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.”
The complete record
Every one of 5,924 lines we hold for Dame Angela Eagle, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 46 of 119.
“It is right that that is an aggravating offence in law, because it demonstrates our determination to prevent the kind of hate speech and activity that would cause our society to lose its civilisation. The laws on online abuse are far less coherent and far less effective when it comes to being used successfully. My hon. Friend pointed out some of the practical difficulties and the fragmented nature of the law, which is inadequate and in urgent need of an update. Inadequate as it is, however, it would still benefit from being enforced more seriously by the police, who all too often tell victims to avoid going online. Such victim blaming is not an adequate response to the hate and trolling that many people experience online.”
“Utterly false and outrageous claims have been made that its lessons are trying to turn children gay, and the Government have not reacted firmly enough to prevent such claims. Our values of respect for diversity in society are now being tested, and we must not be found wanting in our defence of them. As my hon. Friend said, the current criminal law rightly offers legal protection to all who experience direct homophobic physical violence. In fact, both the Public Order Act 1986 and the Criminal Justice Act 2003 offer extra opportunities for the courts to increase sentences in such cases of assault if they believe that hatred of LGBT people was an aggravating feature of the crime.”
“The figures are brought to life when we think of the actual victims of the increases in violence. In London a couple of weeks ago, two gay women were beaten and robbed on a bus by five teenagers for refusing to kiss each other on demand. In Southampton, two women kissing in the street were injured by an object thrown from a passing car. In Liverpool, two men were stabbed and seriously hurt in a homophobic knife attack; one of the people held for that attack is 12 years old. In Birmingham, there have been vocal anti-LGBT demonstrations outside two primary schools, mischaracterising and protesting the No Outsiders curriculum, which teaches respect for diverse families and seeks to end the stigmatising of LBGT people in school.”
“However, although we have come a long way as a community in a relatively short time, these angry political times have created a backlash. There has been a spike in violence and hate crime against the LGBT+ community in recent years, and online abuse seems now to be spilling over into real-life violence. Homophobic and transphobic hate crimes have doubled in the past five years, yet according to the LGBT equal rights campaign group Stonewall, four in five hate crimes go unreported by the victims. Its comprehensive survey “LGBT in Britain” has revealed that one in 10 LGB people has had online abuse directed at them personally in the past month, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge pointed out, with that figure rising to one in four for trans people, who are especially at the frontline and vulnerable at the moment.”
“LGBT liberation and the fight for respect and equal treatment in law have undoubtedly come a very long way in the UK over the past 30 years, and we should not underestimate the progress we have made. As the first openly lesbian Government Minister, and only the second out lesbian ever elected to the House of Commons, I am proud to have played my part in the many gains made under the last Labour Government, including granting equal status in law to LGBT+ people and their relationships; repealing the odious section 28, which stigmatised LGBT+ people at school; and banning all discrimination in the provision of goods and services on grounds of sexual orientation. Those progressive advances have undoubtedly made the lives of many LGBT+ people immeasurably better.”
“I am looking for urgent action from the Government to try to get a grip on this worrying situation. I am sure she will have sympathy aplenty, but we really need determined and rapid action. This debate is timely, being held 51 years after homosexuality was first partially decriminalised in the UK, 50 years after the Stonewall riots in New York, which signalled the beginning of the fight for LGBT liberation worldwide, and in the aftermath of the WorldPride march in New York this weekend, which drew 3 million people—it looked like quite a party, and I was sorry to have missed it. However, our debate also comes in the week of the huge Pride march that will bring London to a joyful halt on Saturday, and I certainly have no intention of missing that party.”
“The fact that this is happening shows that, although the development of social media has many benefits, which we can all name, it has also brought significant downsides. Social media has unleashed a level of hatred and harassment that shames our society and threatens to undermine and dampen our democracy. Hatred and abuse generated on social media are doing real damage to the mental health and wellbeing of hundreds of thousands of people who are targeted by trolls. Undoubtedly, hatred and abuse spill out from the virtual world into the real world. If we are to call ourselves a civilised and good society, these things must not be allowed to flourish online or offline with impunity. We need to change our laws to protect against these new harms much more effectively. I look forward to the Minister’s response.”
