At 3pm today, C4's Krishnan Guru-Murthy conducted an interview over Twitter with Grant Shapps, the Shadow Housing Minister. Shapps, whose previous claim to fame was to have been at the centre of an embarrassing episode involving sock-puppetry, was asked, among other things, about his views on gay rights. The initial exchange between him and Guru-Murthy went as follows:
KGM: Do you agree with Chris Grayling on B&B owners being able to choose who they admit to their homes?
GS: the law is the law & huge progress has been made over the yrs. I'd never want to turn the clock back.
KGM: 'the law is the law' doesn't sound like a big banging of the drum on gay rights. A bit reluctant on this issue?
GS: spotted follow up on gay rights. Big supporter. Legislation passed prior to being MP. Would definitely voted for civil partnerships
Yet, Shapps can only be accounted a 'big supporter' of gay rights if what that involves is not once voting in favour of gay rights. Since Grant became a MP in 2005, there have been two key gay rights votes - over the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations in March 2007, which outlawed discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation in the provision of goods and services, and the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill in May 2008, which granted lesbian couples access to IVF, by removing the earlier stipulation that treatment should only be provided once doctors had considered the child's 'need' for a father.
Shapps voted against lesbian access to IVF, supporting two separate attempts to insert a new requirement on doctors that they take account of the child's 'need' for a father or a 'male role model'. And he failed to turn up to vote for non-discrimination in goods and services. In other words, Shapps failed to support the law that, among other things, prohibits Christian B&B owners from turning away gay couples. Oddly, he failed to mention this when quizzed about Grayling's comments.
In light of his voting record, Shapps has only a 21% gay-friendliness rating from Stonewall. (The only reason this score is not lower still is that failure to vote, as opposed to voting against, gets an MP a token mark in Stonewall's calculations, and so Shapps' no-show on the Equality Act counts slightly in his favour). And yet, in Shapps' own estimation, this is enough to render him a 'big supporter' of gay rights.
When I pointed Shapps' less than impressive record out to Guru-Murthy, he sent this follow-up question:
Grant, @sohopolitico has sent us your voting record on gay rights http://bit.ly/bdVVPW can you explain pls when u have time?
Thus far, Shapps has ignored that question, though he has written other tweets since the interview (including a tweet linking to the interview transcript on the C4 website, which disappointingly does not include Guru-Murthy's follow-up tweet about Shapps' voting record). I'm not holding my breath that he'll find the time to set the record straight anytime soon...
My MP, Anne Milton, scored only 14%
ReplyDeleteI'm now slightly less suprised that she wasn't at all alarmed when her activists equated homosexuality with paedophilia
I have never bothered to check but it is said that although he supports gay rights in theory, Gordon Brown has never once physically voted for any pro gay legislation.
ReplyDeleteI suppose if true one could find lots of reasons to justify that anomaly - but the same would probably apply to Grant Shapps.
@Vulpus_rex:
ReplyDeleteYou can view Brown's voting record here:
http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/mp.php?mpn=Gordon_Brown&mpc=Dunfermline_East&house=commons&dmp=826
As you will see, he has been perpetually absent for key votes. The official explanation is that he was busy with Treasury business, and that key Cabinet members are not generally asked to take time out to vote in the Commons unless there is a danger that the government will lose.
For what it's worth, I think it would have been a good idea for Brown to have made a symbolic show of support for gay rights, by turning up to vote once or twice over the years. I'm sure he wishes now that he had done so, since he has been asked about his seemingly lukewarm stance on gay rights a number of times now.
But notice that there are three key votes that Gordon *was* there to support: the same three that Shapps failed to support. Moreover, even if Shapps can convincingly maintain that, in 2007, when he failed to vote for the Equality Act, he was as desperately needed elsewhere as Gordon Brown had been, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he cannot plead that same excuse in the case of the 2008 votes. For Shapps did not merely fail to support lesbian access to IVF in 2008 - he voted against it. Twice.
PS. Even in spite of his no-shows over the years, Gordon Brown has a 71% approval rating from Stonewall. That's versus 21% for Shapps.
ReplyDelete