Dame Angela Eagle
MP for Wallasey · Labour · United Kingdom
“The Kremlin increasingly relies on proxy organisations to pursue its objectives, seeking to undermine our security while maintaining a degree of plausible deniability. The so-called GRU Volunteer Corps is a clear example of that approach. It is not an independent force or a loose collection of volunteers.”
“This Government have introduced support for the Jewish communities who have been threatened and directly targeted by IRGC proxies. Just a couple of days ago, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced an extra £250 million for policing to ensure that we can support and protect our Jewish communities.”
“I will move on to the Islamic Movement of Companions of the Right. The IMCR has publicly claimed seven attacks at UK locations linked to Jewish and Israeli communities and to Persian-language media, including the antisemitic arson attack on four Hatzola ambulances in Golders Green on 23 March.”
“We expect platforms to act responsibly and not to provide space for state threat-linked activity, propaganda or recruitment. We will be keeping a close eye on that, as well as liaising with social media companies to tell them about how this law impacts them.”
“The IRGC Quds Force and the IRGC Intelligence Organisation, together with the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, form the Iranian intelligence apparatus. As a key component of the Iranian state’s security apparatus, the IRGC is answerable directly to Iran’s Supreme Leader.”
“It provides a targeted and proportionate means of disrupting those involved in foreign power threat activity based on the recommendations of Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of state threat legislation. To answer the hon.”
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“The Minister will find that, at the margins, manufacturers will try to ensure that their products are in a lower rather than a higher band, although some of the most glorious alcoholic beverages cannot begin to do that. I am thinking of spirits, such as whisky, which are much higher in alcohol. If we look at the reaction of business and manufacturers to this change, there seems to be an equal division between those with higher alcohol by volume percentages, who find themselves in the higher-taxed bands, and those in the lower-tax bands, such as beer manufacturers. There is an inverse relationship between manufacturer satisfaction and where they are in the ABV bands. The beer and cider manufacturers are basically happy, whereas the wine and spirit manufacturers are less happy.”
“He will find that definitional issues are not always easy, not least because if tax and duty are to be based on alcohol by volume, the manufacturers will switch the volumes around to get from one band into another. I am interested, philosophically, in what he thinks the right banding is to prevent too much of that. The public policy reason for having that kind of duty system is, I presume, to persuade people gently that if they are to drink alcohol products with a higher percentage of alcohol in them, they will have to pay more tax, because in general higher-alcohol products are thought to have a greater effect on health than products with less alcohol. That was always the reason, philosophically, for moving to such a system.”
“Of course not; otherwise, I am sure the Minister would be in a much worse situation than we find him in today. However, we will make that judgment after he has finished answering our questions. I genuinely welcome him to his position. It is a fantastic job, and he will be fascinated by it. He will wake up suddenly to realise that his job is to tax all vices, and how interesting that can be. The Minister is inheriting a completely different regime of alcohol taxation from the one that is about to make an exit. As he heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead, in principle, the Opposition are not opposed at all to the changes, but although there is that agreement, there is an awful lot of detail, potential issues and problems.”
“The Minister talked about simplification, and changing the system to make it easier for people to understand often brings important benefits. However, the reliefs that are coming in complicate it again. Is he satisfied that he has the right balance in extending the reliefs to the new simplified system, particularly the draft relief and the transitional relief? As the person who brought in the small brewers relief, I have a certain attachment to it, although we will not be talking about that. What revenue does the Treasury believe these reliefs will rob it of, and does he think he has the right balance in imposing a more complicated relief-based system on his simpler system?”
“Given the newness and thoroughness of the changes that the Minister has outlined, and obviously extensively consulted on, I am presuming that the Treasury will also have a review process once the introduction has happened, so that it can look at how the changes have gone and whether further tweaks are necessary. Certainly, but not surprisingly, some aspects of the industry at the higher ABV end wish the transitional arrangements for wine to be extended beyond 18 months, as the Minister would expect. Is there going to be a review process? Could the Minister briefly outline the kind of time scales that are on his mind?”
