Category Archives: News

The LGB&T Dorset Equality Network from the onset of the Covid 19 national and international emergency been for the pan-Dorset area and beyond, including national level in a number of areas, been taking action to protect and support our LGBT+ community members, especially those community members belonging to some of our LGBT+ sub-communities especially vulnerable to the impacts from safety and safeguarding, to hate crime and prejudice, and to healthcare.

Please bookmark this page as we will be adding some specific guidance here for both community members, and for statutory sector from NHS (in conjunction with the NHS Equality & Health Inequalities Team) to local authorities, to police constabularies, the prison service, and beyond.

To give context to this guidance please see the information below from the United Nations High Commission, kindly provided from Nepal’s LGBT community through our links with the latter:

COVID-19 AND THE HUMAN RIGHTS OF LGBTI PEOPLE. WHAT IS THE IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON LGBTI PEOPLE?

Health and mental health: from hospital settings and seeking NHS care Covid 19 poses particularly clear additional impacts for LGBT community members with a healthcare system that still carries a reputation for in all too many cases for community members, especially those coming out as LGB or Trans, being less than welcoming/helpful, professional if you are LGB or T or have a healthcare related need, to come Out as LGB or T.

Further to providing them with specific information, we are looking to the Dorset area NHS and Public Health to provide Covid 19 and the LGBT+ communities specific support on LGBT specific healthcare and staying safe Covid 19 minimising information through an LGBT+ specific healthcare information capaign, as Dorset CCG and Public Health Dorset are aware, further to information and guidance provided through our direct relationship with NHS England’s Equality & Health Inequalities Team.

Safety, crime/Anti-Social Behaviour / Hate Crime: these include due to self-isolation particularly severe changes for community members in terms of vulnerability to bullying and/or abuse. Housing/Accomodation settings have always been particularly problematic to potentially or actually, dangerous.

The areas of gravest concern for our LGBT and LGBTQ communities in regard to to Covid 19 self-isolation are in particular but not limited to in terms of public service organisations heightened attention and supportive intervention at this time:

Housing/accomodation setting, particularly in regard to communal living settings and housing associations where LGBT people commonly can find friction points with neighbours, fellow residents who hold ant-LGBT views and express these through anti-LGBT hate crime

We are looking to see Domestic Violence victims organisations, local authorities, and police teams support dedicated LGBT community outreach on safety and whistleblowing, as the ratio of DV and Domestic Abuse is disproportionately high in the gay and lesbian community due to impacts of prejudice

Coming Out during the current Covid 19 lockdown: Coming Out as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or Trans is at the best of times a matter of courage in the face of adversity and even dangers. In the context of social isolation our LGB&T community members seeking or needing to Come Out as LGB or T, safety issues are considerably exacerbated.

For those LGBT community members Coming Out or feeling they need to Come Out: in the lockdown context this very important right and ability crucial to psychological and emotional wellbeing, especially for younger community members, has been removed. Instead feelings of entrapment where families are not-accepting of LGBT members and have a record of anti-LGBT conduct up to and including abusive behaviour, are greatly amplified. Some 25% of young homeless people are LGBT community members and their homelessness relating to family rejection or bullying, and wont of being able to have supportive trusted friends and support signposting

These are the main areas the LGB&T Dorset Equality Network is supporting our community with in regard to ensuring that the types of risk and concern that the UN report has highlighted to support our community members. This support involves specific guidance to statutory sector agencies and organisations, to enable them to adapt their services to ensure that in these exceptional and extreme times, they can save LGB&T lives, and support our community members in positions of particular considerably deepened vulnerability.

We take the postion that that Covid 19 has provided a sudden and very powerful ‘stress test’ on the credibility and the effectiveness of LGB&T related inclusion and anti-Hate Crime policies and related services delivery. We are there to support our Community, and we are there to support Service providers!

The Network is very pleased to update that Dorset FA has signed up to the Ask for Clive initiative as a supporting organisation, further to our representation on the importance of Ask for Clive, and of the Dorset county FA joining. We wish to thank Mr Andy Mercer and the Board, Chair and CEO of Dorset FA for embracing the exceptional opportunity that becoming one of the first county FAs (potentially the first) to join AfC offers for this county FA and for LGBT community members and LGBT community members who play or follow football.

