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Use of word (2021)

Request

1) Please could you provide the Parliament's definition of queer?

2) How many l, g, b, and t have been in Parliament approximately and how many women and men for each decade of Parliament's history?

3) (Homosexuality was legalised in 1967). How many current MPs and staff are self-describing as queer?

4) When was this 'history month' created? And by whom? And how has it been legitimised at Parliament. Please provide the rationale.

5) When was the first use of Queer for an event of any kind at Parliament?

6) Who proposed and who agreed to this Queer agenda and this expenditure?

7) Please give an accurate date when Parliament conflated trangenderism [sic] with same sex attracted (this is ahistoric) and who proposed and those who supported.

8) Please list the perversions and kinks prevalent historically and currently at Parliament. And the rationale for highlighting.

9) Please identify the person responsible for this 'Queer history' program. Name, title, address.

10) Please clarify who and what department are responsible for this constant emphasis on (Genderism and) Queer/kink - and when this was debated and condoned.

11) Please identify all supporting MPs.

 

 

 

Response

Please firstly note that Parliament consists of the House of Commons and the House of Lords, which are two separate public authorities in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA). The House of Commons can only answer your queries on behalf of itself. If you would like to access any recorded information which may be held by the House of Lords, you would need to ask them directly.


1) Please could you provide the Parliament's definition of queer?

This information is not held by the House of Commons. We hold no record of the House itself defining this word.

However, it may help you to know that, with regards to LGBT+ communities, the House uses the widely accepted definition of ‘queer’ as an umbrella term for people who do not identify as heterosexual or cisgender.

Definitions relevant to your request can be found in a variety of dictionaries such as: Collins, Cambridge, Merriam-Webster .

The House follows the example of LGBT+ organisations which also use these definitions of the word ‘queer’, for example: Stonewall, Gaycenter, Outright International.

These definitions do allow ‘queer’ to be considered synonymous with homosexuality and bisexuality as those are specific as ‘queer’ has been adopted as an umbrella term for all non-heterosexual and/or non-cisgender identities. We do not recognise that ‘queer’ signifies any form of “degeneracy” as an umbrella term as it has been reclaimed and adopted by people in the LGBT+ community. The use of the word ‘queer’ is widely prevalent such that the Q in LGBTQAI stands for Queer. Many LGBT+ people identify as queer (including parliamentary staff) and the House is committed to acting in the interests of all staff and the public generally, including all those identifying as queer. ParliOUT, the Workplace Equality Network which supports LGBT+ people in Parliament, previously used the LGBTQAI acronym, changing to LGBT+ for consistency.


2) How many l, g, b, and t have been in Parliament approximately and how many women and men for each decade of Parliament's history?
and
3) (Homosexuality was legalised in 1967). How many current MPs and staff are self-describing as queer?

Some information to respond to your request is held by the House of Commons.

The House of Commons has invited staff to self-identify certain characteristics since 2013, for the purposes of monitoring diversity to enable us to improve our systems and processes to make us a more diverse and inclusive employer. This is not and has never been mandatory, and the information is collated in an annual Diversity Report which has been published on our website since 2013. We do not hold a breakdown of the gender of those who self-identify on these forms. Please also note that diversity monitoring forms are destroyed 6 years after an employee leaves, in accordance with our records retention policy.

The House of Commons diversity reports are exempt from disclosure under the FOIA in accordance with section 21(1) and (2)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA), which removes a public authority from the obligation to provide access to information which is already in the public domain. This is an absolute exemption and the public interest test does not apply.

However, it may help you to know that information relevant to your request can be found on the Diversity and inclusion strategy pages of our website.

Information relevant to your request relating to Members of Parliament is not routinely collected by the House of Commons. We do not employ MPs, and we do not ask them for this information, or otherwise record it. However, it may interest you to know that publicly available figures on LGBT+ Members are collated in a House of Commons’ Briefing Paper of 27 March 2020, which is available which is available of our parliamentary pages.

Some MPs may have self-identified or be otherwise happy to disclose this information to you. Therefore, you may wish to contact them directly to ask for the information you seek. A list of contact details of current Members can be found on our parliamentary website. We do not hold contact details of former Members.