“Bobby has now found himself the target of turbo-charged online hate—a sign of the angry and hate-filled times that we live in—for daring to put his head above the parapet and take a public stand against this damaging growth in online homophobic abuse. He is strong enough to deal with it, but the point is that he should not have to, and nor should anyone else. The unwritten threat that someone who sticks their head above the parapet or who has an opinion about something will be dealt with online in the way Bobby Norris is being now does not cast a good light on the health of our democracy. Those who argue that one should be able, in the interest of freedom of speech, to say anything online somehow miss the bad effect that this abuse, which is lurking and ready to be uncurled and thrown at somebody, has on our democracy.”
“He felt rightly that this was detrimental to their health and wellbeing and that not enough was being done to stem the tide of homophobic hatred being generated online. He asked me what might be done to bring the Government’s attention to this growing problem and to take effective action to stop it. I suggested that he launch this petition as a first step towards highlighting this serious issue. The petition has attracted over 152,000 signatures, which is why we are having this timely debate. That demonstrates that our petition system is working well. It is a relatively new part of our old Parliament, but it connects us to the modern world and demonstrates that Parliament can be responsive to the issues that people worry about outside of our Westminster debates.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker, which does not happen very often. I look forward to the rest of this timely debate. I pay tribute to Bobby Norris, whose petition to make online homophobia a specific criminal offence we are debating today. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) for the thoughtful, sensitive and effective way in which he introduced our deliberations. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response. We have high hopes that the Government will listen and take rapid action to deal with these issues. Bobby Norris came to see me to talk about the level of hate that he perceived LGBT+ people were receiving on social media.”
“It is time to get serious about the trail of damage that this behaviour causes, and it is also time to introduce updated, effective and streamlined laws to counter this menace.”
“Is she prepared to increase the punishments for abuse, so that the harm caused is better represented in the sanctions available to the courts? What action can we expect, including on the financing of adequate enforcement, to ensure that enforcement is much more effective? Currently, it is laughably inadequate. When can we expect to move from endless press releases and the commissioning of more reviews to concrete action that minimises online harms rather than tolerating them and expecting victims to put up with them? Will the Minister support moves such as those we have seen in Austria to end online anonymity and remove the digital mask behind which so many perpetrators of abuse hide?”
“It is hard to believe that we went through the Enlightenment if that kind of approach to truth and facts is going to be allowed to fester online. We ought to be worried about the effect that this is having on people’s ability to judge facts and truth, without which we will not have a democracy deserving of the name. Terrorist propaganda and the online exploitation of children are also proliferating. After the Christchurch terrorist attack, 300,000 of the 1.5 million copies of the live streaming of murder that were uploaded to the internet went undetected by the automated systems that were attempting to take them down, making that horrendous event available to all who wanted to view it. Can the Minister therefore assure us that we can expect more determined and urgent action to enforce decency and standards online?”
“I certainly hope that the Minister can give us a bit more confidence that the issue is getting a higher priority than it appears to have at the moment, and that her reply will make us happy. In the White Paper on online harms that was published in April, the Government rightly characterised the new online environment as resembling the wild west. After all, it is the world of alternative facts and casual fascism, which has been allowed to fester, and it is high time that there were tough rules and regulations enforceable in law. Completely spurious anti-vaccination propaganda spreads, doing real damage to real lives offline, and mad conspiracy theories also spread, unchecked by truth and reality. For example, large numbers of people believe the world is run by lizards.”
“The report outlines the harms that online abuse can cause, including “psychological effects, such as depression and anxiety; emotional harms, such as…shame, loneliness and distress; physiological harms, including self-harm” and, tragically, suicide; “exclusion from public online space” and all the potential that it provides; and “economic harms”. The report also concludes, as we all should, that hate crime harms society. I am afraid that the Government’s response to the Law Commission’s report typifies their response to the entire issue: they have asked for a further review. We expect that to happen in 2020, but I would have thought that if the Government were really determined, they could come up much earlier than that with more concrete ways of dealing with this ever-present problem.”
