Merchant Shipping (Homosexual Conduct) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-01-20
Topic: Civil Rights
John Philip Glen (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to my hon. Friend for correcting the misunderstanding about that quote. He is absolutely right that it is a total misrepresentation of what the late Mrs Thatcher was trying to say It is worth noting that the Wolfenden committee broke new ground, as it was the first time openly homosexual citizens in this country gave evidence to a Government committee. It is perhaps evidence of how contentious the Wolfenden report was at the time that it took a further 10 years before its recommendations were implemented and decriminalisation took place in the Sexual Offences Act 1967 The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994—the Act that the Bill is concerned with—was seen at the time as a liberalising Act, mainly because it reduced the age of consent for homosexual activity. In addition, sections 146 and 147 repealed the clauses in the 1967 Act that made homosexual activity in the armed forces and on merchant navy vessels a criminal offence. That was done, however, partially because of the anomaly that an individual could not be prosecuted under criminal law but could be prosecuted under service law for that same offence However, sections 146(4) and 147(3), which I hope the Bill will repeal, specifically required that nothing in the Act should prevent homosexual activity from constituting grounds for dismissal. They were added to the Act through non-Government amendments during the House of Lords Committee stage. Those amendments were supported by peers who wished to have the then policy on administrative dismissal in the armed forces on the face of the Act. The amendments were initially resisted by the Minister at the time, but they were pressed to a Division, which the Government lost. So although the criminal penalty was taken away, discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation remained. During the passage of the 1994 Act, the anomaly that there were no equivalent provisions for heterosexual activity on board a ship, for example, was pressed by some Members of this House and the other place The equivalent provisions for the armed forces in the 1994 Act were struck down as a result of a European Court of Human Rights case in 2000. In Smith and Grady v. the United Kingdom, the Court found against the armed forces policy at the time of investigating whether personnel were of homosexual orientation or had engaged in homosexual activity and of pursuing administrative discharge as a matter of policy if that was found to be the case The case raised a number of issues relating to the place of homosexual men and women in the armed forces, but I want to touch on one aspect in particular: bullying. The submissions to the Court during the case argued that one reason for the armed forces policy at the time was the threat of "assaults on homosexuals, bullying and harassment of homosexuals, ostracism and avoidance" The ECHR responded, as we would today, by arguing that that should be dealt with robustly through clear codes of conduct, complaint procedures and training programmes, in the same way as racial and sexual harassment or bullying. In its decision, the Court said: "The Court considers it important to note, in the first place, the approach already adopted by the armed forces to deal with racial discrimination and with racial and sexual harassment and bullying…The January 1996 Directive, for example, imposed both a strict code of conduct on every soldier together with disciplinary rules to deal with any inappropriate behaviour and conduct. This dual approach was supplemented with information leaflets and training programmes, the army emphasising the need for high standards of personal conduct and for respect for others." As a result of that judgment and the implementation of appropriate codes and procedures to tackle bullying and harassment of homosexual servicemen and women, the armed forces are clearly not today as they were at the time of that case; nor is the merchant navy However, despite that very positive development in recent years, we need to acknowledge that homophobic bullying is still a live issue today, particularly in schools. No one should be assaulted, bullied or harassed as a result of their sexual orientation, and it is important to recognise that such things can be particularly damaging when they happen among one’s close peers in such a crucial and formative environment I am pleased the Government have made £2.8 million available to tackle homophobic bullying. The programme funded by this additional money began in September 2016 and will run to March 2019 to prevent and respond in a sustained way to homophobic bullying across primary and secondary schools in England. As part of the programme, which will build on the previous £2 million grant, which was announced in October 2014, the Government are funding six initiatives that will deliver whole-school approaches and staff training to help prevent and tackle homophobic bullying. I hope that the passage of the Bill today, in reaffirming that there is no place for discriminatory employment practices, will also send a clear signal that homophobic bullying and harassment are completely unacceptable The firms that constitute the merchant navy were not actually within the scope of the 2000 Smith and Grady v. the United Kingdom case, because they were private employers, and cases brought in respect of European convention rights are brought against Governments rather than private individuals or entities The provisions relating to the merchant navy were eventually superseded by the Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2003, which integrated into UK law EU equal treatment directive 2000/78/EC.