We are delighted to provide this dedicated LGBT+ outreach Covid 19 related statement from Dorset Police, further to LGB&T Dorset Equality Network request:

Message from Superintendent Gavin Dudfield and Kaz Duke-Glover, Dorset Police’s Legitimacy Manager

During this unprecedented time, we want to reach out to members of Dorset’s LGBT+ community.

This is not just as members of Dorset Police but also on behalf of Prejudice Free Dorset, which includes our Police and Crime Commissioner Martyn Underhill and his office.

We understand this is a challenging time for all our communities in Dorset, but we do not underestimate the impact it is having on yourselves. We recognise the additional concerns you may have in relation to COVID-19 and we are here to support you, both from a policing perspective but also in terms of tackling prejudice and discrimination.

Dorset LGB&T Equality Network has contacted us to ensure we understand the additional concerns of our LGBT+ community members.

The policing response to COVID-19 is clear – Dorset Police is providing business as usual. Yes, we have been given additional powers in line with the Government restrictions, but our priority is to ensure you are keeping yourself and others safe by staying at home and only making essential journeys in line with the government guidance. 

We continue to police with consent. We want to engage with you, encourage and educate you to ensure we can keep as many people safe as possible, so we can support the NHS and save lives. We will always engage before taking any enforcement action.

Dorset Police’s website has a regularly updated Frequently Asked Questions section and we would encourage you to visit this page and make sure you understand the guidance.

COVID-19 may not discriminate, but sadly people still do. We recognise that members of our LGBT+ communities may receive increased prejudice during this time and we reiterate the importance of reporting. Dorset Police takes a robust approach to dealing with hate crime and we encourage you to report all hate crimes and incidents.  You can report directly via our online reporting form, but of course always call 999 in an emergency. 

If you do not want to report directly to Dorset Police, there are a number of third party reporting centres who can report on your behalf and provide you with support. This includes Dorset LGB&T Equality Network, Bourne Free and the Intercom Trust. A full list including links can be found on Dorset Police’s hate crime page.

We continue to work with our partners, to ensure all our community members stay safe and follow government advice.

We provide (6th April) the following updates on actions we have undertaken in support to the particular impacts of Covid 19 on the health, safety, and stautory sector support to community members across Dorset and beyond:

Having worked closely with HMPPS (Her Majesty’s Prison & Probation Service) in the Dorset arwa and South West, we are very pleased to update that guidance we have provided at the request of HMPPS Avon & South Dorset, is being utilised to inform Covid 19 related policy and services by HMPPS in Avon and South Dorset (including The Verne and HMP & YOI Portland), and that HMPPS greatly appreciates the Network’s guidance and support regarding the particular impacts Covid 19 has for those in custody.

We have in recent days alerted Dorset Police and the Office of the Dorset Police & Crime Commissioner (DPCC) to the policing dimension impacts of Covid 19: we have received formal communication back from Dorset Police regarding the issues and needs involved that we have represented, backed by national level research and local Dorset consultation. The Network is delighted that the guidance we have provided is being included in the strategic response (and we believe and hope, operational level response) of Dorset Police, to initiate in the coming days an important LGBT community supportive response to Covid 19 in regard to particular impacts it has unique to our community.

The Network has communicated with the leaders of both BCP Council and Dorset Council on the ASB (Anti Social Behaviour) and safety and safeguarding impacts of Covid 19, that are particular to our LGBT community.

Finally, in regard to the direct healthcare impacts of Covid 19, partly through our direct connection with the Equality & Health Inequalities Team of NHS England, we are developing information resources to support strategy and operational level implementation of both Dorset CCG (NHS) and Public Health Dorset in regard to the medical and public health support needs of our community across Dorset & BCP.

