Relationships Education: LGBT Content

Peter Dowd Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

I would like to inform Members that the parliamentary digital communications team will be conducting secondary filming during today’s debate for its series of procedural explainers—welcome.

[Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petitions 630932 and 631529 relating to LGBT content in relationships education.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. Let me begin as usual by reading out the prayers in the petitions. The prayer in e-petition 630932 reads:

“We believe kids shouldn’t learn about this at an early age. I am sure there are many parents who do not want their or other children taught about LGBT in primary school.”

The petition closed on 12 July 2023 with 249,594 signatures, including 490 from Carshalton and Wallington. It did receive some attention because of the person who started it, so I want to clarify that they were a UK resident and that the Petitions Committee therefore felt it was appropriate to schedule this debate on the petition.

The prayer in e-petition 631529 reads:

“We believe kids should learn about this at an early age. I am sure there are many parents who want their and other children taught about LGBT issues…There is a petition to remove this content, which we believe is discriminatory. LGBT people exist, they have the same rights as the rest of us and kids should know them…without judgement or issue. Despite what their parents might believe.”

The petition closed on 20 July 2023 with 104,920 signatures, including 151 from my constituency.

In their replies to the two petitions, the Government stated that they had no intention of revising their guidelines, but they have since commissioned a review of relationships and sex education, or RSE, as I will refer to it throughout the rest of the debate. Today I want to make the case for why we should not go backwards and allow a return to the days of section 28, and to make the positive case for an inclusive, age-appropriate RSE curriculum. This is a policy the Government should be proud of rather than backing away from.

First, I want to share a little of my own story. I was at school before mandatory RSE and certainly before LGBT+ inclusive RSE. I came out very early in my secondary school career at Carshalton Boys Sports College to a few select peers and staff who I trusted. If that had happened in the days of section 28, I would of course have had to be turned away by my teachers and told to shut up about it. Instead, I was part of a school that was well ahead of its time and that not only taught us about healthy relationships and safe sex, but made sure that that teaching was inclusive of all identities, including LGBT+ people like me. I want to be clear: it was not some graphic exposure of how to have sex or the various things that people might want to do with each other behind closed doors; it was simply about the fact that LGBT+ people exist and can form loving relationships with each other just like any other person and about the precautions they should take, but it was also about how to access specific advice and support if we needed it. That was it.

I now want to set out the current framework for RSE in England, and I want to thank the House of Commons Library, Brook, the Sex Education Forum and others for their helpful briefings in advance of today’s debate. The Government’s RSE guidance of 2019 advises schools to plan a developmental and age-appropriate curriculum. Relationships education is therefore approached in ways that are relevant to the age and maturity of the pupils. For example, teaching about “Families and people who care for me” in primary school can be an opportunity to talk about the fact that some people have two dads and some have two mums.

Key messages taught throughout relationships education include that people do not have to conform to narrow stereotypes and that discrimination, bullying and prejudice are harmful and wrong. Indeed, that principle is woven throughout the British values element of school teaching, the aim of which is to encourage and foster respect, kindness, equality and inclusion. Those are British values: they are intrinsic to the ethos of most schools, and families are supportive of them.

Primary schools are not required to teach sex education or explicitly teach about LGBT+ issues; it is more about families and relationships. Parents also have the right to withdraw their child from the sex education part of RSE up to the age of 16.

The Government ask for a whole-school approach from our schools as a vehicle to deliver strategies to tackle violence against women and girls, sexual harassment —which, as we know from Ofsted reports, is rife—peer-on-peer abuse, bullying, forms of hatred such as racism and religious abuse, and much more. My concern is that removing LGBT+ content from relationships education would conflict with the existing obligation on schools under the public sector equality duty and the community cohesion duty and undermine the Government’s strategies to deliver on both.

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[Elliot Colburn]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Member, who makes a good point. Many people who produce children’s content might also produce adult content. For example, many authors write books that are aimed at adults and books that are aimed at children; that it is not unusual. Any assessment needs to reflect what is going on inside the classroom. We need the DFE to be well equipped so it has the expertise needed to ensure that any complaints that come forward can be thoroughly investigated, and that it has adequate resources in place to deal with issues when things go wrong, which is inevitable in a universal service. I would like to hear more from the Minister about that.

I will bring my remarks to an end by focusing on the societal change from the days of section 28 to where we are now. Section 28 was the ban on the teaching or “promotion”, as it was called, of LGBT+ issues. Since those days, we have been allowed to marry, to obtain a gender recognition certificate and to adopt, and we have gained many other hard-won rights. What does that mean in practice? It means there will be LGBT+ people at the school gates dropping off their much-loved children. Are we seriously suggesting to the Government that a child will have no ability to discuss why someone has been dropped off by two mums or two dads at the school gate? Of course not. Are we seriously suggesting in a digital age, when LGBT+ people are allowed to go about their lives out of the closet and in the knowledge that the state has protections against discrimination in place, that there is a way of preventing children from finding out that LGBT+ people exist? As we saw in the data, more children find out from social media than they do from schools or their parents.

