Pride Month

Christine Jardine Excerpts

Thursday 15th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Elliot Colburn]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. [Interruption.] I heard from a sedentary position that gay parties are the best parties, and I absolutely have to agree. Pride is a celebration. We describe it in many different ways, but we come together and we celebrate, and we are proud of who we are, so I am grateful to him for attending that event in Bracknell and I completely agree.

I also hope that the Government will not be tempted by the calls from some to out trans kids to their parents. I benefited, as I know did so many people who went to school at the same time as me, or before or after, from the safe environment that schools provided to talk about these things without fear of it getting back to a household that may not necessarily be supportive. I was lucky; I was naive at the time when I came out, and I should have known that my parents would be absolutely supportive, which they were, but school provided that safe and non-judgmental environment for me to be able to talk about things, and I know that has been valued by so many others. I understand the need to make decisions about a child’s welfare in correspondence with parents— I do not think anyone objects to that—but the idea of outing trans people to their parents is dangerous, because many families will not be understanding and supportive, sadly. We need to ensure that schools remain a safe place for LGBT+ pupils.

I will touch on the current toxicity around the trans debate—it would be churlish not to talk about it in some detail. Sadly, that toxicity is something that we have had to speak about in Pride debates, and I know that many other colleagues will want to talk about it today. I fear that we as a Parliament, and the institutions we represent, have completely lost control of the conversation, which is being imported from other parts of the world and which often has completely nonsensical and irrelevant arguments brought into it. At its heart is a very vulnerable group of people who are already marginalised and who are now being further demonised and pulled into a national discussion that they did not ask for.

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

The hon. Member makes an important point. Specifically on that toxic and damaging debate that we have seen in this country, particularly over the past year, does he agree that we have to somehow persuade everyone involved to dial down the rhetoric, to be more reasonable and to listen to one another? I have absolutely no problem personally with gender recognition reform or the legislation that was passed by the Scottish Parliament, but I also understand that there are people with genuine concerns. By not listening to them, we have inadvertently dialled up the toxicity, and the people suffering are the trans community.

[Elliot Colburn]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. If we do not dial down the rhetoric, calm that debate down and listen to each other, we will only ever hear those with the loudest voices and those who scream the loudest. The Women and Equalities Committee, of which I am proud to be a member, ran an inquiry on this space not that long ago. One of our conclusions, funnily enough, was that there was a huge amount of agreement, so we were perplexed, when drawing up our conclusions, as to why there should be such anger. It did not seem impossible to us that a way forward could be found, so I hope the Government can update us on what they plan to do to try to dial down the rhetoric in this space.