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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“This is money that is currently spent in our local economy but which will disappear overnight. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimates that these cuts threaten to push 750,000 people into poverty and 500,000 further into deep poverty, which is defined as being more than 50% below the poverty line. There are 6,000 children whose parents are reliant on UC in my Wallasey constituency. This callous cut will be the difference between them putting food on the table or not in the coming months. Analysis by Action for Children found that almost 30% of children in Wallasey already live in poverty after housing costs. In supporting this cut, every Conservative Member is voting in full knowledge of its effects. The Government’s own leaked assessment has described the cut as “catastrophic”.”
“On the final night of the Tory party conference, as the Government wine and dine their billionaire donors, the same Ministers have decreed that millions of our fellow citizens will face the biggest cut to social security benefits since the 1930s. On 6 October, the Government will ram through their plan to scrap the £20 uplift to universal credit, at a stroke leaving 6 million households more than £1,000 worse off a year. By next April, 2.5 million will be £1,300 worse off because their national insurance tax contributions will rise by 10%. In Wallasey alone, more than 10,000 households will lose £10.5 million in support. That money provided a vital lifeline to those struggling throughout this pandemic, many of them key workers. This callous Government have made a political choice to withdraw that support.”
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Is it not a disgrace that the Government have developed this habit of abstaining completely from Opposition day votes because they do not have the guts to oppose in the Lobby the things that we suggest, and they are frightened of the effect that it will have in their constituencies? It was once the case that when Governments lost Opposition day votes they put into effect the will of the House. This Government are showing such contempt for the House that they cannot even be bothered to take part in these votes. Is that not a disgrace? Is there anything, as a House, that we can do to prevent this despicable behaviour?”
“Surely any beating crime plan worth its name should include fraud. Ministers must be aware that a person is more likely to be victim of fraud than of any other crime, yet according to the Home Affairs Committee, a mere 3% of cases reported to Action Fraud even result in a charge or a summons, let alone a conviction. The system is failing and failing badly. When are Ministers going to do something about it?”
“In Wirral there has been a 13% increase in levels of infection in one week, and sadly four people have died in hospital. After a period of there being very few deaths, we now have a much higher infection rate. What level of deaths are the Government prepared to accept from covid before they consider measures to try to prevent the ongoing spread?”
“I rise to express sympathy with the point made by the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) about this dribbling out of Budget announcements. These days, we have trinity Budgets, not one Budget: we have Ways and Means motions when it suits the Treasury. The change of behaviour on fiscal issues, Budgets and tax announcements in which the Government are indulging does not lead to decent policy making, and nor does it help Parliament to hold the Government to account. Rather than the ongoing dribbling out of Budget and tax proposals when it suits the Government rather than the House, let us get back to having one fiscal event and one Budget when the Red Book is published so that we can properly hold them to account.”
“My hon. Friend is making the right sort of points. Government Members do not like it, but they need to listen to it. Does she agree that when the Prime Minister signed the guarantee on the tax lock in the 2019 general election campaign, he also told the country that he had an oven-ready plan for reforming social care, prior to the pandemic? He cannot have signed the tax lock, as well as having a plan for social care, if one of those things was not exactly true.”
“Is the hon. Lady worried that the Government appear to be increasing taxes at a far earlier stage of the economic recovery from the pandemic than similar economies?”
“It will exacerbate the unfairness and inequality that scar our society and that have been highlighted by the covid pandemic’s unequal effect on the poor and vulnerable. This tax hike has been presented by the Government as an historic move to fix the social care system, but in reality it is nothing of the sort.”
“This announcement cynically breaks a guarantee personally signed by the Prime Minister at the last election that he would not put national insurance contributions up. That was one of two solemn manifesto pledges that he tore up yesterday, which makes me ask why anyone should believe what any future Tory election pledge says, ever again. While proclaiming that they are the party of low taxation, the Conservatives have ushered in the largest tax rise in generations and now preside over a country with the largest percentage tax take in peacetime, but it is not a fair tax system. It continues the shift in tax liabilities away from those who make their income from owning assets to those who work. It exacerbates the three-body problem with self-employment, encouraging evasion, and it leaves wealth largely unscathed.”
