Pride Month

Siân Berry Excerpts

Monday 23rd June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

I think we should be proud of the fact that politics has changed the law in this country, and political parties were absolutely essential to that. I pay tribute to everybody in my political party who for many generations fought for equality—but that is true for the Conservative party as well, where people in many cases had to be even braver than they did in the Labour movement, and of course in many other parties as well. I do agree with my hon. Friend; I think it is an entirely retrograde step to ban people from political parties from taking part in Pride marches.

[Siân Berry (Brighton Pavilion) (Green)]

In contrast to the Minister, I fully support the decision that has been made by the major Pride organisations to tell us that as political parties we are not welcome this year on parades or marches. Is the Minister not as sad as I am at the absolute state of political policy and discourse around trans rights that has directly led to this action?

[Chris Bryant]

I will come on in a moment to some of the problems that I think we have, but when I was first elected as a Member of Parliament, there were still many laws in this country that drastically affected the rights of LGBTQ people in this country, and it is because of political parties that we changed the law. We should not discard the democratic process; it is absolutely essential to being able to secure our rights.

We need to remember that in this country we used to hang men for having sex together and imprison them just for meeting or sending each other a love note. This is a serious business, but we also need to celebrate. I remember that on one of the Pride marches I went on, we shouted all the way, “We’re here, we’re queer and we’ve not gone shopping!” We chanted it all the way down Oxford Street, which is ironic in itself.

We have to celebrate, because not every LGBT story is a tragedy, and I wish the film and television industry would learn this. We are extraordinarily normal. That is a terrible word, really, but we are phenomenally normal. We bleed when we are cut and we laugh when we are tickled, and we can defy every stereotype going. I hate to break it to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, but not all gay men like musicals—I don’t understand that, but I have met a few—and apparently not all lesbians enjoy tennis or smoke cigars. [Interruption.] I do not know what is going on behind me.