Nationality and Borders Bill: LGBTQ+ People

Kirsty Blackman Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

Thank you, Mr Sharma, for the excellent job you are doing chairing the debate. I extend genuine thanks to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake). I am not just going through the motions of thanking the Member in charge; this is a hugely important debate, and I particularly enjoyed the video that she put on Twitter earlier, which clearly laid out the information and I thought it was incredibly helpful.

My colleagues have covered some of the detail and some of the clauses of the Nationality and Borders Bill. We disagree with the entire Bill, but I want to talk specifically about the issues facing LGBTQ people. I do not get why the UK Government have chosen to take this direction in the Bill. We all agree that life is more difficult for someone who is LGBTQ+. They are more likely to be persecuted or discriminated against. That is demonstrably the case.

It is especially the case for those who live in a country that has systematic prejudice built into the authority systems and also into the family system and the traditions. That makes it is even more difficult for an LGBTQ+ person to live their life. As has been said, it is not something that someone grows out of and they suddenly forget that it is a part of their reality; it is that person’s self for their entire life. Why would the Government decide to make it more difficult for LGBTQ+ people to claim asylum in the UK? I cannot get my head around it. I would like the Government to explain why they have chosen to go down this route when so many organisations have raised concerns, made it absolutely clear and provided evidence about how much more difficult things would be as a result of the Government’s actions.

I want to focus on a couple of things. If somebody is coming from a country where they have had to hide their sexuality or gender identity from the Government, officials, and everybody in authority they have ever had a conversation with, how can we expect them to sit down with Home Office officials and openly talk about it? They have spent their entire lives having to hide it from officials for fear of being imprisoned, being killed or facing incredibly serious prejudice and discrimination from those authority figures. How can we expect these people to be able to sit down in a room with Home Office officials and say, “Yes, absolutely. I am gay” when they have spent their entire lives hiding it? I do not understand how the bar can change on this issue when it has been made clear that it is difficult enough under the current route.

I also want to highlight, and I will not talk for terribly long about it, that there is a significant number of asylum seekers in the UK at the moment. That means that a number of non-dispersal authorities have asylum seekers placed in them. In areas, such as mine, and in areas outside Glasgow, which is a dispersal authority that is used to dealing with and supporting refugees, there is not the infrastructure to provide that level of support. We have hardly any immigration lawyers who deal with asylum claims in Scotland—never mind Aberdeen.

We are looking at raising this bar when the situation has already been made more difficult because of the lack of support. Given that in Scotland, we do not have the systems in place outside Glasgow, refugees in Aberdeen city and Aberdeenshire are finding it more difficult because they cannot access the systems that they would normally get support from, so why are we not cutting them slack? These people should be cut slack at this moment, rather than having the bar lifted and things made more difficult. I appreciate that there is a huge number of organisations, such as Rainbow Migration, that are doing a great job, but they do not have that significant presence in my constituency; they do not have that significant presence in Aberdeen; they do not have the ability to assist the refugees in explaining their case and making that clear.

I would ask the Government, at this moment, particularly where non-dispersal authorities are having to support refugees, what slack will be cut? What support will be given to ensure that people can make the proper claims? We all agree that there are a number of people who should be able to make these claims and should be granted asylum. How will we provide them with the support that they need to make those claims when we are already failing to do so within the current system?