David Lammy was appointed foreign secretary after Labour won last year’s general election (Alamy)
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A group of new Labour MPs has accused the UK government of violating international law and “betraying” British values by failing to protect LGBT+ people in the British Overseas Territories.
Sixteen Labour MPs have written a letter to Foreign Secretary David Lammy, seen by PoliticsHome, calling for “urgent” government leadership on the fundamental rights of LGBT+ British citizens in the British Overseas Territories.
All of the MPs behind the letter were elected last year, except for Nadia Whittome and Kate Osborne, who were elected in 2019. The majority of the new MP signatories are openly LGBT+, and many of them have not previously spoken out publicly against the Labour government.
The group of MPs, led by Macclesfield MP Tim Roca, said they believe the UK has a “legal and moral duty” to ensure that all its citizens, including those in the Overseas Territories, are afforded equal protection under the law.
“Yet, the treatment of LGBT+ individuals in the British Caribbean has deteriorated, placing the UK in the unprecedented position of being, today, the only Council of Europe Member State that permits discrimination against its own citizens in its Caribbean jurisdictions,” the letter continued.
The MPs said that the government’s “inaction on these injustices is not only a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights but, more importantly, a betrayal of the values Britain has long championed on the world stage”.
They highlighted the poor treatment of LGBT+ people in the Turks and Caicos, the British Virgin Islands, Anguilla and Montserrat, where they said there are “no legal protections for LGBT+ citizens whatsoever”.
The letter claimed that in the Turks and Caicos and in the British Virgin Islands, local people are forced to fight protracted litigations in their local courts for their constitutional rights to equality and nondiscrimination from the local governments “under the watch of the UK government”.
“By failing to prevent differential treatment of LGBT+ persons in these jurisdictions, which naturally includes British citizens, the UK has allowed a two-tier system of British LGBT+ rights to emerge, in which the promise of equality and dignity extends only to some, not all, of its citizens and territories,” the letter continued.
“This is a fundamental injustice that must be corrected in line with the suggestion made by the Foreign Affairs Select Committee in its report on Overseas Territories in 2019.”
The MPs ended the letter by demanding that the government acts “with urgency and resolve this situation in the appropriate manner that it demands”.
An FCDO spokesperson told PoliticsHome: “The UK is committed to defending rights of LGBT+ people around the world. No one should face violence, persecution, or exclusion because of who they are.
“Most of the UK Overseas Territories have already made provision for same sex marriage or civil partnerships, and the UK Government is in dialogue with the remaining Territories.”
The MP co-signatories included: Tim Roca MP, Jacob Collier MP, Michael Payne MP, Danny Beales MP, Steve Race MP, Chris Bloore MP, David Burton-Sampson MP, Oliver Ryan MP, Emily Darlington MP, Mark Sewards MP, Lloyd Hatton MP, Rachel Taylor MP, Michelle Welsh MP, Luke Myer MP, Nadia Whittome MP, Kate Osborne MP.
