LGBTI Citizens Worldwide

Lord Black of Brentwood Excerpts

Thursday 17th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)]

My Lords, I join others in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, on securing this debate. As my noble friend Lord Fowler said, it is really important that we regularly return to this issue so that we can chart progress where it has been made and keep up the moral pressure on those states which deny LGBTI people their fundamental human rights. As we have heard, some real progress has been made in recent years which it is right to acknowledge.

In our own country, now almost 60 years on from Wolfenden, we are one of 18 countries worldwide which have introduced same-sex marriage and, under all three political parties, have established a raft of other rights and initiatives which mean that all men and women are treated equally. These cover a whole range of issues vital to the welfare of LGBTI individuals, including discrimination and immigration, adoption and parenting, bullying and hate crime. That is a huge achievement, but as the noble Lord, Lord Smith, said, of course there is always more to be done. In gay equality, there will be no final victories.

There is one point I would like to mention right at the start of my remarks. In its ground-breaking report this summer, the UN Human Rights Council made 20 recommendations to national governments as part of a “systematic and comprehensive approach” to the human rights of LGBTI people. One of the recommendations was to end the abusive therapies and treatments to which gay men and women can be subjected, including the so-called “conversion therapy”. The use of such therapy is absolutely deplorable, and I am delighted that earlier this year the Prime Minister made clear his strong opposition to its use in the United Kingdom. But when you are dealing with bigots, I fear that words are not enough. I hope that in due course that there will be a suitable vehicle in a Bill passing through this House which will allow us to introduce measures to ban by law these grotesque and abhorrent therapies.

Outside of our own country and continent, while the picture is much bleaker, as we have heard in the debate, there has been a glimmer of progress that we should acknowledge. In some 118 countries, same-sex sexual acts between adults in private are now legal, with Mozambique being one of the most recent countries to decriminalise. A critically important legal case is pending in Belize which would have ramifications across the whole of the Caribbean. I know from Answers to Written Questions which my noble friend the Minister has kindly given me that the Foreign Office is fully aware of this issue, and I urge her to keep a very close eye on it.

The number of countries establishing hate crimes relating to sexual orientation is growing. Eight countries, including Mexico, now have a constitutional prohibition against discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation, and many more, particularly in Latin America, are making significant progress on the issue of legal recognition of gender identity, which is one of the big issues that we still face. For this, and so much other progress, I join others in paying tribute to the work of organisations such as the Human Dignity Trust, Kaleidoscope and Stonewall. Their dogged campaigning and advocacy continue to pay real dividends.

Welcome though those developments are, they cannot obscure the fact that in far too much of the world, LGBT people are deprived of the most basic human rights. They are detained, persecuted, tortured, imprisoned and, in some places, killed just for being who they are. As we have heard, 78 jurisdictions still criminalise homosexuality. Those 78 jurisdictions cover 2.9 billion souls. Legal developments, as the noble Lord, Lord Smith, said, in some parts of Africa are in fact deteriorating, with a number of countries such as Malawi revising their laws to criminalise consensual sex between women, and others increasing the penalties imposed on gay people. The noble Lord made very important points about Nigeria and Gambia. Of course, we have talked today about Russia, where initiatives have been taken to criminalise the “propaganda of homosexuality”. That has been copied in Moldova, Lithuania and other places.

This continues to have lethal consequences in terms of public health because of the link between criminalisation and increased HIV prevalence, as the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS discovered when looking at the Caribbean. The figures are shocking. On islands where homosexuality is criminalised, and there are therefore no prevention campaigns, almost one in four men who have sex with men are infected with HIV. I am told that one appalling study recently found that, when random tests were conducted on homeless gay teenagers in Kingston, all of them were found to be HIV positive. However, in Caribbean countries that do not criminalise, the rate is not one in four, but one in 15. Criminalisation kills people.

As the work by the Human Dignity Trust has shown, criminalisation also tends to march hand in hand with bad or authoritarian government. Only one criminalising state is a full democracy. Of much interest to me, there is also a direct link between criminalisation and poor indices of press freedom—and here I declare my interest as chairman of the Commonwealth Press Union Media Trust. In countries where the rights of a minority are so casually trampled on, it needs a free and vibrant press to foster debate and sow the seeds of change. That is what has been happening in Botswana, and which I hope will happen similarly in Kenya, Belize and Jamaica where the press has been able for the first time openly to discuss LGBT issues and question politicians, providing an important back-drop to vital court cases. For reasons of basic human rights, public health, good government and freedom of expression, decriminalisation must remain at the top of the Government’s agenda. I know that the Minister has been working hard in this area and she deserves our full support.