4) When was this 'history month' created? And by whom? And how has it been legitimised at Parliament. Please provide the rationale.

We have interpreted your request to be for information about Parliament’s LGBT+ History Month, which is an annual event organised by staff and teams of the House and coordinated by the Diversity and Inclusion Team. This year, the rationale was that the event should be an opportunity to reflect on inspirational role models, build stronger and supportive communities and recognise the contributions of the LGBT+ community.

Whilst the House of Commons holds information relating to this event, including the date, by whom and why it was started, this is also already available from public sources. This information is exempt from disclosure in accordance with section 21(1) and (2)(a) FOIA, which removes a public authority from the obligation to provide access to information which is already in the public domain. This is an absolute exemption and the public interest test does not apply.

However, it may help you to know that information on the creation of LGBT+ history month can be found on the University and College Union website. A variety of reasons for celebrating LGBT+ History Month at Parliament are published on the parliamentary news webpages.


5) When was the first use of Queer for an event of any kind at Parliament?

To provide the information you have requested by determining where the word “queer” first appears in relation to any event, the House of Commons would have to manually review all information for all events held on the parliamentary estate. The House processes several thousand events each year and retains booking information and some promotional materials for a wide range of these. We estimate that this would take several weeks of work to locate and review all event information currently held by the House of Commons.

Section 12 of the FOIA only requires the House of Commons to comply with a request which would not exceed the appropriate limit of £600. This represents the estimated cost of one person spending 24 working hours in determining whether the House holds the information, and locating, retrieving and extracting the information. As your request exceeds this limit, it is refused. However, if you were to make a new request for a narrower category of information, it may be that we could comply, although we cannot guarantee that this will be the case. For example, you could refine your request to ask for a particular type of event or for speaking events from a particular speaker.


6) Who proposed and who agreed to this Queer agenda and this expenditure?

This information is not held by the House of Commons as there is no “queer agenda” in the House and the House has incurred no costs for the events organised for LGBT+ History Month 2021.


7) Please give an accurate date when Parliament conflated trangenderism [sic] with same sex attracted (this is ahistoric) and who proposed and those who supported.

This information is not held by the House of Commons as the House does not conflate transgender people with same-sex attracted people. More generally, the House does not confuse gender with sexuality. Transgender people have always been a part of the LGBT+ community, such that the T stands for Transgender.


8) Please list the perversions and kinks prevalent historically and currently at Parliament. And the rationale for highlighting.

This information is not held by the House of Commons. Please note that, while we endeavour to be as helpful as possible, the FOIA only provides the requester with an access right to recorded information held by the House of Commons. It does not extend, for example, to requests for views, explanations or comments about a particular matter. Your request can be in the form of a question, but the House of Commons does not have to answer your question if this would mean creating new information, providing analysis or giving an opinion or judgment that is not already recorded. Further information can be found at our Freedom of Information webpages.

It may interest you to know that the House uses the word “queer” in the manner that it has been reclaimed by those who self-identify as queer. Whilst the word was considered derogatory in the past (as outlined by the definitions provided above), it is now a valid means of self-expression and does not denote “perversions and kink” in the way you describe. The House does not consider the word derogatory in these circumstances, for instance when referring to people who self-identify as queer.


9) Please identify the person responsible for this 'Queer history' program. Name, title, address.

This information is not held by the House of Commons, because the House has no “‘Queer history’ program”.

10) Please clarify who and what department are responsible for this constant emphasis on (Genderism and) Queer/kink - and when this was debated and condoned.
and
11) Please identify all supporting MPs.

This information is not held by the House of Commons. No individual or department is responsible for a “constant emphasis on (Genderism and) Queer/kink” as this emphasis is not something the House pursues. Please note our response to your previous question conflating the words “queer” and “kink” with which the House disagrees.

It may interest you to know that there are a number of established Workplace Equality Networks (WENs) which provide an opportunity for groups of people to discuss and consider issues relevant to their situation or of interest to them, particularly as forums for groups protected by equality legislation. Further information for ParliOUT, the WEN which is a support network relevant to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT+) people based in Parliament, can be found on the WEN pages of our website.