“Will he also bear in mind the balance between having changes to definitions and those detailed things that make up the essence of a system such as this, which are required by negative and affirmative procedures in this House, and guidance, which does not get to be looked at in the House? That would ensure that his welcome comments about respecting the rights of this House to effectively scrutinise how the system beds in and evolves in the future are realised. Will the Exchequer Secretary give us an undertaking that he will bear in mind the right of the House to have appropriate scrutiny rights over some of those things—not just shove everything into guidance, which does not have to come before the House at all?”
“I agree with the hon. Lady’s comments about the potential role of the Treasury Committee, although I am not the Chair—I am only one modest member. She might want to have a word with the current Chair to ask whether that is appropriate. We are clearly all interested and want the system to work effectively. We do not, however, want to see a sudden reduction in revenue, unless that is because people have started drinking less high-ABV products, and are out running and being very healthy all of a sudden. In that case, they are going to live longer and put much less pressure on our NHS. Will the Exchequer Secretary give an outline of the Treasury’s thoughts on when it will do a review?”
“It also means that HMRC has to be vigilant in protecting revenue from those taxes. Will the Minister therefore say a little about enforcement? Given the new dangers around alcohol by volume and the approach to what duties are due, will HMRC beef up its enforcement regarding not only approved producers but checking along the production line when decisions are made on what tax will be due on the particular product being manufactured?”
“If he can give us a handle on how the administration of the scheme will change, that might give us an idea of HMRC’s intention. The Minister is about to introduce a new scheme, whereby the taxation of alcohol is based on the alcohol by volume level. That creates a completely different incentive for adulteration along the production process. HMRC’s decisions about which category of duty a product is in become important in terms of what tax is due. That creates new forms of incentives for fiddling. I am not saying that everyone in the alcohol industry, by definition, wants to fiddle and avoid tax, but there will be temptations along that line, given the new focus on alcohol by volume as a way of calculating what tax is due. That makes adulteration and fiddling potentially much more valuable for avoiding tax.”
“It is obviously important, when we get on to enforcement, that we are confident that HMRC is on top of this. The Minister was a bit coy about when these clauses will come into being, so perhaps he can explain that, given that they are quite important. They are about the fitness, rightness and properness of the characters out there producing alcohol, who must be properly registered by HMRC. The Minister gave the impression that this is just a technical thing—that it is a hold-over from older laws dealt with in a more simplified and perhaps modernised way—but he was not very explicit about how it will be simpler or modernised. Can he give us some idea? Will it all be done online? Is there some modernisation such as that?”
“Despite ministerial complacency, Age UK has pointed out that, nationally, there are currently 165,000 vacancies in social care, which is a 50% increase on last year. In the Wirral, vacancies run at 16%, which is despite the Wirral paying the real living wage. That means that only 26% of hospital patients are currently being discharged from Wirral University Teaching Hospital when they are actually ready to go. Does the Minister agree that the neglect and underfunding of social care by this Government is costing more money through wasted provision in hospitals, when social care, if it were properly provided, could give a much better experience for people who are ready to leave hospital?”
“But the system that we came into this Parliament with only works if the Prime Minister has integrity and he does not keep ignoring the adviser on ministerial interests and the reports that they come up with into things like bullying by Cabinet Ministers. The fact is that we have had two of those advisers resign because their reports were not followed, and that has led to the ministerial list of interests being unavailable to the public for many, many months and many, many more changes of Government. That is completely unsatisfactory. Does the Minister not therefore agree that we need a much more rigorous, transparent system that does not rely on the honour of Prime Ministers, which can now no longer be counted upon?”
“T2. Despite the inquiry by Adam Heppinstall KC beginning over a month ago, the Cabinet Office is yet to speak to Richard Sharp regarding his appointment as BBC chairman. He was appointed to the role over two years ago. Will the Secretary of State advise the House when this inquiry intends to speak to its own subject and when we can expect it to report back its findings? This is a matter of national interest and importance.”