“I look forward to seeing the right hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry) in the Division Lobby tonight. What we witnessed yesterday was a Budget in all but name. It was a Budget sprung on this House with minimal warning and leaked to friendly newspapers over the weekend, but with scant detail being made available to Members of this House in a statement full of the deliberate obfuscations that have come to define this most slippery and unreliable of Prime Ministers. And today the Government are attempting to bounce it through the House before their own Back Benchers rise up in revolt. Some things are abundantly clear, despite the Government’s attempted sleight of hand.”
“We had the Wanless report, rising real wages and a buoyant economy, and we did a lot of work with civil society and communities before we introduced the rise. We did not just pull it out of a hat like a rabbit. It led to a 6% increase per year in funding for the NHS, not the 3.5% that this measure will lead to.”
“The huge cuts to local authorities over the same period have stretched the care system beyond breaking point, yet the Prime Minister had nothing to say about any of that yesterday.”
“It is far from certain that the NHS will not simply swallow up all the money allocated from the tax increase to try to tackle the backlogs in the NHS caused by Government cuts and exacerbated by the effects of the covid pandemic. This new money will not make up for the huge cuts that this Government have been responsible for making to the social care system in the past 11 years. Age Concern estimates that 1.5 million people in need of care have been denied it as a result of the 7.5% per head cut in funding that this Government have delivered since they were first elected in 2010. The burden has fallen on family members and unpaid carers, many of whom have had to put their lives on hold to deliver care to loved ones with little or no support.”
“The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point, especially given the effect on those young people who are having to repay their student loans, which takes their effective marginal tax rate close to 50%. We have to look at the fairness of that. This is not a plan to reform social care. A mere 15% of the extra £36 billion raised in the next three years is earmarked for social care and the mechanisms by which that will be dispensed are unclear, but vital to any prospect of an improved outcome. Indeed, they are so unclear that the Minister could not give us any insight into them during his opening remarks. This new money will not be available until 2023 and it will therefore not help a single family struggling now with the catastrophic cost of paying for their loved ones to access social care.”
“Those trying to provide domiciliary care were not even mentioned, and nor was the growing army of carers. Protecting the assets of those needing to access care for long periods is not a substitute for fundamental reform of the system; it is not a plan for social care. It is a sign that the Government are dodging a long overdue and necessary reform. The Prime Minister’s so-called plan breaks election promises. It is half-baked, inadequate and unjust.”
“At the moment, there are 112,000 vacancies in the care sector, and staff turnover is 34% a year. That indicates the need for fundamental reform. The pay for working in an Amazon warehouse or a supermarket is higher than the pay for caring. Surely that is wrong. The covid pandemic and the shameful betrayal of care workers and those who require care, which unfolded during the first wave of covid-19, told us all we needed to know about the ramshackle nature of a system that this Government have allowed to teeter on the verge of collapse for the past 11 years. The Prime Minister’s announcements are totally inadequate to the scale of the task, if there really is a plan to fix social care. All that those who work in care got out of his statement was a tax rise and no pay increase. Those trying to access care now got nothing.”
“No, because I would run out of time. This is not a plan for social care, even though the Prime Minister is claiming that it is. The system needs fundamental reform, but this is tinkering at the edges. A real reform of social care would involve wholesale change from top to bottom. It would deal with those who require care now, not ignore them and their needs as the Government have done. There is nothing for them in the Prime Minister’s announcement. A real reform would have a plan for care workers and their future, with training, career progression, decent pay and an end to zero-hours contracts, to low minimum wage remuneration, to 15-minute appointments with no pay for the time it takes to drive from one client to another and to fragmented contracts that wreck lives.”
“Given that the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have already decided to break their manifesto commitment on overseas aid and are now gearing up to break their solemn manifesto promises on the tax lock and the pensions triple lock, why should any voter believe ever again that a Tory manifesto promise is worth the paper it is written on?”