“They admit that the current level of online abuse against vulnerable groups, especially women, is completely unacceptable, yet there seems to be little urgency, if I may say so, about the action that they are prepared to take to counter that abuse. A Law Commission review is welcome, but it has never been and can never be an active or effective way to take rapid action against a growing threat. As a recent Law Commission report points out, the law has not kept pace with the rapidly changing environment online. Some 96% of 16 to 24-year-olds are now using social media, but only 3% of malicious communications offences, online or offline, are ever prosecuted, even though there is demonstrable harm to the victims, the seriousness of which we are only just beginning to understand.”
“The world wide web—as you may remember, Mr Walker—was invented only in 1989, the iPhone did not exist until 2007, and Facebook was created only in 2004, and we have not yet reconsidered our laws in that context. So much has been changed by the arrival of the world wide web and dominant tech giants such as Apple, Google and Facebook that the Government must now urgently update our laws to make them fit for purpose. I know that the Government are aware of that need, because their second response to the petition points out that they have asked the Law Commission to consider specific reform in this area.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for her kind words. She is right that we need properly financed enforcement, as well as ensuring that we can make our laws more user-friendly and easier to understand and enforce for the authorities responsible for making decisions. The two provisions most often used to protect against online abuse, hatred and threats are the Malicious Communications Act 1988 and section 127 of the Communications Act 2003; the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, which was originally introduced to deal with stalking offences, is also available for use in more extreme cases. All those statutes were passed by Parliament before the emergence of social media, which has fundamentally reshaped the way in which we engage and communicate as a society.”
“The Law Commission does important work in trying to bring together sometimes fragmented laws and updating them, but the review is not due to be published until 2020. There is a tradition of Law Commission reports sitting gathering dust on shelves and never being acted on, so will the Minister say something about the Government’s determination, if such there is, to act on the Law Commission’s report? Will she consider bringing forward its work so that we can be in a position to legislate faster than the current timetable allows?”
“Can the Minister take a view? I certainly believe that we should get rid of anonymity online. Rather than have me respond to a consultation, surely she can take such a declaration on the Floor of the Chamber, and add it to the total that will be counted at one minute past twelve tonight.”
“Obviously we should all be nicer to one another, but the plain fact is that a lot of people are having their mental health badly affected because there are some very nasty people out there. That can be solved only by taking it much more seriously and much more urgently than I am afraid the Minister seems to be indicating that the Government are going to.”
“She does much work with LGBT religious organisations to try to put together across religions coalitions of moderate, decent, sensible religious people who recognise the right of LGBT people to exist, to have access to respect and dignity, and to have their rights in law. We must not put together this view that if somebody has a religious objection, then somehow there can be no debate about it from then on in. There are multiple views in religions about the legitimacy of LGBT rights. It is only on the far extremist fundamentalist fringes that we get the kind of hostility that is being shown on some of the Facebook groups of these campaigners. I would like to know a lot more about the network that is behind this, because it is a deliberate, reactionary attempt to take back progressive advance and decency for children.”
“Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Mr Godsiff) from this, although I wish he had let me ask him a question—that the motivations of some of those involved in this are reactionary. They are returners to an era where LGBT people should get back in the closet and hide and be ashamed of the way they are. We are not going to get back in the closet, or hide, or be ashamed of the way we are. Nor are we going to allow a generation of pupils who are now in school to go through what pupils in the ’80s had to go through because this Chamber let them down. Nor are we going to allow this to happen in the name of religion. I am a humanist, and married to a Catholic.”
“We have seen it exposed on television and in some of the closed Facebook groups of the individuals involved that are making claims about the sexual orientation of the teachers at this school, using language that I would not use in this Chamber. We have seen it in the mob reactions outside the school. It is not appropriate, however we do these things, that young primary school pupils should have to run a gauntlet of screaming demonstrators simply to get to school, with that noisy, vociferous, aggressive kind of shouting and chanting. That will be traumatic for any kind of young primary school pupil, and we should not be subjecting them to it. To be honest, no parents who believe that they are acting in the best interests of their children should be making them run such a gauntlet. We know—I exempt my hon.”
“Many years later, we are finally making progress on LGBT rights in law and reaching fantastic levels of formal equality in our law. That is one of the most important social reforms that the previous Labour Government were responsible for, and it has been continued, to their credit, by Administrations subsequently. I know of the Minister’s own personal commitment to this agenda. Yet here we are in the middle of a similar kind of moral scare that is being whipped up by people who have a different agenda from the wellbeing of children and their adjustment to the facts and experience of 21st-century life in the UK.”