“Before Government Members start blaming global factors for this, global factors do not explain our alarming relative decline. They do not explain why, under this Government, the UK is stuck in the economic slow lane. All economies have had to deal with the impact of the covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine, but only the UK has managed to go from being one of the most robust economies in the G7 to one of the weakest. The decade of austerity that followed the banking crisis left us unprepared for future challenges, and Brexit has had a further dismal effect on our economic prospects. Both were deliberate Tory choices.”
“I will go straight to the right hon. Gentleman’s website as soon as his analysis is up there. Despite all the growth and back-to-work billing from Tory Central Office, this was a Budget that was treading water and going nowhere fast. There was nothing effective on falling real wages, which are now in a slump not equalled since the Napoleonic war. In fact, the OBR says that wages are expected to fall by 5.7% over the next two years—the largest fall since records began. After 13 wasted Tory years, we have a productivity problem so entrenched that the UK is now the only G7 economy that has not yet returned to its pre-covid pandemic levels of output, and the Bank of England does not expect that milestone to be reached until 2026 at the earliest.”
“The OBR shows that these stealth taxes will raise £29.3 billion because of fiscal drag, equivalent to a 4p increase in the basic rate of tax, dragging nearly 6 million people into higher tax rate bands for the next few years, and we did not hear the Chancellor refer to that in his Budget either.”
“Many are paying the mini-Budget premium as the costs of the Tory chaos last year. Rents are rising steeply, while real wages are falling for all. For those in the public sector, they are falling for the 12th successive year. Today’s Budget had nothing to say about that. Real wages are below where they were 18 years ago, and this decline is forecast to continue for at least this year and next. The Chancellor’s decision to instigate a stealth tax by freezing income tax thresholds will reduce take-home pay substantially and make the cost of living crisis worse for many already teetering on the brink.”
“That is perhaps not surprising from a Government who for 13 wasted years have completely failed to develop an industrial strategy worth the name, as they do not really believe that Governments have any legitimate role in guiding markets. We are in the middle of a brutal cost of living crisis, with sharp falls in household living standards, for which Government policies are not adequately compensating, despite the Chancellor’s welcome extension of the current energy cap until summer. Even with extended public support, energy prices are due to be 20% higher than last year. Soaring inflation has hit the poorest hardest, because energy and food costs take up a larger share of the income of the poorest. Mortgage costs are also rising, with interest rates costing those who have to refix their mortgages up to 10% more.”
“Those who caused the problems are incapable of fixing them. The Bank of England forecasts that growth will be virtually non-existent this year and anaemic next year. The OBR reveals that the economy will shrink by 0.2% this year, and it has downgraded the UK’s long-term forecast in all years afterwards. We did not discern that from what the Chancellor had to say in his Budget today. This contrasts with an average annual growth rate of 2.7% achieved between 1998 and 2007 by the last Labour Government. If that had been replicated since 2010, GDP would now be £800 billion higher. Had that happened, we would have been able to collect £300 billion in tax revenues to prepare our economy properly to face the future. In this Budget, there is little sign of the strategic planning needed to improve productivity performance, and therefore growth.”
“The last proper Budget was delivered in this House in October 2021, not by the Chancellor’s predecessor, or even his predecessor’s predecessor, but by the current Prime Minister, who was the Chancellor’s predecessor’s predecessor’s predecessor. This farcical string of irresponsible Tory Administrations has delivered only uncertainty, turmoil and chaos. What they have not delivered is the business certainty or political stability upon which economic prosperity can and must be built, and we have all paid the price. There is only one answer to dysfunction and incompetence on this scale: a wholesale change of the entire management, and I do not mean the pretend change that this Chancellor and the unelected Prime Minister represent. All of them are culpable for the bleak economic performance.”
