LGBT Community and Acceptance Teaching

Mike Kane Excerpts

Wednesday 4th September 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger, and to follow that inspirational speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard), who spoke with real passion about how hate in society is rising, rather than decreasing. As a fellow football fan, I pay tribute to my football team, Manchester City—I seem to be mentioning them quite a lot this week—for all they do for the LGBT community in Manchester through getting rid of discrimination on the football terraces and promoting proper integration. My hon. Friend gave a really powerful speech.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) on securing this important debate and on such powerful testimony. I am sure every Member here wishes his researcher and his researcher’s friend well. We should all echo the thanks he gave to the health and wellbeing team here in the House, which helped him and which help other Members through a variety of issues.

Before I get into the bones of the debate, I have to say that, based on the hon. Gentleman’s inspirational speech, I will have to come out here as well: I am a Roman Catholic, which a gay friend of mine teased me about not so long ago. Honestly, we do not need collars to tell us that someone cannot partake in liturgy or sacrament, or believe in solidarity, subsidiarity, the preferential option for the poor or the universal destination of goods if they do not believe in the heart of the faith, which is human dignity. Someone who does not believe in the heart of the faith should not be able to partake in the rest of it.

We have seen much better direction under the new Pontiff, for he asked: “who are we to judge” anybody who is gay? For the record, I am the convenor of the Catholic Legislators’ network here in Westminster. The pontiff went on to say that a homosexual man or woman has the right to a family—to a father, to a mother, to a son—and their parents have the right to a son or daughter, and that no son or daughter should be cast out because of their sexuality. I think he was right to say that.

As a Mancunian, I had the great honour of delaying my departure to down here a few weeks ago, just before the recess, because the Governor of the Bank of England was launching the new £50 note at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. It has Alan Turing on it, who was obviously professor of mathematics at Manchester University, which is why that location was chosen. He is one of the greatest heroes in this country’s history. He cracked the enigma code at Bletchley, which led to the defeat of Nazi tyranny and ended the war early, saving countless millions of lives. How did we, as a society, go on to treat him—when he was living in Manchester and elsewhere—absolutely appallingly?

The hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham mentioned what we did to gay people in the ’40s and ’50s and way before that. I think we were all proud—I was not a Member at the time—when the then Prime Minister Brown offered a posthumous pardon to Alan Turing. If anybody has a chance and a few minutes to spare, they should read the speech of Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, at the launch of that note. It was a powerful, moving testimony.

There is cross-party consensus on the need for inclusive RSE. This will not do my career any good, but I have to concur with my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) that the Minister has shown some incredible personal and political leadership on this. That is the last time I will say anything like that around the Minister. I think he has probably felt the love from some of us on the Opposition Benches, including the shadow Secretary of State—my boss—my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), because of this. I have said that now, so I will move on. There will be some criticisms later.

Figures from the “School Report 2017” show that 40% of LGBT pupils are never taught anything about the issue at school. We must provide comprehensive support for our teachers. Compulsory RSE was championed by my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham, who is sat behind me, and was included in the Children and Social Work Act 2017 following her amendment. A huge debt of honour goes to her. I have issues with the Minister about how we get things on the curriculum in this country, and I am not sure my hon. Friend’s way is the best, but it is through her personal endeavour and tenaciousness over a long time that we are in the place that we are. It was also reflected in the proposals of the then Secretary of State for Education—the right hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening), who also worked very well on this—to make elements of personal, social, health and economic education mandatory in schools.

High-quality RSE will help to create safe communities—that is essentially what we are saying. Inadequate RSE leaves pupils vulnerable, particularly to abuse. I take up what the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham said about the Church and the priests. A famous Catholic theologian, Karl Rahner, said that power is a gift from God. Abuse of minors has absolutely nothing to do with homosexuality, as some people have said. It is an abuse of power. There are two types of power in our land—relational and coercive. That was all about coercive power. That point needs making strenuously.

The Government’s draft guidance clearly sets out the rights of parents and carers to withdraw children from sex education, but not relationships education. It also notes the role of parents in the development of their children’s understanding of relationships. For primary schools, the draft guidance states that headteachers will automatically grant a request to withdraw a pupil from any sex education, other than when in parts of the science curriculum. In secondary schools, parents will still have a right to request withdrawal from some or all sex education delivered as part of statutory RSE, which will be granted in all but exceptional circumstances. This will apply up until three terms before the child turns 16, at which point the child would be able to opt into sex education if they so chose.

[Sarah Champion]

This might seem like a small point, but I never got clarification on it— [Interruption.] Sorry; I was confused by the Minister. Will parents be told if their child decides to have that education in those last terms?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Kane]

Okay. I taught RSE to year 5 in primary school for many years, and we had stringent policies. People withdrawing their children would be automatically put on our safeguarding alerts. We need to think about that really seriously.

There is a danger that, without a clear steer from Government, there will be big variations between schools. We need resources going into those schools. This new framework has to be adequately funded, and it is on that that we will hold the Minister’s feet to the fire, now that he has survived another regime change and is one of the longest-serving Ministers ever. I made a Bee Gees joke yesterday; I will not repeat it today.

Children must know their rights if they are to exercise them throughout their lives. Relationships and sex education is effective when it sits as part of a whole-school approach, is embedded across the curriculum and is delivered by well trained staff. The Government must now ensure that schools have the resources to deliver that.