“The Prime Minister seemed to be making an argument earlier that he had anticipated something similar to what went on, by having the rapid response force ready and waiting. Why, then, were he and the Foreign Secretary both on their holidays when this catastrophe happened?”
“The clue is in the dripping contempt for anything different. Anything that does not share the current Tory world view is beyond the pale and ripe for destruction.”
“That will make scarcely a dent against the £400 billion that the Government have borrowed and splashed around with such abandon during the pandemic, so money raising cannot be a reason behind the Government’s intention either. What on earth is going on? Why are Ministers hellbent on this destructive act? When we look at the flimsy arguments that Ministers have used to justify this cultural vandalism, it is hard not to draw the more obvious political conclusion that the Government wish to destroy Channel 4 because they do not like the fact that it caters for diverse audiences and different viewpoints—that they are pursuing a hegemonic media project to control public discourse and they do not like dissenting voices. There are some hints around. The output of Channel 4 has been described by one Tory MP as woke rubbish.”
“All 4, Channel 4’s advertising-funded video-on-demand service, has just posted results that demonstrate a 25% increase in views of its streaming services. Channel 4’s social platforms have had 4.2 billion content views. That once more demonstrates that Channel 4 is evolving to compete in the rapidly changing media environment of on-demand without changing its structure or ownership. Ministers have claimed that Channel 4 needs access to capital to compete, but its executives have denied that that is the case, and its record of producing innovative programming in a unique way bears them out. Privatisation is often justified as a money-raising effort, but as Channel 4 does not produce content in-house, it has no lucrative back catalogue, and its value has been estimated at between £1 billion and £2 billion.”
“Last year, he told an audience at the Tory party conference that the channel was struggling financially, but it is not. It has just returned its highest ever pre-tax surplus of £74 million, despite the disruption caused by the pandemic. Ministers and some Tory MPs have also attempted to justify their obsession with an irreversible privatisation by claiming that UK media players need scale to compete with the Americans, but not all of them do. Moreover, Channel 4 is competing superbly well with the Americans in their own backyard, as its haul of Oscars shows. It is not trying to be a huge, mega-global media player. That was never its purpose. It occupies an incredibly valuable niche of distinctively British programming with a distinctive voice of its own.”
“Any sale is likely to reverse that decentralisation to the regions and would destroy the hubs before they had had a chance to establish themselves. That is a peculiar manifestation of the Government’s self-proclaimed mission to level up, whatever we think that oft-used slogan actually means. Why destroy a unique institution that more than pulls its weight in the national interest? Ministers have been desperate to find arguments to revive the privatisation threat for a sixth time, and appear obsessed with completing this irreversible destruction despite the fact that there is no merit whatever in the proposal. The Minister for Media and Data, whose response to the debate I eagerly await, has had it in for the channel for decades.”
“Crucially, the country would have been much poorer in cultural terms if such unusual, diverse voices and talents had remained undiscovered and unfulfilled, their voices and viewpoints stifled and unheard. That model has proved to be robust and resilient, and it has come through the pandemic in good shape, so why on earth are the Government seemingly hellbent on destroying such a successful and innovative system? Only five years ago, after an 18-month review, the then Culture Secretary, the right hon. Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley), described Channel 4 as a “precious public asset” and declined to privatise it. She did, however, require it to establish hubs in the regions, which it is doing in Glasgow, Bristol and Manchester, alongside a new national headquarters in Leeds.”
“It works with more than 300 production companies a year, and has been responsible for directly investing £12 billion in the independent production sector since being established in 1982. That supports 10,000 jobs in the supply chain, a third of which are in the nations and regions of the UK. It also means that Channel 4 effectively acts as a kind of early-stage venture capital fund that takes risks and is able to finance innovation. It is absolutely clear that the channel’s more risky and experimental programming would never see the light of day if it had to search for commercial backing. If it were not for Channel 4, many exciting and successful careers for writers, directors and performers might simply never have happened.”