“Teaching about LGBT existence and relationships, and showing respect and legitimacy to all regardless of their sexual orientation, is something that has not been a feature of our school system for very long. That is because of the odious and appalling effects of section 28, which was passed in the 1980s in a circumstance that was very similar to some of the scare stories that we are hearing about the possible dire effects of simply teaching relationship and sex education in schools—something that we should have been doing generations ago. If we had done it generations ago, there would have been an awful lot more happy and well-adjusted people than those who have been monstered in the way they have for the way that they are in a system that was disfigured by the effects of section 28.”
“[Laughter.] What we are talking about is respect, their rights, their right to be equally welcome in school, not to be bullied or treated as if they are lesser, not to be made to feel that somehow there is something wrong with them, not to feel suicidal, not to be called “faggot” or “lezzer” in school and not to be humiliated. That is what we are talking about when it comes to relationship and sex education—plain, simple decency.”
“These are the diverse parents that we have in our communities now, and the children that they send to school, or the potentially LGBT children in school, do not deserve to be treated with anything other than equality and respect. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] All that is meant by the teaching on relationship and sex education is that this diversity needs to be represented. It is not propagandising and it is not trying to “turn people gay”, which I have heard mentioned—I am not sure it is possible to turn people gay; there certainly would be no gay people if you had to be taught about being gay to be gay.”
“I thank my hon. Friend. She has a great deal of experience in this, not least because she lives amongst the community that is being portrayed in such a way. We must not give in to this kind of organised campaign, which is effectively being organised from the outside. The Equality Act—which was passed in 2010, so has been on the statute book for nine years—actually says that schools have a duty not to discriminate against LGBT people. That includes discrimination against pupils who are LGBT—to be fair, that would probably not be very apparent at primary school level—pupils who are perceived to be LGBT, and pupils with LGBT parents, carers and family members.”
“Is the Minister as worried as I am about the emerging evidence of an organised campaign to disrupt the introduction of RSE in schools, which is now spreading from Birmingham to other places? Will he reassure us that his Department will crack down on those attempts with the utmost determination?”
“Until we got to that passage in the Minister’s speech, I thought I understood what the situation was, but he seemed to be saying that he is going to give very radicalised fundamentalist-type campaigns options to make as much fuss as possible to prevent the teaching of LGBT equality and relations until it is easier to do it. I fear that what he said a few minutes ago—I hope that he will be able to put me right on this—is almost an open invitation to these organisations that are already spreading disruption across the country to do even more of it. We cannot compromise with such organisations, and if he does not stand up to them now, he will regret it.”
“Is my right hon. and learned Friend as alarmed as I am by the cavalier way in which certain contenders fighting the election for the leadership of the Conservative party seem to think that they can cast Parliament aside to ensure that they have their no-deal Brexit, when this Parliament clearly would not allow a no-deal Brexit to pass? In those circumstances, is not the responsible and right thing to do to give this Parliament the chance to prevent such outrageous shenanigans?”
“Does the hon. Gentleman agree with me that the Secretary of State appeared to be telling us that he agreed it would be wrong to drag the Crown into Parliament by having a Prorogation as political as that suggested by some of the Tory leadership candidates? Does he therefore agree that passing this motion merely puts into our Standing Orders for that particular date an insurance policy to prevent the more unscrupulous of those who are currently standing for the Tory leadership from doing precisely what they are threatening in hustings to do?”
“I see us heading towards a final choice between no deal and revocation, but in the absence of that choice being before us today, the modest measure that we are debating gives us a chance as a Parliament to have an insurance policy against careering off into the catastrophe of no deal. A newly elected leader of the Conservative party with no democratic mandate from the country and no majority in Parliament might manipulate the way in which this House works to deny us the chance to express what we have already expressed clearly: there is no majority in this Parliament to take this country out of the European Union without a deal. To me, that is a modest proposal.”
