Section 28 Repeal: 20th Anniversary

Debate between Jim Shannon and Ben Bradshaw

Wednesday 29th November 2023 Westminster Hall

[Mr Bradshaw]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. That is the difference a Labour Government make. I am sure some of our SNP colleagues will be making the same point about Scotland a little later.

The current Westminster Government have repeatedly broken their long-standing promise to ban the psychological abuse known as conversion therapy; they have abandoned the pledge made by the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) when she was Prime Minister to reform the gender recognition process; they have used spurious constitutional arguments to block Scotland’s democratically agreed gender recognition reforms; and they have threatened to repeal the Equality Act, in effect, to cancel trans people. Stonewall, our main LGBT charity, which was founded in response to section 28, faces a constant onslaught from the Government and their allies in the press. Unsurprisingly, in this atmosphere, hate crime against LGBT people has rocketed. Britain’s supposedly independent Equality and Human Rights Commission has been packed with political cronies and it is now being investigated by the United Nations. Ministers brief almost every week that they intend to reverse LGBT-inclusive sex and relationship education in schools—their modern-day equivalent of section 28.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Can I say first of all that I understand exactly the need for this debate and for people to make their own choice? However, I do say respectfully—I hope the right hon. Gentleman will understand what I am saying—that there is also a need for parents to have a say in the teaching of their children and what happens to them in school. I say that as a plea. I have had hundreds and hundreds of emails from constituents on this issue. I very much respect the right hon. Gentleman and what he is trying to do, but I just ask for the same consideration to be given to parents and their children.

[Mr Bradshaw]

I take the hon. Member’s point, but parents already have such powers. I gently make the following point back to him: a significant proportion of young homeless people are LGBT people who have been rejected by their families. While most families are affirming and supportive of their LGBT children, not all families are so, while I take the hon. Member’s point, I make that point back to him. It is the interests of the child that should matter to all of us. Whether we like it or not, some parents have attitudes that actually harm and damage their children, and schools need to be able to manage that in a sensitive and professional way, as I believe the vast majority of schools do at the moment anyway.

The policies reportedly being considered by the Government include banning trans young people from socially transitioning at school, banning them from attending single-sex schools matching their gender, forcing schools to out trans and non-binary young people to their parents, allowing teachers to misgender pupils, and blocking trans children from using bathrooms and changing rooms matching their identity.

Like gay, lesbian and bisexual people, trans and non-binary people have always existed. Gender dysphoria has been an internationally recognised condition for decades. Coming out as trans or non-binary is never easy, and often extremely difficult. That is why, historically, so many trans people have suppressed their gender dysphoria, leading to high levels of mental illness and—all too often—suicide. These children are not a threat to be contained; they should be supported and cared for. What schools need is guidance that will keep all young people, including trans and gender-questioning young people, safe and happy and help them to thrive both in school and beyond.

At an exhibition in the Forum at the University of Exeter to mark the 20th anniversary of the repeal of section 28, Melissa, a trans woman, writes of its impact on her as a teenager:

“The biggest effect was me not being able to actually figure out that I’m transgender, that what I needed was actually possible, what my life could have been. I almost took my life at that age. If I had been told that it was a thing that you could do and be, and there was a possibility, then that would have saved me an awful lot of pain. It made me determined to bring up my kids in a different way. They do have an inalienable right to be gay, and an inalienable right to be trans, and they know it.”

Section 28 marked the peak of the last great moral panic about LGBT people, which began in the 1980s and collapsed beneath the Labour landslide of 1997. My homophobic opponent’s campaign in Exeter helped me to deliver the biggest swing to Labour in the south-west. As I prepare to retire at the next election, it feels as if we are in danger of going full circle, back to the dark days of the 1980s.

In 2009, David Cameron had the decency to apologise on behalf of the Conservative party for section 28. I beg the Minister not to let his Government repeat the mistakes of the past. It will damage people’s lives, and it will lose them votes.

Shared Transport: Government Policy Objectives

Debate between Jim Shannon and Ben Bradshaw

Wednesday 9th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

I secured this debate because, having joined the Transport Committee about a year ago, I became struck by how little attention is being given to the multiple ways in which car clubs and other shared transport can help national and local governments meet their multiple policy objectives. Shared transport is about giving people access to cars, bikes, and other vehicles, without the need to own them. I should perhaps declare an interest: my husband and I have not owned a car for more than 25 years. When we need one, which is much less often than we thought we would, we use the south-west’s fantastic car sharing scheme, Co Cars, which is a co-operative based in Exeter of which I was one of the founder members.

For those who do not know how such schemes work, they can vary a bit, as can the ownership models. Essentially, however, someone registers, then they book the car or van nearest to them online, using an app in some cases. They pick it up using a smart card, and they drive it away, returning it when they are finished. It is simple, and much cheaper than buying and owning a car oneself, and there are no insurance, maintenance, or parking headaches.

As well as the cost, there are climate change, air quality, local amenity and congestion advantages to car sharing. According to the RAC Foundation, the average private car sits doing nothing for 96.5% of its life. What a waste of money and valuable urban space. As we transition to e-vehicles as a country over the next few years, simply replacing private internal combustion vehicles with electric ones will not be enough to meet our zero carbon targets, and it will do nothing to tackle congestion. In fact, one could argue that with people feeling less inhibited to drive if they are driving an e-vehicle, it is likely that congestion will get worse, without a reduction in the total number of private vehicles on our roads.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The right hon. Gentleman is making an important point, and this issue concerns us all across the whole United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Does he agree that by not involving and co-ordinating with car clubs and the shared transport sector, we are missing the potential for getting people off the roads and into shared transport? That would benefit the environment—he has referred to that—and it would also help people’s pressed finances.

