this, given that he always argued that he was paying the going rate. His answer was that he had not tested it, so his whole argument for paying people ludicrously inflated salaries fell with that one answer.

As the right hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) predicted, I am now going to talk about Scotland. It has been clear for a significant period of time that the BBC is not delivering for Scotland in the way that it should be. Audience satisfaction ratings show that Scots do not feel that the corporation fully represents their views and interests. Appreciation measures in Scotland are lower than the average for the rest of the UK, and people in Scotland think that the BBC is poorer at representing their lives in news, current affairs and drama, compared with people in other parts of the UK. Members do not have to take my word for that; the BBC fully acknowledges that problem.

We on the Scottish National party Benches here in Westminster and our colleagues in Holyrood and the Scottish Government are committed to high-quality, well-resourced public service broadcasting, and we want a BBC charter that allows this. Charter renewal has been a valuable opportunity to provide a framework for the BBC that enables it to maintain its important role as a public service broadcaster, to improve its performance for Scottish and UK audiences and to provide further support for the Scottish production sector and those in our wider creative industries. For the first time, the Scottish Government and Holyrood have had a formal role in the charter renewal process, following the recommendations of the Smith commission. The SNP has delivered a clear and consistent message on the straightforward changes we believe would help to transform the BBC in Scotland for the better. We welcome a number of elements in the charter, but it is vital that the BBC now delivers.

The SNP has argued that the BBC needs an enforceable licence service agreement for Scotland and a dedicated board member for Scotland. There are clear reasons for this. A Scottish board would allow BBC Scotland to have greater control over its budget and to be given meaningful commissioning powers. The charter accepts SNP proposals for the BBC to report on its impact on the creative industries for the first time, but it does not make provisions for a fairer share of the licence fee raised in Scotland to be spent in Scotland. Such a provision could deliver up to an additional £100 million of investment annually in those creative industries. We welcome the commitment to continued support for the Gaelic language, but the Secretary of State refrained from going just a little further and moving towards parity with the Welsh channel S4C for MG Alba, as recommended by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, on which I serve.

The Select Committee supports many of the wider proposals in the draft charter. We welcome the abolition of the BBC Trust and its replacement by a unitary board, although, as I suggested in an intervention on the right hon. Member for Maldon, we were alarmed to see what I will gently describe as the rather relaxed method of selection for the new chair, when Rhona Fairhead moved seamlessly from her old job as chair of the BBC Trust to her new job as chair of the unitary board. The right hon. Gentleman said that the transition period was important because, to paraphrase slightly, the transition meant that she was effectively continuing in the same job. However, Ms Fairhead herself said that it was a completely different job, which is precisely why it should have been subject to open competition, rather than having arisen from a cosy chat between her and the Prime Minister, with no civil servants present. I discovered that during a heated Select Committee cross-examination that resulted in Ms Fairhead accepting that she should perhaps go.

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman had a go at the director-general earlier, but Rona Fairhead should have been screaming blue murder when the Government were forcing their settlement on her. The whole point of her post is that she is meant to be independent and able to say to the Government, “No. You will not do this.”

[John Nicolson]

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. That is precisely Ms Fairhead’s role and precisely why many of us found it disturbing that she had been appointed without open competition. What was the quid pro quo for getting a job such as that with no competition? She would have to be truly saintly not to feel slightly beholden to the people who had appointed her in that way.

Scotland’s frustrations with the BBC often focus on the provision of news, which is why I have led the calls for a new Scottish Six. The national news programme, “Reporting Scotland”, is treated as a regional news programme under current arrangements. It is under-resourced and cannot report on news outwith Scotland’s borders. The current six o’clock news does not work in the post-devolution age. Scottish viewers often have to sit through stories on devolved issues that are of no relevance to them, such as English health or English policing. It is a blast from the past and it needs to change.