- Conference
- 2024 National LGBT+ Conference
- Date
- 17 July 2024
- Decision
- Carried
Conference welcomes the new United Kingdom (UK) Labour government and hopes that this will be a new era for our LGBT+, Black, disabled and women members.
LGBT+ people did not fare well under the last UK government. In the 2024 ILGA-Europe Rainbow Index, the UK was 15th scoring 51.88%, with a poor record on asylum and scoring under 50% on equality and non-discrimination, hate crime and hate speech and legal gender recognition.
Disabled LGBT+ people have not fared much better. Despite human rights concerns raised by the United Nations, disabled LGBT+ people have been demonised. The last government proposed to change how personal independence payments (PIP) works including stopping cash payments and replacing these with grants and vouchers. The proposals were a fundamental challenge on the rights of disabled people to be independent and failed to account for costs incurred for many disabled people related to their disability.
The UK Labour government has said that more disabled people and those with health conditions will be supported to get into and remain in work. This can only be achieved if the UK Labour government delivers on the Disability Employment Charter including ensuring employers provide reasonable adjustments within a specific time frame and publish a disability pay gap report.
The next 5 years gives us an opportunity to improve the rights of our members and hold the UK Labour government to account on their promises:
1)the introduction of a Race Equality Act
2)strengthening protections against dual discrimination
3)updating mental health legislation to address the disproportionate impact the current law has on Black people and autistic people
4)improving flexible working
5)supporting unpaid carers
6)strengthening trade union law
7)requiring employers to publish ethnicity and disability pay gaps
8)improving hate crime protection for disabled and LGBT+ people
9)implementing the socio-economic duty.
Conference is gravely concerned over Labour reneging on its previous commitments to trans equality, reversing its stance on gender self-declaration and stating that it will work to implement the recommendations of the independent review of gender identity services for children and young people, despite there being criticism of the methodology used and of the findings. For disabled trans people, the findings have been criticised as an ‘insidious mobilisation of neurodivergence which undermines their agency’. The decision to extend the ban on puberty blockers for young people is subject to legal challenge and has been criticised by some Labour members of parliament (MPs).
Conference requests the national LGBT+ committee, working with appropriate parts of the union, including Labour Link to:
A)Produce a list of equality commitments to be raised with relevant parts of the Labour government
B)Request a meeting with Labour MPs to discuss our concerns over the Labour government’s position on trans rights including those of children and young people
C)Seek an update from the UK government on the work to implement the actions in the Disability Employment Charter
D)Continue our campaign within the labour movement for improved rights for our trans, non-binary and gender diverse members.