We will keep you updated on all of the above in the coming days. Concluding this important update with a very important alert on those considering or needing in earnest to come out as LGB or T in ‘lockdown’ circumstances (if their families are anti-LGBT), via Pink News, from the Albert Kennedy Trust:

The Albert Kennedy Trust (AKT), a charity that cares for the LGBT+ homeless, has warned young people to “think hard” before coming out at this time.

LGBT charity tells young people to ‘hit pause’ on coming out while in lockdown with parents:

The advice comes as LGBT+ helplines see a surge in calls from people who are stuck self-isolating with abusive family and partners.

“If you’re a young person and you’re thinking of coming out, press pause on that until you get support,” Tim Sigsworth, AKT’s CEO, told Sky News.

He expressed concern for how families may react to their child coming out in this particularly stressful time, and warned of the dangers of being made homeless during the pandemic.

“You can’t predict at these completely unprecedented times how your parents will react. They, like you, are under a lot of stress and they may not react in a positive way.

“We’re all being told to self-isolate, so being on the streets, it has to be the most dangerous place for a vulnerable young person at the moment,” he said.

Councils were asked to house all rough sleepers after the UK went into lockdown, but that can be hard when individuals start showing symptoms of the virus.

Research by AKT last year found that a quarter of UK adults would feel “ashamed” to have an LGBT+ child.

“We had a young person very early on in the crisis who was staying in a hostel, but then started to show symptoms and the hostel asked them to leave,” Sigsworth said.

“They had nowhere to stay and no family; their family had rejected them. They had no work, no options other than the street.”

More than one in ten wouldn’t want their child to bring home a same-sex partner, while one in five would worry about how family members would respond to them having an LGBT+ child.

With the pandemic cutting off alternative options, the situation has significantly worsened for many.

Last month the UK-based LGBT Foundation received its highest number of weekly calls to its helpline since the beginning of the year, more than double the number received in the same period last year.

Link: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/04/05/albert-kennedy-trust-coming-out-hit-pause-coronavirus-lockdown-parents/

This makes grim reading, but is an important ‘stress test’ for the statutory sector, especially local authorities and to some extent police and healthcare organisations (GPs and GP ‘clusters’, Public Health Dorset, Dorset CCG and the pan-Dorset NHS foundation trusts), regarding solidity of their policies and related operational level and public communication strategies for those members of our community coming Out as LGB or T in adverse family circumstances. The Network is as all of the organisations and bodies referred to above, leading across the pan-Dorset area to support our most vulnerable LGBT & LGBTQ community members, and the statutory and private sectors in regard to effective delivery at the time of Covid 19 of both the latter.

Please watch this space for more updates!

The Network at the time of the national Covid 19 emergency wishes to alert all LGBT+ community members and public service organisations and local authorities to the following risks and issues that affect generally or sub-groups of our LGBT+ community are particularly susceptible to in comparison to the broader general public:

LGBTQ people are vulnerable because of three specific factors.

• “The LGBTQ+ population uses tobacco at rates that are 50 percent higher than the general population,” it states. “COVID-19 is a respiratory illness that has proven particularly harmful to smokers.”
• LGBTQ people are also at risk because our community has higher rates of HIV and cancer, “which means a greater number of us may have compromised immune systems, leaving us more vulnerable to COVID-19 infections.”
• 3. The third and final factor in LGBTQ people being more vulnerable is because we “continue to experience discrimination, unwelcoming attitudes, and lack of understanding from providers and staff in many health care settings.     “As a result, many are reluctant to seek medical care except in situations that feel urgent – and perhaps not even then.”

Source – Gay Times:  https://www.gaytimes.co.uk/community/133402/lgbtq-people-are-more-vulnerable-to-coronavirus-for-three-reasons/

Please watch this space for more information including action representations the Network is making to Public Health Dorset, Dorset NHS CCG, and in regard to aspects of point 3, Dorset Police, the Office of the Dorset Police & Crime Commissioner (DPCC) and local authorities.  In all of these our community working with these state organisations can make a difference in the fight against Covid 19 and also anti-LGBT prejudice & hate crime, and for LGBT+ inclusion and welfare!

Stay safe, self-isolate, and social distance to save lives and help our NHS and public services to help us all!!

