Pride Month

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Monday 23rd June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Alex Sobel (Leeds Central and Headingley) (Lab/Co-op)]

In the words of the organisation Stonewall:

“Pride Month 2025 is grounded in this year’s powerful theme, activism and social change. It’s a reminder of how far the LGBTQI+ community has come and how much work still needs to be done.”

I would like to thank Stonewall, Trans+ Solidarity Alliance and Rainbow Migration for their vital work, which I have relied on in understanding the challenging issues facing the LGBT+ community. Rainbow Migration in particular supports LGBT+ people through the asylum and immigration system. Its work is pivotal to a number of constituents of mine who have fled their country and identify as LGBT+. They are seeking support in the UK, where they can feel like their true selves.

Rainbow Migration has asked Home Office Ministers to remove blanket inadmissibility provisions for so-called “safe states” such as Albania, Georgia and India. For example, Noah, a gay Georgian and former service user of Rainbow Migration, had the following lived experience of a “safe state”. Noah fled homophobic persecution in Georgia. He was extremely fearful of being sent back there, saying that he would rather take his own life than go back and face persecution. He said:

“No one can know that you are gay in Georgia. If people do, homophobic people will try to attack you. Either with words, or they’ll try to beat you.”

Noah was physically attacked by family members. He was forced to stay in a hospital for people with mental health issues and had an exorcism performed on him at church. Thankfully, he was granted refugee status due to the risk of harm, but he is deeply concerned about Georgia’s designation as safe. He says:

“Georgia cannot be considered a safe country. They don’t know what is going on in Georgia—how the LGBT people are living there. They cannot understand. The last time that Pride took place, the television operator was killed. Who will come and say Georgia is a safe country after that? If you’re gay, your two options are either hospital or exorcism.”

How can we in this country describe Georgia as safe for LGBT people?

In 1997, under the last Labour Government, the first positive recognition of same-sex relationships in UK law was introduced for migrants. The unmarried partners concession made it possible for same-sex couples to make an application for a partner of a British citizen to remain in the UK if they had lived together for four years. It paved the way for greater legislative equality for same-sex couples, and it was the first time same-sex relationships were recognised positively in British law.

Being an ally is about reflecting on how to contribute to lasting social change and acting on that reflection, so I agree with Rainbow Migration in calling for an asylum and immigration system that treats LGBT people with dignity.

Unfortunately, the UK’s current legal framework for dealing with inequality and discrimination is creaking under the weight of the culture wars. Legislation such as the Equality Act 2010 and the Human Rights Act 1998, which were designed to protect the most marginal and vulnerable in society, have been weaponised by those who seek to promote exclusion and social division, with this year’s Supreme Court ruling and the subsequent guidance by the EHRC causing widespread fear among the trans community.

At a time of rising discrimination, the UK should reassert its commitment to the value of equality, instead of creating a set of contested rights that dehumanise the most marginalised. It can do this in a powerful way by signing and ratifying protocol 12 to the European convention on human rights, which creates a general prohibition on discrimination. The UK is one of only nine countries in the Council of Europe not to have signed protocol 12. Everyone in the UK would benefit from access to the human right of the general prohibition on discrimination, including LGBTQI+ people.