“Its successful TV output this year alone includes the AIDS drama “It’s a Sin”; a comedy about a female Muslim punk band, “We Are Lady Parts”; and the magnificent “Grayson’s Art Club”, which got many of us through the lockdown in better shape than we would have been in without it. The support the channel has given to the Paralympics has been inspirational and genuinely groundbreaking. Its news output, although controversial with Conservative MPs, includes “Unreported World”, the Heineken of news because it reaches the parts that others simply do not go to. Since Channel 4 is prevented from undertaking any in-house production, it has played a leading role in growing the UK’s world-leading independent TV production sector.”
“Channel 4 has also nurtured a younger audience, which makes it especially attractive to advertisers and to those who wish to sponsor content. Channel 4’s public service broadcasting remit obliges it, among other things, to be innovative, inspire change, nurture talent and offer a platform for alternative, culturally diverse voices. In the 39 years since its creation, Channel 4 has fulfilled its remit—and more. It has become a pint-sized film powerhouse with 37 Oscars and 84 BAFTAs. Film4, its production arm, has co-financed successes such as “The Favourite”, “Slumdog Millionaire” and “12 Years a Slave”, to name but a few.”
“Channel 4 was established in 1982 with an unusual structure and remit. It is Government owned but wholly commercially funded, which means that it costs the taxpayer nothing. More important, Channel 4 has no shareholders and is free to reinvest all the surplus it can generate back into content production. That enables it to develop adventurous and experimental programming that would never find more conventional commercial backing and would therefore never see the light of day if Channel 4 did not exist in its current form. Over the years, Channel 4 has developed such programming with some panache, and as a consequence the UK has a thriving cultural pool of TV and film production talent and punches well above its weight in the soft-power stakes of cultural influence on the global stage.”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered privatisation of Channel 4. I am very relieved to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Deputy Speaker, and thankful to have secured this timely debate on the future of Channel 4. Ministers have made it clear, for the sixth time, that they want to privatise Channel 4. They have issued what they ludicrously describe as a consultation document, in which they reveal that their preference is wholesale, 100% privatisation of Channel 4. They have also decreed that the exercise will close on 14 September, which leaves little parliamentary time to resist this act of wanton cultural vandalism and leaves the public only the summer holiday period in which to notice the existential threat that the Government’s actions pose to one of the most successful experiments in UK broadcasting history.”
“Finally, how will flogging off Channel 4, possibly to one of the corporate digital giants, preserve the UK’s unique voice in the age of bland corporate entertainment? I look forward to hearing the Minister’s detailed answers.”
“That may serve the immediate interests of what some in the Conservative party believe, but it does not serve the interests of the country. How does the Minister think that it is in the country’s cultural interests to destroy Channel 4? Will his Department prepare and publish an impact assessment of its privatisation plans? How do the Government intend to change the remit of Channel 4 to facilitate a sale? How will privatisation protect innovative and experimental programming that comes from diverse and often unheard voices? Ministers have also announced that the current ban on in-house production could end with privatisation. That would put the UK’s thriving independent production sector and the 10,000 jobs that it supports directly at risk. How will the Government protect the sector?”
“Already, the big beasts—Disney, Netflix, Discovery, Google and Amazon—are beginning to circle, and the Minister for Media and Data is spending his time facilitating the interests of those corporate big beasts by hinting that in-house production will be allowed following privatisation and that Channel 4’s “edgy” remit will be changed. So there we have it: a sale that threatens to destroy in one fell swoop the independent production industry that Channel 4’s remit and inability to produce in-house have fostered in the UK for the past 40 years. That is deliberate vandalism of all that is unique and successful about Channel 4. If privatisation happens, the bland dullness of US corporate regurgitation may well await us all.”
“A complaint was made to Ofcom, but it was subsequently thrown out. To silence such dissent in the future, the Government have decided that Channel 4 will be privatised, and Ofcom taken over by new, hard-line appointees. The BBC has already been cowed. Our national discourse is being drained of different voices as a deliberate act of political ideology. That reminds me more of the authoritarian events going on in Hungary than of something I ever expected to witness in the UK. I hope the Government will step back from the brink that they have moved towards. For Channel 4, privatisation will be irreversible—an act of vandalism that does irreparable damage to a model that has worked well and provided a unique source of innovation and support, nurturing a vibrant independent production industry that should be the pride of our country.”