“Do not forget that this Chancellor has pencilled in £55 billion more of austerity cuts in public expenditure, to begin conveniently after the next general election. Today, he announced a mere 1% increase in departmental spending in the future, which is ongoing and damaging austerity. We see our NHS teetering on the brink, with 7.2 million people on waiting lists and record job vacancies; our transport system is not fit for purpose; and the privatised water industry pollutes our waterways with sewage, while shareholders and executives pocket massive profits and put consumer prices up. We see a brutal cost of living crisis juxtaposed with soaring levels of private wealth for the few, and the pension tax cut for the top 1% will make that worse.”
“After 13 years in office, the Tories have given us: five Prime Ministers, with three in the past six months; seven Chancellors, with four of them in just three months; and the catastrophe of last September’s mini-Budget and the meltdown in the bond markets that it caused, unremarked upon by Government Members in today’s proceedings. They have shredded the UK’s reputation abroad and were the opposite of fiscally responsible. It is little wonder then that during this incoherent chaos the Government have delivered us the worst of all possible worlds. We have the highest tax burden for 70 years—up again as a percentage of GDP in the OBR documents today to 37.7%—alongside crumbling infrastructure and overstretched public services.”
“I am coming to some individual issues later, but obviously the fuel issue is important to those in constituencies such as that of the hon. Gentleman. The self-harm of unilaterally deciding to impose trade barriers on our closest trading partnerships was unique to the UK. It generated huge regulatory uncertainty for business, hindered the recruitment of workers and has done immeasurable and senseless damage to our economic prospects. The OBR forecast said that Brexit would cost up to 4% of GDP—twice the losses inflicted by the covid-19 pandemic—and it has. In fact, today’s OBR document shows that trade is down an alarming 15%. That is the record for which this Chancellor and the Tory party must take responsibility.”
“It is great to see you back in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker. My constituents have had similar problems trying to engage with the quinquennial review of the armed forces compensation scheme. They find it slow to make decisions, difficult to engage with and not user-friendly. When the Minister publishes the review’s findings, I hope he will come back to the House to explain how he will make the system much easier for veterans to engage with, as my constituents have told me it is very difficult indeed.”
“I commend the quick and effective action. However, although the collapse of SVB in America was partly due to liquidity issues, there is also the issue of the changes that were made to the threshold at which banks are considered systemically risky, which increased from $50 billion to $250 billion. That meant that SVB could continue in America without the very focused regulation that might have spotted this problem earlier. Does the Minister think that the Edinburgh reforms present any similar risks, and will he say a little about the exemption from ringfencing that he announced today for HSBC? Is he content that that does not present any risks either?”
“We will not see her like again, but those who knew her know what a privilege that was and what a magnificent and unique parliamentarian we were lucky enough to know and work alongside.”
“I was in the Chamber when she announced it, and there was dismay around the place, which forced her in the end to stop speaking from her prepared notes and just say, “Be happy for me!” She had decided to go at a time of her choosing after feeling that she had served the House to the best of her ability for as long she wished to do so. Betty regarded herself as a democrat. She was pro-EU, as I think the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) said in his remarks. She was a child of the Labour party. She was a Labour icon. She was, as I mentioned, one of that group of formidable women who came into the House in the 1970s. She was, above all else, a servant of Parliament.”
“She was probably the nearest thing to regal that any non-royal could be, which befits the highest commoner in the land, which of course our Speaker is. She was always impeccably fashionable, as perhaps befits the daughter of textile workers. She was clear in interviews that her dress sense had come directly from the expectations of her father for her to be presentable as she was growing up. Betty was, in private, an astute observer of the political scene, personally kind and thoughtful, and good at putting new Members at their ease while keeping them on the straight and narrow as far as procedure went. She was a stickler for tradition and a staunch protector of the rights of the House, as we have heard. There was a moan of great shock when she announced her resignation in 2000. Nobody had expected it.”
