Lesbian Visibility Week

Rachel Taylor Excerpts

Thursday 24th April 2025 Westminster Hall

[Kate Osborne (Jarrow and Gateshead East) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Lesbian Visibility Week.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Butler. In this debate we are considering that this House believes LGBTQIA+ women and non-binary people should be recognised for the work that they do and the joy that they bring.

Lesbian Visibility Week originated in 1990, and has been given life and observed annually in the UK since 2019, enabled by my good friend and ex-publisher of DIVA magazine, Linda Riley. I am so pleased that we are once again acknowledging its importance in a Parliament that boasts the largest number of openly lesbian, bisexual and gay women MPs in history.

Maureen Colquhoun, the first openly lesbian MP, was elected 51 years ago but was deselected by her local party the year she came out—a stark reminder of the struggles faced by lesbian politicians. It took 23 years for there to be another openly lesbian MP. Thankfully, there are now a lot more of us, including some of my brilliant colleagues who will be speaking in this debate.

Lesbian and gay women face intersecting discrimination based on their gender and sexuality, and of course, people of colour and lesbians with disabilities also face unique challenges and discrimination due to intersecting identities. But while it is crucial to address those challenges, it is equally important to celebrate the significant contributions that lesbians make in fostering solidarity and sisterhood within their communities. Lesbian women have played, and will always play, a pivotal role in not only supporting each other but leading and strengthening the broader women’s and LGBT+ rights movements.

For the past five years we have set aside this week in April to celebrate and uplift lesbians everywhere, from all backgrounds and all walks of life. We are a community that grows stronger each and every year for it. This year, the theme is celebrating rainbow families, focusing on LGBT+ women and non-binary people’s families and recognising the importance of all family structures.

On Tuesday night I was proud to host the second annual parliamentary launch of Lesbian Visibility Week. At the event, London Women’s Clinic launched its new IVF equality manifesto. As a mum of two wonderful boys, one of whom was conceived through IVF, it is a subject close to my heart. Everyone deserves the chance to start a family, no matter their sexuality or gender identity.

It was around 16 years ago that I started the IVF process as part of a same-sex couple. At that time we went through unnecessary procedures, a long waiting list and significant costs. But despite the hurdles it was achievable, and my wonderful youngest son is now 14. Since the IVF journey that I was part of, the hurdles that LGBT+ couples have to jump through have increased, with a fragmented NHS meaning a postcode lottery in provision, while the financial cost is significantly higher.

The event was attended by many MPs and guests, and I thank everyone who came. I particularly thank the Minister for Equalities, my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Dame Nia Griffith), for attending the event and speaking, and for responding to this debate, as well as DIVA’s Linda Riley and Anya Sizer from the London Women’s Clinic for their speeches. It is disappointing that despite multiple promises there remain far too many unnecessary financial and practical barriers for same-sex couples, and a postcode lottery on IVF. I have written to the Secretary of State and Ministers on that on a number of occasions, and I will keep fighting until all barriers are removed.

I have dedicated most of my political career to campaigning for LGBTQIA+ equality. My first political activism was campaigning against section 28 and highlighting the damage it did, and continues to do, to our community. Section 28 was intended to silence the discussion of lesbians and gays. It failed. It united and energised our communities.

[Rachel Taylor (North Warwickshire and Bedworth) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. Like her, my first political activism was campaigning against section 28; that is what made me join our wonderful party. I feel truly supported by her and by my other lesbian colleagues in this place. It was that rhetoric, and comments that our relationships and families were somehow pretend family relationships, that was so hurtful. Does she agree that we now need to safeguard against the risks of the rhetoric about trans people doing the same sort of harm to them as it did to us in the 1980s?

[Kate Osborne]

I absolutely agree, and will touch on that later. As a community, we are always stronger when we are together, and we will always have T as part of the LGBT community.

Given the global attacks on our LGBT+ community, we need to find that fighting spirit again. The attacks on our community did not just start happening again; they were driven by far-right money from America, hate in this country and globally, the media and—yes—politicians, who should know better, continuing to demonise the LGBT+ community. Last year, I spoke about the increase in the lesbophobia that I faced: from being called a rug-muncher to being called a nonce, and having pride flags in my home town of Hebburn ripped down.

We have seen a rise in hate crime, and we must make active efforts to support our non-binary and trans community, who still face unique day-to-day challenges for simply being themselves and loving who they love. Under current hate crime legislation, hate crimes based on race or religion can attract a greater penalty because they are classified as aggravated offences. Our manifesto committed to ensuring that hate crime based on sexual orientation, gender identity and/or disability would also be classified as aggravated offences. I look forward to hearing from the Minister about moves towards that happening.

