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Mr. Hughes: I do not want to be distracted down that road, but I shall try to deal with the point succinctly. This country signed up to the European convention 50 years ago. It was drafted by a member of the hon. Gentleman's party. It is effectively a British document in conception.
Mr. John Townend (East Yorkshire): Yes, but it has changed.
Mr. Hughes: The convention has not been changed on this issue; the two articles with which we are concerned are from the original. Governments of both parties have adhered to it and my party has always supported it. I do not believe that it is good for national Governments to think that they always get it right without anybody else adjudicating. Establishing the convention after the war was a far-sighted move and a great tribute to the Council of Europe. It has been good for Britain in many ways and has given people many rights.
Mr. William Thompson (West Tyrone): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Hughes: Once more, then I must make progress.
Mr. Thompson: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that when the convention was established and when there was talk of equality, it was never in the minds of those who drew up the document that it would be interpreted as widely as it is now?
Mr. Hughes: I do not think that that is true on this particular point. When the convention was drawn up
people had ideas about equality in family life and on gender, sex and race matters that obviously led them to conclude that people should be treated equally. I was born in the year in which the convention was signed, but I am sure that gay people in the first half of the century would have expected that their time would soon come and that they would be given equal status under legislation such as this.
Mr. Howarth: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Hughes: I shall not give way again. I am trying to enable all colleagues to speak.
I want to own up. I tabled an amendment to the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 that would not have failed to achieve equality, but would have achieved it for 17-year-olds. However, the House disagreed with it and I accepted that. I must tell the House the most persuasive argument, which was that made by Euan Sutherland. He came to see me as a Southwark resident and was supported by his family and a couple of friends. They said that, as young men, the issue was not how they were protected or what they did, but whether they were treated equally at all stages. If society would not treat them equally, how could it expect them to receive equal treatment from their peers? If the law did not treat them respectfully, how could society ask other people to do the same? Euan Sutherland--and also someone who once worked for me--put the case most convincingly. Those young people said, "This prejudices and discriminates against us." We need to move on.
The right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) said that she is not prepared to see equality override protection, but the Bill would not do that. We must enshrine equality in the law and then we can work on the protection. Colleagues, particularly on the Tory Benches, may still be thinking of opposing the Bill. I say this to them: in Britain, criminality is not attached to female-female relationships and never has been; nor is criminality attached to male-female relationships at 16, which is the same age at which people are allowed to leave school, go to work, pay taxes, join the services, get married and have children--
Mr. Hughes:
And, as the hon. Lady said, be vulnerable to sexual diseases, no matter through what activity. From that age, people are treated in one way if they happen, permanently or impermanently, to have a male-female relationship, but differently if they are two men in a relationship. That is not logical. If we could get away from justifying inequality to considering the more sensible point made by the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Ms King) about how to protect young people from abuse, we would do the country a service.
One cannot tell gay people, who, according to any projection are likely to be a minority of the community, that they are valued as equals if the law does not treat them as such. We cannot get away with that. It is like telling people with physical or mental disabilities, or women or men or black or Asian people, "You're equal, we value you lots, we love you, but we're not going to treat you equally." We simply cannot do that. If we cannot move forward in Britain in 2000, we are in big trouble.
Clause 2 is straightforward. Thanks to the hard work of my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) and others in Standing Committee, we have decided not to criminalise under-16s. It is no good to anybody to say that a sexual activity engaged in at school renders someone a criminal. It is fine to deal with adults' abuse of young people, but let us not criminalise under-16s. Let us consider someone who is under 16 and goes through a passing homosexual phase at school and is criminalised for that. That blot remains on the record for ever. To criminalise someone for that is not the response of an adult, mature society.
Let us consider abuse of trust, which the Minister tackled the other day when he replied to the short debate about procedure. I hope that the other place will have an opportunity to consider the details of the Bill. As my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton (Jackie Ballard) will say if she catches your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, as I hope she will, we are worried about some aspects of the drafting. Those anxieties are shared outside the House. The House has considered the measure, and I hope that the other place has an opportunity to examine it. We are considering a difficult measure which deals with the exploitation of younger people by older people. I hope that we can spend time on it to ensure that we get it right.
I am a Christian and a member of the Church. I come from an evangelical church background. I say to those who try to place an interpretation of faith on their views that there is a great difference between arguing that the Gospel, the Koran or the teachings of Guru Nanak say that someone should lead a particular life style or behave in a specific manner and legislating to make it illegal not to behave in that way. If the Church is to be all embracing, and faiths are to win people, not lose them, they must accept people as they are. They should try to win them by argument, not legislation. I hope that the division and difficulty that the Church has experienced on life style can be removed. The way in which people live, their moral choices and their behaviour are matters of morality, faith and conviction, but not legislation. Legislating on such matters is not for us in this multicultural, multi-community age.