[Mr Bradshaw]

I agree with that. Car clubs represent a fantastic resource for both national Government and local government to achieve exactly those aims.

There are currently around 6,000 car club vehicles in the United Kingdom. The number of active car club members—that is people who have joined, renewed their membership or used a car club in the last 12 months— is approaching half a million, which is a massive 96% increase in just one year. Total membership is 784,122, which is a 24% increase on the previous year. The transport sharing umbrella organisation, CoMoUK, has found that for every car club vehicle, 18.5 private cars are taken off the roads, taking into account the reduction in the number of cars owned by members and purchases that do not take place.

Nationally, because car club vehicles are on average just over 1.5 years old, their carbon emissions are an average of 26% lower than the average car in the United Kingdom. In Exeter we are lucky to have more than 50 Co Cars, including 20 electric vehicles, and more than 150 electric bikes—they are somewhere on a street near you. Some 11% of car club cars nationally are electric, compared with less than 1% of privately owned cars across the United Kingdom. That makes driving an electric car not just possible for those who cannot afford it, but easily accessible. Access and social equity are crucial, and 20% of car club members stated that although they could not afford to buy a private car, joining a car club gave them access to one when they needed one.

Car sharing also accelerates modal shift. Since joining a car club, 16% of people said that they had walked more, 10% said that they had cycled more and 26% said that they had cut their car use overall. I stress that shared transport covers a range of other modes including bikes, e-scooters—in trial areas only, of course—demand-responsive transport such as flexible buses and lift share. It also includes so-called mobility hubs: places that enable people to switch easily between public, active and shared transport modes. Bicycle sharing has been shown to be a powerful tool to re-engage lapsed cyclists, with 50% of bike share members in the UK saying that it was the trigger to get them back on a bike again and 53% saying they would have made their last trip by car or taxi if bike share had not been available.

The COP26 declaration on accelerating the transition to 100% zero-emission cars and vans, signed by the UK Government, states:

“We recognise that alongside the shift to zero emission vehicles, a sustainable future for road transport will require wider system transformation, including support for active travel, public and shared transport, as well as addressing the full value chain impacts from vehicle production, use and disposal.”

The Secretary of State for Transport, in the foreword to the transport decarbonisation plan in 2021, said:

“We cannot simply rely on the electrification of road transport, nor believe that zero emission cars and lorries will solve all our problems.”

The Minister—I am pleased to see her in her place—told the conference of CoMoUK in December last year that shared mobility must become the norm across the UK and that the country needed to do more to move away from

“20th century thinking centred around private vehicle ownership”

and introduce

“greater flexibility, with personal choice and low carbon shared transport.”

Hear, hear to that.

So everyone agrees that shared transport is a positive thing that can help us meet multiple policy objectives. The challenge is to create a coherent cross-Government departmental policy framework and support for it. I will give a few examples.

First, on electric vehicle charging, car clubs are explicitly excluded from on-street residential charging schemes and are not positively included in any public funding framework or guidance. We have been told that an EV infrastructure strategy is coming “soon” for a while now, and there is also potentially a new EV infrastructure fund, but again we have not had any publication or details about that, and we have had no indication of whether any of that will necessarily improve the current position. That is despite, as I said earlier, car clubs having 11 times the proportion of EVs in their fleets as the general UK car fleet and providing access to EVs at a fraction of the cost of leasing or owning one.

Secondly, on guidance to local authorities, the transport decarbonisation plan promised a local authority toolkit in 2021, but that has yet to appear. It also stated that the Department would support car clubs to go fully zero-emission, recognising that, as car club fleets contain newer vehicles, they can lead the transition to zero-emission vehicles. However, again, we have not yet had any further details on that.

Thirdly, national planning policy still does not do enough to favour decarbonising options such as shared transport in spatial planning. Shared transport is not usually included in scheme design at all, and the national planning policy framework makes it difficult for councils to refuse applications that do not go far enough on shared transport proposals. Many good councils such as my own in Exeter want to limit parking provision and require mobility hubs and transport sharing schemes as well as good cycling and walking provision in development plans, but the planning system neither recognises nor encourages that. Mobility hubs play a particularly valuable role in areas with high levels of pollution and low sustainable transport accessibility levels, and they should be pursued by national and local government.

Local government should also be required to actively support shared transport to achieve modal shift, placing it at the heart of its transport strategies. It should also develop sustainable transport hierarchies to recognise the different role that shared cars play as opposed to privately owned vehicles, and include data from shared transport in official transport statistics for the area.

Fourthly, traffic regulation orders are cumbersome and expensive. A consultation on improving the system to make it quicker and more innovative and adaptable was promised, but again it has not appeared.

Fifthly, public transport accessibility levels should be updated to sustainable transport accessibility levels, which would encompass all forms of sustainable transport, including shared transport.

Sixthly, on taxation, the current system is based entirely on the private ownership of cars, with shared transport paying the same full rate of VAT as privately owned ones. The Treasury could help a lot by tweaking the tax regime in a revenue-neutral way, if needs be, to incentivise vehicle sharing.

Seventhly, we would like to know where the future of transport Bill is. It appears to be stuck somewhere in Government, meaning that we will soon reach the second anniversary of the e-scooter trials at a time when every other developed nation has either legalised and regulated them or has committed to doing so.

I know that the Minister shares my enthusiasm for shared transport as a multiple solution to her transport challenges and those we all face, and I look forward with interest to her response.