Gender Recognition
Debate between James Daly and Kemi Badenoch(4 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Kemi Badenoch
I welcome my hon. Friend’s question. As a teacher, he knows how carefully we need to look after children, and how carefully we need to ensure we are safeguarding across the board. He is right, and this SI is just one step we are taking to provide clarity. There is more coming, and not all of it will be legislative. We will bring in measures to help people understand exactly what is going on. We should not assume that the knowledge we have in this House is present in the population. I have met people who do not understand the difference between being gay and being trans. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) is complaining that my answers are long. It is because I want people to hear the truth and to understand what the Government are doing.
James Daly (Bury North) (Con)
The main feature of countries that have come off the list seems to be their adoption of laws that remove all safeguards on changing gender. Does my right hon. Friend agree that this approach is dangerous? What further steps is she taking to address its expansion?
Kemi Badenoch
I cannot control what other countries do. All we can do is emphasise our own policies. Across the House, we have conversations with international counterparts. There has been a lot of interest in what we are doing. I remember speaking to a Minister who said their country—I will not name the country—had brought in self-ID early because they thought we were going to do it, and that they were now thinking again. There are countries, even in Europe, that are taking steps to limit this, because they have seen the consequences and do not think that the benefits outweigh the disbenefits. I am glad that we in the UK are setting a standard for evidence-based policymaking and are showing others how to get this right.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between James Daly and Kemi Badenoch(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Kemi Badenoch
It is not true that negotiations with India have stalled, either because of the Home Secretary’s comments or for any other reason. They are ongoing. What has changed is the deadline: as a result of my becoming Secretary of State, we are focusing on the deal and not the day, and that is the most important aspect. The Home Secretary is well within her rights to discuss migration issues, and her comments were not specific to the India trade deal. She has a responsibility for migration, and she is doing her job properly.
James Daly (Bury North) (Con)
Islamophobia Awareness Month
Debate between James Daly and Kemi Badenoch(2 years, 5 months ago)
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The Minister for Equalities (Kemi Badenoch)
Does my hon. Friend agree that on such a sensitive subject such as this, the highly partisan nature in which the debate has been opened, if watched by our Muslim constituents, will look not like people trying to tackle anti-Muslim hatred, but as if they, as a community, are being used as a political football for political goals?
James Daly
I thank my hon. Friend for that point. I could mention all sorts of policies here, whether it is support for the self-employed, for taxi drivers or for anybody else in my constituency. I believe I should be working with other MPs in Greater Manchester for the greater good to support all our Muslim constituents through specific policies that address the issues that are at the heart of the challenges they face.
When you represent people who you know; when you have been part of a community; when you do everything you possibly can to represent people, to be their voice in Parliament and to address the issues—what more do Opposition Members expect? Prejudice is an issue that is addressed through the individual and through all of us behaving in a way where we welcome and take every opportunity to say that we value all our communities, and we especially value our Muslim community. We value every single person. Prejudice and racism are not addressed by a definition. They are addressed by an individual and by all of us coming together to make sure that people are not judged by anything other than their personality, their goodness, and their ability and desire to influence their community for the better.
I can tell everybody in this Chamber and elsewhere that my interaction with my communities is simply for that purpose. I am a politician who wants to make change and who wants to ensure that people are treated in an equal fashion. This Government’s levelling-up agenda is about equality of opportunity. Every single policy that we put in place is to ensure that that is the case and that people are not discriminated against on the basis of their background.