“It believes that you enjoy in abundance the qualities necessary to protect and sustain the House, and to safeguard its rights.” —[ Official Report , 27 April 1992; Vol. 207, c. 20.] She repaid that trust in spades in the eight years during which she presided. Betty was, as has been referred to in some tributes, the owner of a famously loud voice, which, of course, you need if you are in the Chair, Mr Speaker. She stamped her personality on the role and became a national treasure. She got rid of the wig, rightly assuming that her abundant shock of impeccably sculptured grey hair was a suitable alternative. She presided with, I think, great authority, wit and charm over some very difficult periods—not least the trench warfare over the Maastricht treaty.”
“It is perhaps why she appealed in this place, when we were all listening, for people to vote for what she was and what she represented rather than for how she was born. That was, I think, a pitch to the 90% of people in this place, during that election, who were not women. Betty was not John Major’s choice or the Conservative choice in that election—as we have heard, Peter Brooke was—but 72 Members of the governing party voted for her, which just shows her reach. When John Major realised that his pitch for Peter Brooke had failed, and that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) said in her tribute, people were very happy about it, he was extremely graceful in his tribute to her. He observed that she had “made history”, and said to her: “The House trusts you.”
“Three other women were elected in that election and I think we ought to remember them. Maureen Colquhoun was of the same generation as Betty, and although she had a very different parliamentary career, hers was equally as important. Jo Richardson was also returned, as was Audrey Wise. They were all formidable Labour women. It just shows what you had to be in that time to get anywhere near this place. When I was elected to Parliament in 1992, my first ever vote was in that historic Speaker’s election, which was only the third in a century. As we have heard, Betty was the first—and, so far, the only—woman to be elected Speaker in 700 years of parliamentary history. It is a tribute to her personal qualities and the regard in which she was held that she broke that glass ceiling when women made up less than 10% of that House of Commons.”
“During that struggle, she even began referring to herself as “the girl most unlikely to succeed”, but on 24 May 1973, she was successfully elected in a by-election, and she served her voters faithfully in the constituency of West Bromwich, and its successor constituency, West Bromwich, West, until 2000. I certainly do not envy my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (John Spellar), who had to try to get local coverage in the newspapers with Betty also vying for that space. The Parliament that Betty entered in 1973 was almost entirely bereft of women. When she first came to this place, only 4%, or 19, of the 635 MPs were women. That figure was to fall even lower in the February 1974 election—of which today is the anniversary, by the way—which returned 23 women, of whom 13 were Labour and, of course, Betty was one.”
“Despite being a fun-loving teenager, she was—perhaps inevitably, given that background—always serious about her politics. She said that her parents were politically minded because they were mill workers in Dewsbury during the depression years. Betty was famously a keen dancer, as we have heard, and a chorus girl who, rumour had it, even performed at the pantomime. But in the end, she chose Parliament, and she persisted so that, finally, Parliament also chose her. She did not become an MP easily, as we have heard—no woman did back then. It took her five attempts over 16 years before she was finally successful as the 95th woman ever elected to this House of Commons.”
“I speak as a current serving Member of Labour’s NEC who has some insight—more from history than personal experience—of the kinds of times that Betty went through when she was a servant of the Labour party NEC. I also speak as someone whose first vote in this House was actually in that Speaker’s election, so I started off pretty well in the 1992 to 1997 Parliament with a win, but I do not think that we won a single vote after that for the length of the Parliament. Betty was, as we have heard, born to a working-class family of textile workers in Dewsbury, the daughter of a millhand and a weaver. She later said: “I came out of the womb into the Labour movement.” Her mum and dad, Mary and Archie, were both members of the Labour party and the textile workers union when she was born.”
“May I take this opportunity to add my thoughts and condolences to the friends and family of Baroness Boothroyd? Voting for Betty to become the Speaker was the first vote in which I ever took part in this House. In the five years that that Parliament took up, I think that it was the only vote that we won. Research shows that LGBT+ young people are twice as likely to be bullied as their peers in school. For trans pupils, this can be even worse. The Secretary of State’s predecessor promised last September to issue draft guidance on supporting trans pupils. It still has not appeared, so can the Secretary of State tell us when this guidance will appear, as pupils need it and teachers are crying out for it?”