“I look forward to the right hon. Gentleman being one of, I hope, more than 40 Conservative MPs who appear in the Lobby to vote against any such privatisation proposals. If he can raise that number, I hope to be in the Lobby with him. It is certainly the case, though, that “Channel 4 News” has refused to be cowed by the Government’s none-too-subtle attempts to intimidate it. Those manifested themselves most notoriously during the 2019 general election when—this may be the real reason that we are seeing what we are—the Prime Minister was replaced by a melting ice sculpture in the Channel 4 leaders’ debate on climate change, which he had characteristically shirked. Following that incident, an unnamed Tory source briefed that Channel 4 would be privatised as punishment for lampooning the prime ministerial no-show.”
“It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Fovargue. That is two Chairs in one debate. I am disappointed that the Minister declined to allow me to question him, since this is my debate. I do not think our arguments have been backward looking, and many of us have made the point that Channel 4 is already evolving. This is the question I would have put to the Minister, had he allowed me to do so: why have the Government made it clear that their preference is for 100% privatisation of Channel 4? If the consultation is open-minded, they would not have been so firm in their view. It appears to me, from reading the documents, that the Government have already decided that they are going to flog off the entirety of Channel 4. They have made that clear in the way the consultation is worded.”
“We need to know how Channel 4—which offers unique things to our country, many of which we have heard about today—can be facilitated, not changed out of all recognition, and that it can look forward to a future in a changing media environment that preserves all that we value it for. Question put and agreed to . Resolved , That this House has considered privatisation of Channel 4.”
“I agree with the last two points the hon. Gentleman has made, although I am not sure I agree with the point about the Treasury, as selling off Channel 4 would not raise much money. That makes the threat to the model and to the remit all the more problematic, especially, as many hon. Members have pointed out, with respect to the ongoing health of our independent sector, its ownership of IP and the trade benefits that that gives us. I hope the Minister will in future demonstrate, more than he has today, an open mind on what is happening with Channel 4, and will be more forthcoming, more quickly, on how he thinks the remit will change and whether the in-house production ban will remain.”
“I hope that I will get an equally happy response to my question. The Secretary of State has said that he is anticipating as many as 100,000 covid infections daily. If that were actually to happen, according to his figures how many people would he expect to be hospitalised, and how many would he expect to develop long covid as a result?”
“We have further to go to ensure that those theoretical rights exist in reality in our country and in the world. I for one will continue to fight until LGBT equality is achieved.”
“On 27 March 2019, this House took a historic decision when it voted by 538 to 21 to approve a set of draft regulations to introduce inclusive sex and relationship education in our schools, putting it on a statutory footing. That guarantees that children are properly equipped for adult life and ensures that they can be supported to live a happy and safe life. The Government must recognise and defeat the challenge posed to Parliament’s intention by the organised demonstrations outside schools which lie about the content of the lessons and seek to foster panic and hatred, while intimidating children and teachers. They must be robustly dealt with. We have come a long way in our campaign to ensure that LGBT+ people are a part of our society, with equal rights under the law.”
“To address another myth head on, that does not mean that Keith will be able to identify as Kathy whenever they choose and then switch back again. It means that trans people can establish their legal status in a simple process and do the things that the rest of us take for granted, such as getting married in the right gender or having their pension and insurance policies administered in the right gender. The current bureaucratic, demeaning and intrusive process, which involves them having to get doctors to agree that they are suffering from a mental illness and to certify that they have lived in their preferred gender for two years, is no longer fit for purpose. Again, I implore the Government: you promised you would do this, now just get on with it.”