The Network is very Proud to announce the launch of the ‘Need to Know – Immigration UK‘ website information resource in conjunction with our national/main partner organisation ‘Just a Ball Game?‘ whose support on this multiorganisation supported badly needed information resource is greatly appreciated. The resource ‘lifts the lid’ on the mechanics of bullying and brutality at the heart of the Hostile Environment, and its source, its implementers and protectors — in Whitehall.

You can view the resource at http://needtoknow-immigrationuk.com/

Today in conjunction with the e-resource launch we are delighted to share the following article from Immigration News UK: https://immigrationnews.co.uk/the-hostile-environment-whitehall-britains-darkest-chapter-a-need-to-know-guide/

A formal launch in London will be taking place for the associated e-book (both resource and e-book being compiled and created by Alan Mercel-Sanca, Network lead and principal initiator) later in March, with March 19th the advised date — PLEASE WATCH THIS SPACE for more information!

The resource is a nationally and internationally important initiative that involves and unites both BAME and LGBT communities on the very serious issues of targeting and abuses of power and process that the Hostile Environment current UK Immigration operational level implementing organisations/agencies (especially the Home Office & Immigration Tribumnal) have been responsible for. Groundbreaking in bringing our LGBT and BAME communities together in an exceptional way, through a shared often horrific experience of many years duration through the latter, the resource has a dedicated LGBT section, and beyond this the broader information resource highlights LGBT experiences along with our BAME communities ones.

The Network has made a representation to the leader of Bournemouth Christchurch Poole (BCP) Council and the council’s equality portfolio holder on the extraordinary decision of BCP officials to LEAVE OUT of a very important housing/accomodation ‘selective licensing’ consultation, despite awareness of in particular the safety and safeguarding issues and needs of lesbian and [male] gay community members that had been represented, sadly, unsuccessfully [from the then Bournemouth Council’s side] to the Bournemouth area former council up to its then Equality Lead level.

Formal apology and communication of appreciation from the Council Leader to the Network:

We are delighted to share that our intervention was greatly appreciated by the Leader of BCP Council who along with a senior official of the Council, has communicated with us to express their gratitude for drawing this serious error to the attention of the Council Leader & Equality Portfolio holder.

A formal apology for the LGB ommission on the paper version of the consultation form has been made by BCP Council, and the electronic version of the later flagged up as containing the LGB section, so important to community members, landlords, and those with interest in LGBT safety and safeguarding and inclusion. We have been invited to hold a meeting with senior council officials to build on the work accomplished through the combined alert & representation of the Network, and corresponding apology and action by the Council.

The Network is very pleased to share that its lead, Alan Mercel-Sanca in conjunction with Bournemouth & Poole College’s Lloyd Perry, Head of Student Support was the main feature on BBC Radio Solent’s the ‘Early Late Show’ this evening (16th December, 8 – 8:30pm): https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06lspzr. Alan and Lloyd taking questions from Early Late Show host, Stephanie Newenhouse on BPC & Network collaborative support on Ask for Clive initiative introduced at the college by the Network.

The Network is really Proud of the college’s enthusiastic embracing of AfC; the student and teacher/lecturer outreach great impacts of the introduction of AfC in key locations across both BPC (Bournemouth and Poole) campuses was detailed from Lloyd’s side, whilst on the Network’s side Alan explained about the St Alban’s (Hertfordshire) private sector (bars and clubs) origin of AfC and its dynamics (a response to very real safety and feeling welcome in social venue needs that until AfC advent had been remaining all too often, despite public sector best efforts (some good, but much bad in our Dorset area and nationally), unmet.

In the broadcast the Network shared about its national level work with Lindsay England (Just a Ball Game? founder) and on counteracting the anti-LGBT dimension of the Home Office & Immigration Tribunal de-facto persecution of LGBT community members (international and UK).