“People like that who fight for LGBT rights when they are under the most attack are our heroines in the liberation movement.”
“We did that not only in the area of outdated sexual offences, but in the workplace and in equal access to the provision of goods and services across our society. The battle to repeal the odious and harmful section 28 was particularly hard fought, but its removal was an essential requisite if we were to begin to rebuild the safety and wellbeing of LGBT+ pupils in our schools, which had been destroyed by that piece of prejudice masquerading as legislation. This morning, it gave me great pleasure to do an interview about those doughty abseiling lesbians who dropped themselves into the House of Lords 35 years ago today. They waited until the Lords had voted to include section 28 in the Bill; they did allow the debate to go on before they made their protest. They smuggled in a washing line from Clapham market under one of their donkey jackets.”
“Here in the UK, we have come a long way from the dark days when homosexuality was criminalised and LGBT people were forced by the prejudice in society to live their lives underground, constantly in fear of being discovered, mocked, blackmailed and punished. It gives me great pride to stand in what has been described as the gayest Parliament in the world—perhaps that is the law of unintended consequences. If I had been told on my first day in this place more than 30 years ago that we would have achieved this much progress during my membership of the House, I would scarcely have believed it, although I would have been very happy. I am particularly proud of the role that the last Labour Government played in ridding the statute book of discriminatory anti-LGBT legislation.”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered LGBT history month. It gives me great pleasure to open this debate. The beginning of this year’s LGBT history month gives the House a timely opportunity to consider the progress that we have made as a country in guaranteeing respect and freedom from discrimination for our diverse communities. It also gives us a chance to look at the progress, and sometimes the lack of progress, in the rest of the world. The all-party parliamentary group on global LGBT rights, which I co-chair with the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn), who is in his place, is especially concerned with that global aspect.”
“I see the effect of these gains especially in the increased visibility of LGBT+ people and their willingness to live their authentic lives in the open at last.”
“I thank my hon. Friend. I am not sure about him standing on my shoulders; I am not sure I could quite cope with that, but I understand absolutely the points he made and, unlike my response to them, they are very serious. They are a serious cause for concern and should concern everybody in this House. Returning to the transformative work of the last Labour Government in this era, I recall that we needed to invoke the Parliament Act, no less, to equalise the age of consent in the face of massively ferocious opposition and ongoing vetoes from the House of Lords. This was the heavy lifting and it was done because it was the right thing to do. These progressive gains have made our society a better and more supportive place for everyone, and they finally allowed LGBT+ people to be respected and included and to enjoy equal rights before the law.”
“Russia legislated for a modern version of section 28 and then extended its so-called anti-LGBT+ propaganda laws across society. That follows the vicious persecution of LGBT+ people in Chechnya; legislation has been passed in Hungary, with so-called LGBT-free zones appearing across the country, and anti-LGBT law is also being passed in Ghana, accompanied by open persecution of LGBT+ people. On that point, I wonder if the Minister might be able in his response to scotch persistent rumours that the Government are in the middle of trying to negotiate a Rwanda-style deal with Ghana. The implications of that for LGBT+ asylum seekers are too horrendous to contemplate, so I hope the Minister will be able to put all our minds at ease that that is not currently on the Government’s agenda.”
“The Government’s announcement of a review of those countries whose gender recognition certificates they will recognise is ominous, with rumours circulating that the Government are seeking to delist as many as 18 countries whose gender recognition certificates we currently accept. That is so that they can justify their use of section 35 of the Scotland Act 1998 to strike down the recently passed Scottish law on gender recognition. Surely the best way forward would be to have, not that confrontation, but a sensible discussion to find a way through. I urge the Government to reconsider their confrontational stance. I hope the rumours of delisting are not true and that the Minister can reassure us on that point, because such a move would take away existing rights. Many countries are at risk of going backwards on LGBT+ rights.”
