Merchant Shipping (Homosexual Conduct) Bill

Iain Stewart Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 20th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this debate at such an early stage. I serve on the Select Committee on Transport and am also an openly gay man, so I hope that I can bring my knowledge from both perspectives to our deliberations.

I start with the customary congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) on his good fortune in securing such a high place in the private Members’ Bills ballot and on choosing this subject. If I heard him correctly, if the Bill is successful it will be his second change to the laws of the land. I imagine that will make him eligible for membership of a fairly exclusive club of Back Benchers who have secured not one but two changes in the law, but we must not get ahead of ourselves. This is only Second Reading, and there are many more stages to come in this place and the other place.

I welcome the important point that both my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury and my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley (Craig Whittaker) made that the Bill is much more than a simple tidying-up exercise. Reading the explanatory notes and some of the briefings that were provided, I had some concern that the Bill’s sole purpose was to tidy up some clumsy legal arrangements in previous legislation. That is important, for the reasons that they set out, but I am glad that they appreciate the Bill’s wider significance in continuing the journey on LGBT issues that we have been on for many decades.

I appreciate that there would have been clumsiness in binding together the removal of discrimination in merchant shipping and in the armed forces. It would have been difficult to put the two together in a single measure in the Armed Forces Act 2016, and I am glad that the sensible decision was taken to decouple them and allow the welcome changes to the armed forces law to proceed without delay, rather than getting into a bit of a pickle by putting the two together. As both my hon. Friends have said, the Bill is the completion of a journey that has already been started. They gave a helpful précis of the changes that have happened, from the decriminalisation of homosexuality to the steps towards equality over the past few decades under Governments of all colours.

My hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley touched on the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013. I would like to focus on it too, because there is a strong parallel between the process by which we arrived at that point and the Bill. If the House will indulge me, I would like to explain that thought.

When the Civil Partnership Act 2004 was introduced under Tony Blair’s Government, it was a recognition that it would be difficult to move straight to same-sex marriage in law. There was wide acceptance at the time that although that was a desirable ultimate goal, the legal difficulties and the objections of many of the Churches would have made it difficult to go to that point straight away. I was not a Member of the House at the time, but I was perfectly comfortable with the Civil Partnership Act, as it gave same-sex couples pretty much the same rights that heterosexual couples had under civil marriage. There was a small legal difference in the provisions, but it was about 98% the same, and I thought that was good enough.

[Craig Whittaker]

It is interesting that my hon. Friend focuses on the same-sex marriage Act but also mentions the Civil Partnership Act introduced under Tony Blair. Does he agree that the latter was probably the most significant Act for equality, because it put those who went into civil partnerships on a footing of legal equality with married couples for the first time?

[Iain Stewart]

I agree with my hon. Friend to an extent. It almost put us on the same footing, but there was a difference—if he will forgive me, I will come on to that point in a minute.

Once the Civil Partnership Act was in force and many thousands of couples had taken advantage of it, the debate then became about whether we should move to full same-sex marriage. At the time I thought, “Do we really need to do this? Haven’t we got what we wanted, in practice, and aren’t we just going to be indulging in a bit of a sideshow that will not really make much difference?” I think other colleagues felt the same. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realised the importance of moving to full equality, as my hon. Friend has said. Although the Civil Partnership Act almost gave us equality, it was still not the same. Gay people and straight people were still treated differently under the law.

I mention that because we could argue today that the provisions of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 and the Equality Act 2010 would make it difficult for a seafarer to be dismissed because they were homosexual or had engaged in a homosexual act. However, that discrimination exists on the statute book, and there could be a case in which someone was dismissed for that. That is wrong, so the Bill is not just a tidying-up exercise but will send out a powerful signal. It might not affect a great number of individuals, although homosexuality on the high seas is not a new concept—I understand from doing some research that a special language called Polari has even been used, so that discreet signals can be sent out to people who might be interested.

[Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)]

Are you making a bona speech?

[Iain Stewart]

I am not fluent in the language.

Although the Bill might not affect a great number of people, there is still discrimination in the law, and we should not be ignorant of the fact that it may deter people from pursuing a career on the high seas. Such discrimination can cause significant psychological damage to young gay people as they grow up, if they know that they will potentially not be able to pursue their vocation or the profession of their choice because they are different.

My hon. Friends the Members for Salisbury and for Calder Valley referred to the stigma and problem of bullying that still exists in our schools and workplaces. There has been welcome improvement, but it still causes a lot of emotional and physical distress to young people as they grow up. Having discrimination in the law on this matter adds to that. It might not be a huge thing, but it is part of the same problem.

I can relate my personal experiences. Growing up thinking that you are different is very tough. Even in these more enlightened times, people still think something is wrong with them, and they might be inhibited from pursuing what they want to do. It is not a well-known subject, but a growing body of evidence in psychology is unravelling and pointing out the damage that can be done. If Members are interested in reading about it, I would point them to a very good book by Professor Alan Downs called “The Velvet Rage”. He documents both in America and here how, even after homosexuality has been decriminalised, when we have same-sex marriage and civil partnerships and when much of the discrimination has been removed, lots of young people still grow up feeling different. Some deal with it better than others, but it still does long-term damage to a lot of people, and that is why removing discrimination from legislation is so important; it is not just a tidying-up exercise.

If someone wants to pursue a career but thinks they cannot, that can be very damaging. For a long time in my teenage years and early 20s, when I had decided that politics was my passion and a career I wanted to pursue, I did think, “I can’t do it.” I thought I would live in fear of being revealed for who I was on account of something so innate in me—I cannot change being gay; it is how I was born. It is as natural as being left or right handed or as the colour of one’s hair. None the less, I thought that I could not pursue a career in politics because I was so afraid of being cast aside or being exposed for who I was. And that was in the late 1980s, early 1990s.

That is why section 28—or section 2A, as it was in Scotland—was so damaging. It really did have a detrimental effect. The Conservative party has apologised for it, but we should not underestimate the damage it did. I know it was introduced not as a discriminatory measure but to curb the excesses of some local authorities, but that was the effect it had. I decided it was not right to be dissuaded from my career choice because of that. Can we imagine if Terry Wogan had been told he could not be a radio broadcaster because he had an Irish accent? It was that ridiculous.

I got through it, but it took me a long time to realise that I could still have this career, and now it is not an issue at all. Just this week, Parliament was voted one of the most LGBT-friendly places to work for both Members and staff, which is an incredible achievement of which we should be proud. The Bill is, therefore, more than symbolism. My hon. Friends the Members for Salisbury and for Calder Valley are right that it is symbolic, but it goes much deeper than that. It will not make the headlines—events over the pond might make the front pages tomorrow—but that should not detract from the effect the Bill will have.

Looking forward, I hope that our merchant navy has a bright future. In the post-Brexit world, I hope that this nation will regain its seafaring traditions and sell its goods right around the globe under lots of free-trade agreements with countries near and far, and I hope that those goods will be transported on the high seas. In making that happen, we need to have the best people to crew our ships. I do not want any young gay person thinking, “That’s not for me, I can’t do it. I’d be bullied, discriminated against and possibly dismissed”, and so being dissuaded from entering that profession.

The Bill is symbolic, and it is important for our future economic prosperity, but, above all, it is another important step on the journey to proper equality and towards breaking down those barriers, injustices and fears that afflict too many young people growing up. I hope that my comments today have helped to explain the Bill’s wider significance, and once again I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury on choosing this subject for his private Member’s Bill. I wish it every success in today’s vote—if it comes to that—in Committee and its remaining stages and in the other place. I will be proud to support it all the way through.