It would be next to impossible to hide from children the fact that LGBT+ people exist. The Government think so, too. Their guidance for gender-questioning pupils explicitly said that it was not appropriate to continue to ask schools to hide a student who was questioning their gender from a parent because it would be next to impossible for that parent not to find out anyway in the digital age. If the Government agree with that when it comes to gender-questioning pupils, they have to be consistent and agree with that when it comes to LGBT content in the RSE curriculum.

When such content is done right, it has benefits for all. It tackles discrimination, promotes healthy relationships and reduces poor mental health. In his reply, I hope the Minister will offer a categorical assurance that the review will be focused on materials and training, and not on erasing LGBT+ people from existence. I can tell the Minister and the House quite clearly, as I am sure many others will, that no matter how hard some people might try, we are not going back in the closet. We exist, and there is nothing extreme about knowing we exist. In the RSE review, the Government should commit to examining why teachers lack the confidence to teach the subject, invest in materials to support the teaching of the subject, and not try to erase LGBT+ people from existence in the eyes of the students that teachers are there to look after.

[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

I remind Members to bob if they wish to be called. I also ask Members to address the Chair.

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[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

I am very interested in the hon. Gentleman’s analogy, but it is a bit unclear. Is he saying that we should not teach what two plus two equals at all? In other words, is he saying that we should not teach anything around relationships, including straight relationships and that there are parents, mothers and fathers? Or is he saying that he wants that to be taught, but that the only outcome he wants is that people have to be straight? That is what is not clear.

Every book, whether it be Enid Blyton, Harry Potter or whatever, mentions relationships and we talk about them when we teach literature to children. In primary schools, children are taught about how a hen lays an egg, and the egg hatches—

[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

Order.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

It would be great to know what the hon. Gentleman wants: only straight, or nothing?

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[Nick Fletcher]

My hon. Friend and I are on opposite sides of this argument. I know he does not agree with me. We have, however, both been able to speak to each other on this with respect, which I really do hope continues. I do genuinely believe that there are people out there who are struggling with gender dysphoria—

[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

Order. Could the hon. Gentleman speak through the Chair?

[Nick Fletcher]

Sorry, Mr Dowd. I do genuinely believe that there are people out there who are struggling with gender dysphoria, and I think we should treat all these people with respect and kindness. As long as we do not have biological males in single-sex spaces, as long as we do not have biological males in women’s sport, and as long as we are not indoctrinating our children with this, I have not got an issue. I genuinely believe there are people out there who are confused with this. They should be able to go to people and seek help, but I do not think they should be going to people for it to be affirmed; they should be able to have an open and free conversation about this. But there is a time and a place for it, and our schools are not the time or the place.

I and several colleagues have recently written to the Department for Education to request that parents can withdraw their child from RSHE lessons. At present, children can only be withdrawn from sex education. However, we have an industry that seems set on teaching our children that they can be the opposite sex to what they were born. They have published this material in the relationships part of their textbooks, and therefore children cannot be removed from these lessons. Parents must be able to protect their children from this ideology. They must be able to do it now, before more children are affected by this teaching. At present, we have absenteeism levels not seen before within our schools. This material is not helping.

I ask the Minister, why are we allowing this in our schools? It is a false idea with no basis in science, leading some vulnerable children to seek puberty blockers, then cross-sex hormones, then invasive, risky surgery. Those practices impact bone and brain development. They chemically castrate children. They leave vulnerable children, vulnerable young people, living with lifelong, irreversible complications.

I can see why parents would choose not to send their child to a school that is teaching this—I would not either —so what is the answer? I believe this teaching has to stop in our schools. We need to take this literature out of our schools completely, change the RSHE guidance and allow parents, as a safety net, to withdraw their children from RSHE. As a society, we should call out every organisation that is taking part in this. Individuals who are joining in with this rhetoric should stop and think, “Where does this end?” They should stop and think with regard to trans-progressive flags, the lanyards and the pronoun email footers, because where does it end for our young children when they see this? They should stop and think about fuelling confusion in society and especially in the minds of our children.

If we encounter any person who is personally struggling with this, we just need to be kind. We should not have to legislate for kindness; we should all just be decent and treat people with respect. But sometimes we also have to be cruel to be kind. Sometimes we just have to say no. Parents, teachers, every adult just needs to be strong and say no to children—no, they are not born in the wrong body.

Let me say this one more time. There are few things more dishonourable than misleading the young, and I for one will play no part in it. I hope this Department will really step up now. The Department of Health and Social Care is beginning to see the light. The Home Office is, too. I hope the Department for Education can as well.