50 Years of Pride in the UK

Debate between Kieran Mullan and Anneliese Dodds

Thursday 30th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate and pay tribute to the hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley) for opening it. I also thank every single speaker in the debate. I think I speak for everyone here when I say that we have seen one of the best examples of this Chamber in operation this afternoon: we have seen passion, commitment and the personal history that is so important for Members to bring to bear on issues such as this one.

There is so much to celebrate in the 50th year since the first Pride march took place in London on 1 July 1972. Half a century on, life has changed for the better for LGBT+ people in our country in many ways, and we should be proud of that, as hon. Members have said. We should be proud also of the contribution of so many trailblazers from this place as well: Chris Smith, Maureen Colquhoun, my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Dame Angela Eagle) and so many others. This was memorably described earlier as being now the gayest of Parliaments. It has taken us far too long to get here, of course, and there will be no Parliament in the world that does not have gay people in it; it is just that those people will far too often not be able to be publicly who they genuinely are.

It can be very easy today to look back and wonder whether that progress was inevitable, but, as speaker after speaker has said, it was not inevitable. That progress was won in the face of bigotry, ridicule, hostility, violence and intimidation. In the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard), it has most definitely not been a one-way street towards progress. There is politics in Pride, because these are issues about power over individuals and their right to autonomy.

When my party, Labour, voted for a resolution committing to lesbian and gay rights in 1985, it was during a period of extreme hostility towards LGBT+ people. Just two years later, of course, our opponents proactively campaigned against that position on LGBT+ rights at the general election and then, as many speakers have said, followed Margaret Thatcher’s section 28, banning councils and schools from the promotion of homosexuality as, in those bigoted words, “a pretended family relationship”. It was, of course, the last Labour Government who removed that terrible law from the statute book in 2003; who introduced the unmarried partners concession that committed the UK to ending discrimination against gay and lesbian couples for immigration purposes; who lifted the ban on lesbians, gay men and bi people serving in the armed forces; who introduced civil partnerships, in the face of strong opposition; and who introduced laws to allow unmarried couples, including same-sex couples, to apply for joint adoption, again in the face of hostility.

As so many speakers have said, today some of that hostility is less overt, but LGBT+ people are still being let down. We in this Chamber know that the Minister had ambitious plans to mark the 50 years of Pride through the flagship Safe To Be Me global equality conference, which was supposed to open this very day. Instead the Minister is here and there is not going to be that conference, for the simple reason that there would not have been anyone there for Government Ministers to confer with—not even their LGBT+ adviser, Iain Anderson. That is because his resignation and the withdrawal of over 100 LGBT+ organisations and charities from Safe To Be Me last April was a consequence of Government policy—the Government’s decision to reverse their plans to ban trans conversion therapy.

This is an international embarrassment. It shows that the Government need to rethink their approach on this issue, but so far we have not seen that. As has been mentioned, even the proposals to ban conversion therapy on the basis of sexual orientation still include the consent loophole that risks letting some of the worst practitioners off the hook.

The hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn), in a very illuminating and thoughtful speech, rightly referred to the Westminster Hall debate that recently took place on the subject of conversion therapy. I do not want to repeat the arguments from that debate, but it really is extremely disappointing that instead of coming together to talk about the fact that almost a dozen countries still have the death penalty for homosexuality and that in dozens of countries it is still illegal to be who you are, we are lacking that conference.

[Dr Mullan]

The hon. Lady is talking about the global nature of these issues. Sometimes we see what is going on in other countries as being separate from us. One of the things I have noticed in the media with regard to big-budget global movies is that in the west we have now started to see more and more progress with gay characters in some of them. However, when some of the big film studios put out films in China, such as a recent “Harry Potter” film that has a really high-profile gay character, they dampen it down because they are worried about how it will be perceived there. What goes on in other countries can have an impact in this country with regard to gay representation.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am grateful for that important intervention, which links with some of the contributions from SNP speakers on the role and responsibilities of companies in this space. I pay tribute to the British Council, because the work it has done with the British Film Institute has been very important in making sure that some of the marginalised, discriminated-against voices of LGBT+ people are heard right across the world, including where they know that films they have produced have been viewed in some of the countries where homosexuality is illegal by Government fiat. That is incredibly important work.

We would argue that we really do need to see a change in approach on these issues from the current Government. We had hoped that the conference would be used to launch a new LGBT+ strategy, which it was suggested might cover, for example, IVF, trans healthcare and homelessness, but we are yet to see it. The previous strategy was abandoned but we are yet to see the new one. It does seem that there has been over-promising but under-delivery in this regard, with the LGBT+ action plan having been killed off, the LGBT+ advisory panel having been disbanded, and with promises to reform the Gender Recognition Act having been dropped.

We are also concerned about something referred to by many speakers—attempts to pit different groups of people against each other instead of standing up for LGBT+ people and bringing them together. Of course, that is taking place in a context where hate crimes against LGBT+ people in our country have doubled over the past five years. I extend my solidarity to the hon. Members for Lanark and Hamilton East and for Livingston (Hannah Bardell) and others who have been subject to homophobic and transphobic abuse—those who are in the Chamber now and those beyond it. My hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey provided some horrendous examples of the international nature of some of this hatred, especially that coming from actors from the far right and authoritarian right.

We need a different approach. The next Labour Government would not seek to divide people; instead, we would seek to bring them together. We would continue to protect and uphold the Equality Act 2010, including its protections for LGBT+ people. We would require employers to create and maintain workplaces free from LGBT+ harassment, including by third parties. As was mentioned in this debate, while some businesses are moving ahead, others are far behind in this regard; I associate myself with the remarks made about the importance of the TUC LGBT+ conference in that connection.

We will strengthen and equalise the law so that LGBT+ hate crimes attract the tougher sentences they deserve; they are not currently treated on a level playing field. We will ban all forms of conversion therapy outright, including trans conversion therapy, and we will modernise the outdated Gender Recognition Act 2004 while maintaining the Equality Act 2010 protections for single-sex spaces.

The inquiry has finally now begun on the case of LGBT veterans. We will never rest until we see that compensation, which is so needed, and things being set right for those veterans who were treated so appallingly. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden) for all his work and the work of those campaigners in Fighting With Pride. I heard directly from some of them recently, and their words were incredibly powerful about the disgraceful treatment meted out to some of those who did so much defending our country, and who frankly we should be proud of indeed, despite the shameful way in which they sadly have been treated by Governments and our society.

My party, the Labour party, is and always will be the party of equality. We stand up for LGBT+ rights, not because that is always easy, but because it is always right. To conclude, this week is about far more than celebrating the wonderful diversity of this country and the achievements of the past 50 years. As important as that is, it is about recommitting to ensure genuine equality for LGBT+ people, and that is not just important for LGBT+ people—as my hon. Friend for Wallasey said, it is important for all of society. As my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy) said, equality adds beauty and strength to our society. I would say that it also adds health, happiness, prosperity and decency.