Decriminalisation can come about in a number of ways. Often it is a result of legal challenge. Sometimes it springs from the membership requirements of regional groups of countries, such as the OAS and the OSCE. The OSCE, for instance, should be a criminalisation-free zone but two of its members criminalise homosexuality. However, it can also come about because of pressure from civil society and, in particular, as the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, and others have said, from international business. Businesses today carry as much influence as sovereign states, particularly in the developing world, and I believe they must leverage that power in furthering the human rights agenda. Businesses operating in countries where homosexuality is criminalised need vocally to express their concern about it, and if necessary make clear that investment decisions will take this issue into account. I think the UK Government can encourage those developments, and I ask my noble friend what action the Government are taking to ensure businesses play their full part.

There is one other substantive point I would like to make. It may seem obvious, but I am not sure that enough thought is given to it. It is on the subject of cultural change. Decriminalisation is the foundation stone, of course, but it is the first step on a very long road. Bear in mind, as I mentioned earlier, that in our country it took 60 years from Wolfenden, and 50 years from decriminalisation to full legal equality for gay men and women, and a huge shift in cultural values at the same time—including that first kiss on “EastEnders”. In some countries, the path will be a great deal more difficult than it was for us, and it seems to me that we need to be ready to help the process along by supporting and encouraging civil society and grass-roots groups who will foster change long after the lawyers have left town. In many places, gay men and women will have become used to a “Don’t ask, don’t tell” attitude towards their sexuality. In the wake of decriminalisation they will find their lives very different and, frankly, not always easier in the short term.

This is particularly important because of the baleful influence of evangelical movements, many of them from the US, in so many of the countries affected, as my noble friend Lord Fowler mentioned. Where there is the prospect of legal change or where decriminalisation has happened, these groups, which are well organised and well funded, move in to take over the territory that the law is vacating. A friend of mine in Belize, where that vital legal decision is pending, told me that the evangelicals are already thick on the ground there. They play a key role in building schools and therefore influence the education of the young—clearly not in a positive way. They are often supported by influential and popular television programmes. Every morning in Belize there is a TV programme called “PlusTV”, the presenters of which invite viewers to join with them in praying to rid Belize of homosexuals.

That produces a massive cultural problem, which of course also often leads to violence, in particular in conflict zones. Stonewall recently undertook a consultation with 66 LGBT rights organisations worldwide, which confirmed that violence is the global movement’s top priority—even more so than decriminalisation. We heard the statistics earlier about the murder of trans people. In the Americas alone, a trans woman is killed in a hate crime every 32 hours.

The mere fact of decriminalisation will not alter the toxic culture that envelops so many LGBT communities. If we are to make a real difference, we will need to be ready to help tackle it by supporting grass-roots organisations. I wholly agree with my noble friend Lord Fowler and others that we need to look at practicalities. Here are some relating to this. In some cases, we may have to do that by providing funding mechanisms that explicitly support LGBT groups formed to create change. On a practical level, it will mean: helping NGOs to run education campaigns, especially in schools; providing training for diplomats and desk officers that equips them with the skills they need to engage with LGBT groups, along with workshops for public officials; ensuring that police and law enforcement officials treat LGBT people fairly and appropriately; and, crucially, providing advice and support on running HIV prevention campaigns aimed in particular at men who have sex with men.

As this extraordinarily good debate has shown, the agenda is huge. Global and regional organisations can play their part, but it seems to me that the British Government are in a unique position to play a leadership role in this area, particularly as—certainly according to the Economist—we possess more soft power than any other nation on the planet. Let us use it. In this 800th anniversary year of Magna Carta we have been constantly reminded that one of our greatest exports is the rule of law, which is undermined by criminalisation. Let us also use that heritage, which saw us play the leading role in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as the ECHR. Let us use, too, our position in the Commonwealth, in particular at the CHOGM in Malta, to ensure that its institutions bring maximum pressure to bear on countries that still deny LGBTI people the basic human rights that we take for granted.

Above all—I hope this will be one of the messages of today’s debate—we must remember that decriminalisation alone is in so many ways just the beginning of the story, not the final destination. How we build on those legal successes in supporting change at the most local level—change that is fundamental to the quality of life of LGBT citizens worldwide—will be just as crucial in securing the identity and dignity of so many of our fellow men and women.