Merchant Shipping (Homosexual Conduct) Bill

Debate between Wendy Morton and Peter Heaton-Jones

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 20th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

No; we will not count our chickens, but I hope that in a few weeks or months it will be the case. He is truly becoming a legislative leviathan, and I congratulate him on it.

My hon. Friend follows in a long line of Back Benchers who have piloted important legislative developments in the arena of social policy through the House, and I welcome his addition to this important historical trend. I want to say, in complete support of my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley, how struck I was by the speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart). His comments, the way he framed them, and his personal testimony express better than any legal language could why we need to do this today. It is a personal matter for so many people and it has been swept under the carpet for so long. Even if this is a tidying-up exercise, if I can use that phrase, even if it is purely a symbolic change to make sure that different bits of our legislation do not give the wrong message, that sort of personal testimony is why it is so vital that we make it. I echo my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley in saying that, if anyone outside this place reads just one speech in today’s debate, it should be that of my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South.

As has been said, the change that the Bill proposes is largely a symbolic one, but it is still vital. The Bill seeks to rectify an anachronism in our current legislation, which is the law as it applies to merchant ships. The Bill would repeal certain aspects of sections 146 and 147 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, which suggest that it would be lawful to dismiss a seafarer for a homosexual act. Those sections repealed in England, Wales and Scotland and revoked in Northern Ireland laws that criminalised homosexual acts in the armed forces and aboard merchant ships. However, the two particular aspects of those sections that my hon. Friend’s Bill seeks to address today still maintain that homosexual acts could provide grounds for discharging a member of Her Majesty’s armed forces or dismissing a member of the crew of a UK merchant ship. The Armed Forces Act 2016 repealed those parts of that previous Act as they maintain their hold over the Navy—Her Majesty’s armed forces—but they left in place the aspects relating to merchant ships. As such, we still have on the statute book in this country legislation that says:

“Nothing contained in this section shall prevent a homosexual act from constituting a ground for dismissing a member of the crew of a United Kingdom merchant ship from that ship.”

I am afraid that that wording on the statute book—even though it has been superseded, I am so pleased to say, by the Equality Act 2010—gives rise to a perception that is the last thing we want as a country that has moved so far to equalise the rights of the LGBT community. That is why, as symbolic as it may be, the change that the Bill seeks to introduce is so important.

Merchant ships are in the unusual position of being both workplaces and residences, as my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), who has a habit of appearing back in her place just as she is being referred to—it is very clever; it is a skill that all Members should develop—pointed out correctly in an intervention, and that is partly why we are in the position that we are in. Many owners of merchant ships are able—because they are the outright owners of a residence as well as a workplace—to introduce and enforce rules and regulations on those vessels, as anyone in their own home can do for a visitor. They are able to ban alcohol, or smoking even by seamen in their own cabins while off duty. They can impose stringent restrictions on many other activities on health and safety grounds or merely because they feel that it is the right thing in their own residence. The danger is that, with this historical language on the statute books, that could be extended, and because merchant ships are viewed as both a residence and a workplace, one fears that some merchant ship owners could extend those powers to homosexual acts, which would be inappropriate.

[Wendy Morton]

Perhaps I should start by saying that I am not an apparition; this is Wendy Morton, the Member of Parliament for Aldridge-Brownhills. If anyone wants to learn the techniques of bobbing in and out of the Chamber, they should remember that it is always done with the permission of the Chair.

It is almost 50 years since the Sexual Offences Act 1967, and things have moved on a great deal. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is high time—or high tide almost—that the legislation was changed and that the anomaly regarding residences and workplaces was dealt with?