Global LGBT Rights

Debate between Helen Grant and Crispin Blunt

Thursday 26th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) for securing the debate and for the leadership he gives to the all-party group. He has taken the more voluntary route of taking himself off to the Back Benches to champion these causes and we all benefit from the quality of his leadership. I took a rather more compulsory route, but that does mean that I have the freedom to engage with these incredibly important issues. I want to reflect on why they are so important. What has brought us here today are the headline issues, raised by previous speakers, relating to what is happening in Azerbaijan, Egypt and Chechnya. We only have to go online to see horrific videos of mob justice in Nigeria, where gay men are being lynched, and the administration of ISIS justice, with gay people heaved off tall buildings.

I want to reflect briefly on some of the headline issues in Chechnya, because the cases there are truly appalling. My right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs talked about Maxim Lapunov. He was lucky enough to survive. There is, however, the story of popstar Zelimkhan Bakayev, who went back to Chechnya on 8 August for his sister’s wedding. By all the accounts I was able to get hold of, he was arrested within three hours and was dead within 10. This was a man whose picture taken with Ramzan Kadyrov, when the Chechen leader wanted to ride on the back of this popstar’s popularity. If that can happen to him in Chechnya, we can draw our own conclusions about how appalling the situation is and our expectations of the Russian authorities to do anything about it.

Headline atrocities have brought us here today: the dreadful scale of arrests in Azerbaijan and Egypt, and direct state repression. The number of people affected by direct oppression runs into many hundreds of thousands. There are people who are in relationships that they do not want to be in, people who have experienced “corrective rape”, and people who are in forced marriages. There are millions of people—probably between 50 million and 100 million in India—who, because of the laws of their countries, are simply not able to be themselves.

[Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that although in various countries there is a wide range of laws to protect victims of abuse and discrimination, many are deterred from using the law to protect themselves because of, for instance, high legal costs, a heavy burden of proof or worry about the implications for their job prospects?

[Crispin Blunt]

My hon. Friend has drawn attention to all the difficulties of living a life if the society in which people live and the laws that surround them do not allow them to be themselves. The reason so many of us who are speaking in the debate are LGBT ourselves is that we know just how important this freedom is to us. I know, because I did not come out until I was 50. When I was growing up, having been born in 1960 into the United Kingdom that existed in the 1960s and 1970s, what I understood about myself was that there was something wrong with me. I wanted to be a soldier, and I wanted to be a politician, and that was wholly inconsistent with ever beginning to come to terms with myself.

An awful lot of men my age are coming out now, because they have the societal and professional freedom to do so. The British experience can provide a lesson, and the British story is one that we should be able to tell others. We should be able to tell the rest of the world how we have moved from active implementation of the criminal law in the 1950s, when more than 1,000 men were imprisoned for consensual same-sex acts, to where we are today.

When I say “we”, I am thinking of the role that we can play as parliamentarians. We should not underestimate the huge challenge that faces our parliamentary colleagues in other countries that, because of religious beliefs and the influence of religion in those societies, are in the same state as the United Kingdom in the 1950s when it comes to attitudes to LGBT people. Nor should we underestimate the effect of our own personal stories, and our own personal testimony. We should look our fellow parliamentarians in the eye when we have the opportunity to do so and get them to first base. People’s sexuality is not something that they choose.

I used those terms during a debate in the House in 1999, before I truly understood myself, and I was, quite rightly, heckled by colleagues on the other Benches. It should not be assumed that people understand. Once our fellow parliamentarians have got to first base and have accepted that sexuality is very largely innate—if not completely innate, but let us not go into that now—and not something that people choose, the public policy that ought to flow from that will flow from it.

We should say to our parliamentary colleagues in other countries, “You are representing gay people whether you like it or not. You are representing just as many gay people as I am.” There is no evidence of any difference in the proportion of sexualities between different races or parts of the world. Our parliamentary colleagues in other countries have a responsibility, and they have a lead opinion. Our responsibility is to help them to change their societies by means of the evidence that we can give them from our own experience.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Helen Grant and Crispin Blunt

Tuesday 31st January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to draw the House’s attention to the benefits of more effective integrated offender management, which is another way of expressing the multi-agency working to which he draws attention. This good practice is widening across the whole system and, I am delighted to say, becoming the norm.

[Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)]

One in four girls, some as young as 13, are hit by their boyfriend. What action will the Minister take to tackle violence among children?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Helen Grant and Crispin Blunt

Tuesday 13th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

I am grateful for that detailed question from the hon. Gentleman. I will write to him with a full answer.

[Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that prison is not the right place for women who pose no risk to the public, and that robust community sentences would be a much better option?

Prisoners: Females

Debate between Helen Grant and Crispin Blunt

Tuesday 7th June 2011 Ministerial Corrections

[Mrs Grant]

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many female inmates on the prison estate have access to (a) games consoles and (b) television; and if he will make a statement.

[Official Report, 26 April 2011, Vol. 527, c. 170-71W.]

Letter of correction from Mr Crispin Blunt:

An error has been identified in the written answer given to the hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant) on 26 April 2011. The list of prisons that provide games consoles for shared use in women's prisons omitted one establishment. The full answer given was as follows:

[Mr Blunt]

It is not possible to the give exact number of prisoners who have access to televisions and games consoles, as this changes constantly. There are currently 4,241 (at 8 April 2011) women in prison in England and Wales, and most of them have access to television. Her Majesty's Prisons Askham Grange, Bronzefield, Eastwood Park, Holloway, Low Newton and New Hall do not allow access to television where prisoners have been placed on the basic level of the Incentives and Earned Privileges scheme (IEPS).

Prisoners on the enhanced level of the IEPS are allowed to have certain games consoles in possession if they pay for them themselves. The National Offender Management Service does not collect centrally the numbers of prisoners who choose to do this and there would be disproportionate cost in obtaining this number. In addition, a very small number of consoles have been purchased for shared use in association by prisoners on the enhanced level of the IEPS at the following establishments: Askham Grange, Downview, Eastwood Park, New Hall and Styal. At Bronzefield, there is a games console in the Healthcare Centre.

The correct answer should have been:

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Helen Grant and Crispin Blunt

Tuesday 17th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

I would have thought that a moment’s reflection would make that clear. Let us suppose that someone who is accused of rape co-operates with the authorities at the first opportunity, rather than puts their victim through the entire process of having to be prepared to give evidence and then having to give evidence. That is one example where there is a definitive benefit to the victim from encouraging the earliest possible guilty plea.

[Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that short-term prison sentences for women are quite ineffective and that robust community options would be much better?

[Mr Blunt]

As my right hon. and learned Friend the Justice Secretary made clear last year, there are of course problems with short prison sentences for both male and female offenders. We will not take away from the judiciary and magistracy the ability to use short sentences when required, but we need to ensure that community sentences that are properly robust and properly punitive can carry public confidence as an appropriate option, particularly for women offenders who frequently have wider responsibilities in the community that would be lost if they were incarcerated.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Helen Grant and Crispin Blunt

Tuesday 20th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)]

11. What the reoffending rate was for prisoners who had served custodial sentences of over 10 years in the latest period for which figures are available.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)]

Of the 125 adult offenders released from a custodial sentence of over 10 years in the first quarter of 2008, 6.4% committed at least one further offence in the one-year follow-up period. In contrast, among those serving custodial sentences of 12 months or less in 2008, the reconviction rate was 61.1%.

[Mrs Grant]

What are the Minister’s views on short sentences for women? Does he agree that community sentences may be more effective in reducing the rate of reoffending by women?

[Mr Blunt]

Short sentences for men have proved pretty ineffective, and I think that short sentences for women are even more ineffective and deleterious. We support the conclusions of the Corston report, we are conducting an analysis of the effectiveness of different sentences as part of the current sentencing review, we are committed to reducing the number of women in prison, and a network of women-only community provision is being developed to support robust community sentences.

Perhaps at this point I should throw a bouquet to my predecessor, the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), in recognition of her work in this regard. We propose to build on it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Helen Grant and Crispin Blunt

Tuesday 15th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

Absolutely not. I notice that the date to which the hon. Gentleman referred was in 2007, and there certainly has been a significant increase in the prison population between then and today. As far as the prison building programme is concerned, I draw attention to the evidence that the then Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor gave to the Committee referred to by the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael). He said that the prison building programme, as it now stands, is an opportunity to upgrade and update our prison capacity to make it more fit for the purpose of addressing reoffending behaviour. If we are successful in bringing about a drop in prisoner numbers—I am quite sure that everyone in the House would like to see that—we may be able to release other parts of the estate.

[Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)]

In the context of capacity and overcrowding, what are the Minister’s views on short sentences, especially for women?

[Mr Blunt]

The evidence is that short custodial sentences are not working. They produce terrible reoffending rates. We do not have the capacity in the probation service to address people on licence, which is one reason why they do not have any supervision when they leave prison, and we are on the most dreadful merry-go-round. It is one of the glaring gaps in the way that we deal with offenders and reoffending behaviour, and the current Administration will do their level best to address the issue.