We provide this alert to community members and fellow LGBT & LGBT allies in regard to suspicious perceived homophobic discriminatory phone calls. The Network received such a call today, and wishes to alert community members and other community supportive organisations and groups. The particulars indicate a religious fundamentalist and/or political entrenched anti-LGBT perspective and approach. The caller may contact you to ask ‘are you a Homosexual group’! They will say they have found from a recently bereaved friend that they have ‘much high quality Homosexual material’ and don’t know what to do with it, and therefore ‘I made an internet search on Homosexual groups and found your number’ hoping I could provide you with the material.

An offer was made to provide our contact email so the individual could give all particulars on his request: who he was, where based, what the nature of his purpose of contacting was, etc. This invitation to provide an email to the Network, that we made, was Not taken up, nor was there interest from the unknown contactee in taking down the Network contact email address that we sought to provide.

The individual who did not provide or offer his name, then proceeded to say that the material was clearly ‘high quality homosexual porn,’ and included a blow-up doll! This we found highly offensive and made very clear that the contact made on such a basis by the contactee was unwelcome, unwholesome. Said contactee continued ‘it is such a pity that such good quality material [including the doll] should not be given to [homosexual] people, and would otherwise need to be thrown away.’

The Network has very great experience in the nuances of the still all too endemic forms of never directly stated but very real homophobic indirect hate and hate crime which causes still so many community members extreme distress on a daily basis. We as do most (particularly independent orientated organisations and groups) know exactly the type of tactic that was being attempted, and we are actively considering taking the particulars to the Police for this reason.

The Network regards such a contact as more than suspicious and that it demonstrated (somwhat cowardly as is the way nowadays with most homophobes) unstated homophobic motivation of the clearest kinds. Only hard-core homophobes particularly in religious faiths (and within UK immigration services and some judges within the related Immigration Tribunal) contexts use the perjorative term ‘homosexuals’ now: it belonged to the ugly pre-1967 era and is associated with the horrific tale of the de-facto manslaughter of the British patriot and national hero Alan Turing under state/systemic anti-LGBT persecution.

We ask community members and fellow LGBT equality and inclusion values supporting groups and organisations to be alert in case they are contacted too!

We also politely wish to communicate to those charged with counteracting or prosecuting anti-LGBT hate crimes. And this term understandably includes what community members regard as unambiguously clear contempt in direct AND indirect forms against who they are (sexual orientation or gender identity) — such as here the vicious rationale (used in almost all cultures and nations across the globe that have systemic anti-LGBT perspectives and statutory powers that are used often by the most violent to torture and kill LGBT people — that they take note that the incident detailed in this news item reminds that it is indirect prejudice and discrimination that is the main, and very serious continuing, means of those who actually cannot due to the Law, openly express what is in their hearts and minds regarding non-acceptance of those who are different to themselves.

The LGB&T Dorset Equality Network is pleased to issue the Open Letter below to the leaders of the four main (Westminster) political parties — Conservative / Labour / Liberal Democrat / SNP — on the occasion of the General Election.

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Date: 2^nd December 2019

Dear Mr Johnson, Mr Corbyn, Ms Swinson, and Ms Sturgeon,

As leaders of the four main political parties of the recently dissolved Westminster Parliament, the LGB&T Dorset Equality Network provides to each of you on behalf of the LGBT community (6%+ of the total UK population and our Dorset area) this Open Letter on the particularly important occasion of this the General Election of 2019. 

This letter has been proposed by many within our community, as the election provides a rare, precious opportunity for direct, unfiltered, communication between citizens and voters with your respected selves. 

The LGB&T Dorset Equality Network brings before you in this Open Letter two particular matters of true national interest and importance that we request you to kindly provide us with timely and clear responses to.

This request made for constructive a-party political, LGB&T community supportive reasons as will be readily seen by the details and related considerations provided below on the two different, yet at some points interconnected matters that we submit for your respective direct reflections and related formal responses as leaders of your respective political parties.

You will understand, we are sure, outside of those times for the given party in government that there does actually exist a very real, and unhealthy in a parliamentary democracy, degree of often unacceptable extent of gate-keeping filtering and de-facto blocking of direct voter – politician communication by unelected civil servants. 