“It is a great privilege to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) and the speech he has just given. I fear that the trajectory of the entire Brexit debate since the referendum, with everything that has happened, is pushing us to the extremes of that debate, because we had a Prime Minister who simply did not bring the country back together, or seek to do so. She decided that the way through this conundrum was to appease the unappeasable Brextremists in her own party. It is hard to see whether there will be the kind of consensus and bringing back together of our fragmented country for which my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) wishes.”
“If we have to do that by using a modest Bill, that is the least we can do. There is no way, for the legitimacy of what we do in the future, that this Parliament must allow a Government without a majority and a new Prime Minister who does not have a direct electoral mandate to cause a no-deal Brexit without referring this back to the people. There is only one way, in the end, of solving the constitutional issues facing us, and that is through either a general election or another referendum. In any case, it is the people who must decide how we go forward. We are not going to allow any newly elected head of the Conservative party to take that decision away from the British people. That is why I support the very modest change before us today to put that insurance policy on to the statute book.”
“I would listen to such self-serving arguments with far more patience had we not had a Government who have spent the past few years disregarding all sorts of constitutional propriety in how they have run this Parliament: gerrymandering the number of people on Select Committees, wilfully ignoring Opposition motions and finally refusing even to participate in votes, and being quite happy to ride roughshod over centuries of constitutional convention for their own aims. They then get themselves in a lather about the very modest motion that we are debating. In the interests of the economic prosperity and security of this country, we have to prevent the Government party and any new Prime Minister behaving like a latter-day Charles I, seeking to govern without this Parliament.”
“I agree with the hon. Lady. She is absolutely right to point out the Irish dimension of the entire debate. That many Conservatives seem willing to cast the Good Friday agreement into the flames has been an astonishing aspect of this debate. Members of the Conservative party opposed to this modest insurance policy describe it as a constitutional outrage that this Parliament should seek to ensure that the country is not driven off the cliff of a catastrophic no-deal Brexit. In seeking to put aside one modest day of debate, to try to pass a Bill—which would need a majority in this House and to get through the House of Lords—to prevent that scenario, they suggest that we are somehow upending years of constitutional propriety.”
“Funding may not have had a direct effect, but surely the Minister needs to recognise that, with the huge cuts to local authorities and a national shortage of well-qualified social workers putting enormous pressure on social services systems around the country, we are seeing a crisis in one area responded to by putting in extra money and bidding up social workers’ wages, allowing them to move to solve one problem but creating gaps in other areas. Surely the Minister needs to take a much more systemic view of what is going on in social services up and down the country, and recognise that funding is an issue.”
“I think the Minister has misunderstood his job. He seems to think it is about disenfranchising people who are going to vote the wrong way. After the 2014 European elections, the Electoral Commission warned that the current practice of requiring citizens to complete an additional form needed to be more streamlined, moving to a near automatic system of inclusion as is the case in most other European countries, yet the Minister and his Department did precisely nothing about it. [ Interruption. ] Perhaps he could get the smirk off his face. We are actually talking about democratic involvement; even though the Minister does not seem to rate it, Labour Members think that it is an important principle.”
“Despite the Secretary of State’s characteristically emollient and reasonable tone, the announcement he has made today covers up one of the most catastrophic pieces of public policy and waste of public money that we have seen in many a long year. It has let down communities that suffer from crime; it has let down victims of crime; and it has let down those people who commit crimes who have a right to try at least to change their ways. Will the Minister say something about the Secretary of State—one of his predecessors—who actually thought that this would work and talk to us about ministerial accountability, because there seems to be absolutely none of it left in this flailing Government?”
“The far right use the politics of hatred and resentment to foster blame against identified groups of people whom they can scapegoat for all society’s ills. They are organised globally and they often adopt similar tactics, wherever they appear. Call them right-wing populists, call them the alt-right; they are hostile to difference and they wish liberation movements, whether for LGBT people or women, to be crushed. They want us back in the closet and back in the kitchen. They also direct their ire at the black and ethnic minority communities, religious minorities and foreign nationals. I believe that there is a connection between all forms of prejudice and bigotry, and we are undoubtedly living in an era when discrimination is accelerating in its most reprehensible forms. It must be exposed and opposed.”