“There is no contradiction between LGBT+ rights and women’s rights that is not adequately covered in the Equality Act 2010. Trans rights which grant them respect and dignity are not a threat to anyone, and I say that as a lifelong feminist and a lesbian. It is obvious that we are now in the midst of a well-organised global backlash against LGBT+ rights. It is well-funded, ferocious and potentially deadly for LGBT+ people. Its adherents range across the globe, from President Putin to Steve Bannon, from Viktor Orbán to ex-President Trump. Its aim is to reverse progress and, sadly, our own country is by no means immune to these global issues.”
“The Prime Minister spent his leadership election campaign pledging to save, and I quote him, “our women” from the supposed threat of trans people, and we currently have an Equalities Minister—not the Minister opposite, the right hon. Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew), I hasten to add—who feels able to use the term trans women and predator in the same sentence, as if the two were somehow inherently the same. Although she appears to have lost the battle, it was reported that she wished to exclude trans people completely from the proposed ban on conversion therapy even though they are more likely than anyone else to be subjected to it. For the record, I believe that the cause of equal rights best advances when the interests of all those who have suffered discrimination in the past advance. We advance together.”
“Some of it, I am sad to say, has been provoked deliberately by the disgraceful targeting and problematising of transgendered people by some members of the Government and their enablers in the press. We are currently in the middle of a full-blown hysteria which targets transgender people using many of the tropes and smears which those of us who lived through the ’80s remember only too well being used against gay men and lesbians. Trans people, especially trans women, are disgracefully being portrayed as automatically predatory, inherently dangerous to women and children and somehow responsible for all the violence against women which plagues our society. That is an offensive caricature which does not bear relation to the truth.”
“I hope we can hear from the Minister in his response some indication of precisely how and when the Government will do that. I note the recent announcement of a draft Bill, which is welcome, but as yet there is no detail on when it might be enacted, or what it will actually consist of. As the delay lengthens, vulnerable LGBT+ people are left at risk of this unacceptable abuse. Secondly, the Government should be tackling the rising tide of anti-LGBT+ hate crime. Currently in the UK, the atmosphere is becoming increasingly hostile, with a 42% increase in reported hate crime targeting sexual orientation and a 56% increase in the targeting of transgender people. Some of this is associated with the backlash I mentioned earlier, to which I will return.”
“Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) pointed out, and a threat that we may go backwards here and in the rest of the world. In the UK, we are approaching the 20th anniversary of the repeal of section 28, the 10th anniversary of the equal marriage Act and, incidentally, the 25th anniversary of my own coming out, but there are still things on our immediate to-do list. First, the Government must fulfil their pledge to legislate for a comprehensive ban on conversion therapy. That must include all LGBT+ people and not be rendered ineffective by either a religious or a consent loophole. For let us be in no doubt: conversion therapy is torture, it is inherently abusive and damaging, and five years after pledging action it is past time for this Government to act.”
“None of it happened automatically as if there was always going to be an inevitable progression from less enlightening times to a more enlightened present day. This progress was not inevitable. It had to be campaigned for; it had to be fought for; it had to be won. And it was won, often in the teeth of fierce opposition from the red-top tabloids and some in the Conservative party who put section 28 on the statute book and blighted the lives of generations of children—although I am glad to see that there has been progress there too, and I genuinely welcome Conservative Members to the ongoing fight to maintain and strengthen the gains we have made, because there is no doubt that there is a backlash, as my hon.”
“It is almost like my hon. Friend can read my mind—which is a slightly worrying prospect—because I am going to come on to make precisely that observation. These gains have led to the increased visibility of LGBT people and confidence among our community for them to live their lives as they wish, in the open. I also see it in the recent census returns, which show an increased propensity of young people to define themselves as LGBT+ without the stigma that that label would have presented in the past. There are those who regard this as a bad thing and call it a “social contagion,” but I regard it as a welcome freeing of our society from oppressive norms which imprisoned people and narrowed their lives, depriving them of the chance to flourish and live their lives more truthfully. None of this was easily accomplished.”