“The battle for equal treatment, dignity and human rights for all can be achieved only with empathy and solidarity between those who have been oppressed by discrimination and bigotry and their allies. Change is achieved by working together. That is why some seek to foment fear and division to prevent progress to a fairer society, free of all discrimination. The Government continue to claim that the UK is a world leader in LGBT rights. For that to be the case, they must stop giving a green light to those stoking fears and isolating an already vulnerable community that feels under siege and increasingly abandoned. The Government must follow international best practice and allow trans and non-binary people to obtain legal gender recognition through a simple administrative process.”
“Instead, they appear to be much more focused on encouraging the waging of a disgraceful hybrid war on Stonewall because it is trans-inclusive. The Government should concentrate instead on modernising the arrangements around gender recognition to make them more humane. Trans people are finding themselves under siege, used as an excuse to bring back the same old anti-LGBT tropes, which those of us who are old enough to have experienced them recognise from the 1980s: stirring up fear about predators, safety in bathrooms and, most insultingly of all, the safety of children. This Government seem to have completely forgotten that at the heart of this long-overdue reform are people who are just trying to live their lives. I am a proud lesbian, a proud feminist and a trans ally, and I see absolutely no contradiction between any of these values.”
“The UN independent expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity has concluded that conversion therapy is “degrading, inhuman and cruel in its very essence”. The US independent forensic expert group on conversion therapy has concluded: “All practices attempting conversion are inherently humiliating, demeaning, and discriminatory”, and that they “generate profound feelings of shame, guilt self-disgust, and worthlessness”. It is no wonder that those subjected to conversion therapy often suffer mental health breakdown as a direct result, so what on earth are the Government waiting for? They should now proceed with a complete ban, with no loopholes. The Government have reneged on their own stated intention of reforming the Gender Recognition Act.”
“A full 12 months have passed since the Prime Minister’s pledge to ban conversion therapy. We are told that a Bill is in the works—I sincerely hope one is—but all we have seen are the assurances given to the Evangelical Alliance that “religious freedoms” will be upheld. If the forthcoming Bill creates exemptions for religion, it will not actually constitute a ban, because 50% of conversion therapy takes place in a religious setting. The leaderships of all the major religions have stated that they are in favour of a ban on conversion therapy, as is the UN. Abuse, coercion, corrective rape and exorcism have no place in a civilised society and no place in acceptable religious practice.”
“As a minimum, they must introduce a ban on conversion therapy, with no religious exemptions and no loopholes; progress the long-promised reform of the Gender Recognition Act 2004; and oversee the proper introduction of inclusive sex and relationship education in schools, with robust, proactive guidance. The Government must take action against demonstrations outside schools that are organised to stir up hatred and intimidate children and teachers. In March this year, we had a very disappointing response from the Minister for Equalities to the petitions debate on banning the abhorrent and abusive practice of conversion therapy. This led to an unprecedented cross-party letter to the Government in support of an outright ban, signed by the LGBT+ groups of eight political parties represented in this House.”
“Although the Government’s LGBT envoy Lord Herbert has rightly condemned the new Hungarian law, our own Prime Minister’s eagerness to roll out the red carpet in Downing Street for its author Viktor Orbán was an unconvincing way of expressing his official disapproval. The total silence that has accompanied the homophobic baiting of Kim Leadbeater, Labour’s candidate in the Batley and Spen by-election, sends its own signal to those perpetrating the abuse. To improve on their LGBT credentials, the Government have to make good on the promises they have already made.”
“If a person is trans or non-binary, they might be mortified that here in the UK their very existence appears to be up for debate in the name of someone else’s “free speech”, while crucial health support for them is increasingly unavailable. Meanwhile, out on our streets, homophobic hate crimes have soared, increasing by 19% last year, with transphobic hate crimes up 16%. Over the same period the number of prosecutions has plummeted from 20% of reports to a mere 8%. If an LGBT person looks abroad, they might see their Hungarian counterparts being subjected to a section-28 style anti-LGBT law that bans the so-called “promotion of homosexuality”—that has a familiar ring to it—or their Polish counterparts being forced to live in newly established “LGBT free zones”.”