“We cannot and must not be complacent about what has been achieved, because we are in an era of backlash, and that should remind us that things can go backwards and that rights, once achieved, can be taken away. In 2019, the warning lights are flashing. The 2019 Rainbow Europe list shows that LGBTQI rights are even going backwards in Europe for the first time in 10 years. As the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs said, Turkey is failing to uphold fundamental civil rights, and Bulgaria has repealed a law allowing trans people to change their names and gender. Poland has made it harder for lesbians to access reproductive rights. Everywhere, the rise of the far right is threatening work to counter bigotry and discrimination against LGBTQI people and in some cases it is reversing gains already made.”
“IDAHO day calls on us to contemplate the work we still need to do to ensure that our LGBTQI sisters and brothers across the globe are able to achieve their own liberation from discrimination and bigotry. That moment is a long way off, however, when we realise that 70 countries still criminalise same-sex relationships and that this involves the potential application of the death penalty in 11 of them. Stonewall’s international work shows that one quarter of the world’s population still believe that being LGBTQI should be a crime. LGBTQI people are losing their lives as a result of the bigotry and violence directed against them; it is estimated that there is a killing every two days. So while we have seen the forces of progress advance in recent years, there is still much work to be done.”
“We had to invoke the Parliament Act to get it on to the statute book after three attempts because the Lords simply would not vote for it. They also outdid themselves in the debates by comparing gay sex to bestiality. Now we have a welcome agreement across political parties that LGBTQI people should not face legal discrimination, and I speak in this debate as just one LGBT MP in what has been called the “gayest Parliament in the world”. Who would have thought it? As we celebrate that progress, though, we have to remember that the forces of reaction have not been vanquished completely here and certainly not in the rest of the world, as the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs said.”
“Positive change was not accomplished easily. Each reform was hard fought and resisted by the very forces that had given birth to section 28 in the first place. Eliminating discrimination against LGBT people in UK law required heavy political lifting. It was undertaken out of conviction and it carried considerable political risk at the time, even if it seems in retrospect that it was all straightforward. I got fed up of seeing the Labour Government I was part of characterised in the tabloids as being obsessed with LGBT rights or seeing us being lampooned as being run by a “gay mafia”. Section 28 was not repealed easily, as those of us who were there will attest. It took three years to get it through the House of Lords, and the Conservatives fought tooth and nail to keep it. Equalising the age of consent was not achieved easily.”
“That disgraceful and overtly discriminatory measure was put on the statute book by the Thatcher Government, egged on by the red-top tabloids in full cry. It effectively singled out LGBT people as a threat in our schools, treated them as though they were alien and delegitimised their very existence in law by referring to their relationships as “pretend”. It caused untold misery and suffering. As the first openly out lesbian Minister in any UK Government, I was very proud indeed to have been part of a Labour Government who largely achieved equality in law for LGBT people during their 13 years in office. Indeed, the civil partnership legislation normalised LGBT relationships by granting legal protections equating to marriage. These were landmark social reforms, but their achievement was not inevitable.”
“I congratulate the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) on securing this debate, ahead of tomorrow’s International Day against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia. I join him and others who will celebrate the gains that LGBTQI people in the UK have made since the decriminalisation of homosexuality over 50 years ago. It is a mark of how far we have come that this debate is taking place and that both major parties finally recognise the inherent justice of treating LGBTQI people as equals, at least in law if not quite yet in reality. I am especially proud to have been a part of the Labour movement that recognised at its Bournemouth conference in 1986 that LGBT people needed particular protection after the oppression visited upon them by the odious section 28.”
“Much of the anger and hostility is being spread by social media, as the right hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening) pointed out. We have much to do to counter those disturbing trends if we are to be able to celebrate our progress on future IDAHO days. We must not fail in that crucial task.”
“I could not agree more. I will refer to social media briefly later, but I think we need to contemplate far more when considering how to tackle the threat. In the aftermath of the EU referendum in the UK, there was a spike in all sorts of hate crime. In the three months after the vote to leave, such crimes against LGBTQI people rose by a massive 147%. There is a sense that that type of bigotry has somehow now been normalised, and the LGBTQI community is suffering because of it. So are others—women, religious minorities, black and ethnic minorities, the disabled. We now have candidates standing in the EU elections across Europe who openly advocate removing civil rights from sections of the population or scapegoating immigrants; others are unapologetic about issuing on social media rape threats against serving politicians.”