I sit on the Council of Europe and its committee on equality and non-discrimination. Part of my brief is reporting on the ban on so-called conversion practices across Europe. As part of that, I visit and speak to people in other countries about their legislation. One country was Italy. Outrageously, the official visit request was rejected, and I was unofficially told that this was because they did not want more of our finger-wagging critique. Thankfully, the very nice Maltese Government have offered us a visit instead.

Just last month, as I got off a train at King’s Cross, I was verbally abused by a man who shouted at me that I was obviously a lesbian, that I was a sexual deviant and that I was going to hell. I am frequently misgendered. I do not mean occasionally—it is a weekly occurrence. In January, I was misgendered three times during one two-hour train journey. I have been misgendered by staff of this House. I was misgendered while buying some jeans last week. This is genuinely a frequent issue for me and a number of my lesbian friends.

I note that Ministers said yesterday that there will be guidance regarding the Supreme Court verdict. That decision will have a huge impact on my life, on many other cis lesbians and, indeed, on heterosexual women. I suspect that I will get challenged even more now when accessing facilities. The impact on my life will be problematic, but the impact on my trans siblings’ lives will be significantly worse.

--- Later in debate ---

[Antonia Bance (Tipton and Wednesbury) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Ms Butler. I congratulate my hon. Friend and sister the Member for Jarrow and Gateshead East (Kate Osborne) on securing this debate. I am a proud trade unionist, a proud Black Country MP and a proud lesbian MP—out for 26 years and now out here in this place. I rise to add my voice and my visibility to the debate. I could talk about the advances made by Labour Governments or the advances we hope for from this Labour Government, but instead I want to talk about a subject very close to my heart, the subject of this year’s Lesbian Visibility Week: being a mama.

There have always been lesbian mums. So many of us feel the urge to parent and to mother, often—sometimes in the past, sometimes today—in the face of huge homophobia and abuse, as well as practical obstacles. Indeed, a Radio 4 documentary in December, “The Lesbian Mothers Scandal”, set out how homophobic judges removed children from their mums simply because they were lesbians and sometimes gave custody of the children to abusive fathers. These women, who are now in their 70s and 80s, deserve an apology for the actions of the courts and the family court system. I hope the Minister will look at giving it.

I say again what I said in my maiden speech a few months ago:

“I grew up in a world where people like me could not get married, but now our beloved daughter has both her mothers’ names on her birth certificate.”—[Official Report, 8 October 2024; Vol. 754, c. 194.]

One of the proudest achievements of our last Labour Government, but one that people sometimes do not speak of, was the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008. For the first time, it recognised lesbian parents with both our names on birth certificates, and it opened fertility treatment to us, as well as to single women. Sometimes I think it is missed off the list of achievements of the last Labour Government, because it was an achievement for women in particular.

Now that we have a Labour Government again, it is time to take the next step, for all the lesbians who would like to have a family, and make sure that we equalise fertility treatment on the NHS. It is so clear that lesbian women still face unequal barriers to accessing fertility treatment. They face an average cost of £25,000 before they become eligible for NHS treatment, because of the need to jump through the hurdles of self-funded IUI rounds—sometimes many rounds—before they qualify. My own integrated care board, the Black Country ICB, requires lesbian couples to undertake six cycles of self-funded IUI before they are eligible for IVF. That is in addition to the cost of donor sperm, which I know for sure is not cheap. In my area, just one cycle of IVF is funded, not three as per the NICE guidelines.

The financial impact of self-funding is huge. For many couples, the disappointment when one IVF round is not enough is completely avoidable. I would like to see revised NICE guidelines and a commitment that every area should meet those guidelines in full. After all, as well as being Lesbian Visibility Week, this week is Infertility Awareness Week. I send my solidarity to all the women and their partners who are trying to conceive—TTC, in the language of the message boards.

[Rachel Taylor]

I recently spoke to a constituent who wanted to have a baby with her partner. She was told by her ICB that because of her partner’s situation—her partner already had a child—she would not qualify for any rounds of IVF. I looked into it and found that to be the case in other ICBs too. This needs to be taken into account as people enter new relationships. That is so important for our community.

[Antonia Bance]

My hon. Friend and sister is absolutely correct. There are a load of stupid barriers that do not reflect modern families and how we form our relationships nowadays. People do form second partnerships, and people do have existing children. Frankly, when many people are delaying childbearing and when fertility problems are on the rise, although in many cases they are completely soluble with medical treatment that we know very well how to do, the fact that these barriers continue to exist is absolutely outrageous. Too many women are navigating a postcode lottery and unfair rules, piling costs on their credit cards—I know about that—and worrying about money when they should be concentrating on the medical process.

In this place, books for children depicting all sorts of families were once decried as depraved and were used as justification to deny that lesbian families existed, to silence us and to call our families pretend. No longer. Heather does have two mummies, and so do Sam, Sanjay, Jessie, Aaron, Lily, Albie, Clementine and so many more, because it is love that makes a family.