The Bill is about private acts. We must not introduce into our discussions matters that are nothing to do with the Bill. We should have a review of sexual offences--I hope that the Minister and the Department are making good progress. The law is a muddle. I say that as someone who used to practise in the criminal courts. It is all over the place. Much of it dates from many years ago. It contains may inconsistencies, illogicalities and anomalies. The sooner the general review is before Parliament for careful consideration, the better. It should address the differences in the way people are treated. It should improve the law on indecent activity in public places. That does not work at the moment. We must not include in our discussions the debate about clause 28. That is a separate debate, which is not about the rights of our citizens, but about what our public institutions do.
I beg hon. Members to put aside extraneous matters and issues that involve our personal convictions and our faith and, to borrow a phrase from someone much more famous than me--[Interruption.] He is much, much more famous than me. I sense that at the moment,
Lorna Fitzsimons (Rochdale):
It gives me great pleasure to be able to speak in this debate. Many colleagues have provided eloquent testimony to their long-held views and passionate beliefs in the rightness of what we are doing. The Bill is testament to the sort of society we want to live in and the sort of people we want to be. We must remember that this place is an advert to the rest of the country. As my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ann Keen) said, our language and tolerance is used by the general public as a method of judging what constitutes acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. We have to lead by example. If we do not have laws that ensure that we treat people equally and accept that everyone is equal, we are going round in circles on one leg.
It was interesting and sad to listen to the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe). She talked about permanent exclusion. Anyone who has worked with or near children who are approaching the time in their lives when they question their sexuality, ask questions and make discoveries knows that exploring those matters under the cloud of knowing that they are involved in an illegal act leads to exclusion. I can think of no better definition of permanently excluding someone from society. The message is loud and clear: society does not recognise their right to exist, and the act that they want to practise is illegal, not because they are gay but because of their age. As soon as they become a certain age, the act becomes legal.
I find it offensive that young girls are treated differently. We should provide protection for all our children, regardless of age or sexuality. One does not say to a child, "Are you gay? All right, I'll protect you." Every child deserves protection in law and in society generally. Being a member of society means looking out for children. One does not look for the tag on a child's head; one looks to protect them. The premise that a gay young boy between the age of 16 and 18 needs more protection than a young girl of the same age is nonsense. Anyone who claims that has not listened to any teenage girls. I am about to become a stepmother of a 12-year-old girl, and we cannot avoid young girls' questions and their sexuality. They cannot avoid their sexuality--they have hormones popping everywhere. It is naive in the extreme to say that young people have to hide their sexuality in a discreet closet because it does not exist.
Another point has been eloquently made. To pretend that the change would undermine the family is outrageous. Excluding people means excluding family members--brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, aunties, uncles, sons and daughters. Do some people think that gay people do not have families? It is offensive to say that, all of a sudden, it is a chattering-class issue or a right-on issue, that it is not a core issue.
It was interesting to see a little snippet on BBC news this morning. It had done a vox pop in Newcastle upon Tyne, Central--not exactly a trendy, cafe latte-type place.
The question was, "Is it just the chattering classes? Are they not concentrating on bread and butter issues and on what you want as working class people?" Interestingly, woman after woman said, "No. It is a core principle about the type of society that we want to live in and the type of people we want to be. We have to ensure that all our children are protected and are treated equally." That did not come from me or anyone here--it came from ordinary working-class women in the constituency of Newcastle upon Tyne, Central. We have to recognise that.
I have had the most heart-rending personal letters from young men who have never declared their sexuality to anyone because they were too scared; I am sure that I am not the only hon. Member here to have received such letters. Are we not humbled by the courageous way in which they are coming out and touching us as Members of Parliament by writing to us? Sometimes, we are the first person with whom they have shared that experience because of the law as it stands. Sometimes, they do not have the courage to go to their family because of their perception of how the family will deal with it. Often that is unfair because families can be very supportive--although sometimes they are not, as we know from our surgeries--but we cannot let down those constituents.
To say that there are no gay people in Rochdale is naive. To say that there are no young people asking real questions about their sexuality, who want help and to be able freely to ask and to get information, is wrong. How can they freely question something when it is illegal and there is total fear? That is at the core of the child protection issue. Surely, if something is made illegal--we all know this from all the case law--it will go underground. People do not report crimes, and they are preyed on and blackmailed. The bottom line is that keeping this law is the best way to continue the abuse of children by people who allegedly care for them.
"There is a tide in the affairs of men"
10 Feb 2000 : Column 452
and women. As the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow said, the Bill will lead us towards a more tolerant, less bigoted society in which all people, after centuries of struggle, will at last be treated as equals. The measure is a small step in that direction. Please let us not put up barriers of bigotry now; let us move on to a more enabling and refreshing agenda.
3.26 pm
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