Historically speaking our Civil Service has many great and rightly justified credits to its name, but sadly in the past 20 years and especially in the 2012 onwards ‘Hostile Environment’ era in particular this record has been undeniably tarnished by elements of Whitehall that have de-facto in the name of serving Parliament and Nation in fact introduced dangerous to human rights, a free and professional justice system, and to parliamentary democracy itself revealed conduct, that no elected politician (representative and protector of the voter the latter represent and are empowered by) can ignore. 

There are continuing exceptional devoted civil servants in public service in Whitehall and across our nation, but they have increasingly over the past two decades and especially since 2012 been all too commonly exceptions which stand in contrast to a very different rule of an all powerful bureaucracy that has shown itself all too comfortable with seeking maximum non-transparency and unaccountability.

This opportunity to communicate with you is therefore a most rare and mutually valuable one, as citizens & voters faith in political parties is in reality often made, or more often broken not on the delivery of you our elected politicians, but in whether or not from local government to national government levels there is serious respect for in practice delivering in meaningful effective ways the manifesto commitments of political parties.

We ask, you therefore to respond to two particular contexts – one local government level, and a further one national (detailed in the second part of this open letter) – and to commit in concrete terms to support each of our requests for hands-on meaningful change and action in the two areas detailed.

Our first request for action:

We ask you all to in terms of your manifesto commitments LGB&T remits delivery to ensure that whichever party (parties) win the General election that your LGB&T remits include ensuring that all executive to frontline levels officers & staff of public service organisations, local authorities, and national agencies/services, are requested to provide and implement the following:

• Implementation strategies for their LGB&T E&D policies
• Having those strategies monitored by local area to national independent LGBT community organisations / respected community leads
• That those strategies assessment is embedded in government inspectorates both regular and unannounced inspections of public service organisations, local authorities, and national agencies delivery, and where best practice, especially enthusiastic best practice energetically demonstrated, that is highlighted and rewarded. 

Some Dorset area context to the above:

In some regards in the Dorset area whilst there are some honourable best practice examples, it is still in some directions common practice of putting effort to implement the legal provisions and the spirit of the Equality Act 2010 very low on the priorities list for taking action, even sometimes when almost all the work has already been completed from the LGBT community side.  A case of, figuratively speaking, a sea of ‘can’t do’ ‘not today’ ‘brush off apathy’ being perceived as an unspoken but discernible (from the community’s side) unstated policy and tactic.  We would like to share with you after the election some of the experiences that LGBT+ and LGBT+ Allies all too commonly, to their dismay and consternation experience. 

The Ask for Clive campaign is a major national phenomenon that has been a reaction to this, seeing that the private sector is much more ready, commonly, than those in the public services & local authorities bureaucracies with mandatory requirement to implement the provisions and protections of the Equality Act 2010 in real practical day to day life and services provision terms.  In Dorset we have seen both exceptional positive opportunities embracing Ask for Clive’s potential to highlight or initiate best practice around LGBT safety and welcome, and in contrast some awful perceived ‘lets push this in to the long grass’ ones that can only be considered as reactions based in unstated homophobic standpoints or protective of those whom it must be believed hold views that regard LGBT inclusion and welcome, as undesirable. We would like to share our experiences with each of you to inform action and policy.

Second request for your intervention and responses:

Former Home Secretary Amber Rudd on the Whitehall directed & implemented UK Immigration system in the age of the ‘Hostile Environment  

‘ .. She wished she had looked into immigration enforcement “much earlier” but had been misled by some civil servants, she told the BBC.   “Unfortunately, I was told certain things that turned out not to be true.”    “I would like to get immigration enforcement right. I think that there is a problem there and it needs some really careful analysis and a brutal look at who’s doing what and who’s got what powers where.”

Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-45915418

Queer asylum seekers likely due compensation after supreme court rules Home Office unlawfully imprisoned thousands

The Home Office “falsely imprisoned” countless queer asylum seekers who are now entitled to damages, the highest court in the UK ruled.  Five Supreme Court judges this week ruled that many dreamers who lost liberty at the hands of the government are viable for compensation packages that may run into millions of pounds, reported The Guardian.  Many refugees are survivors of torture or persecution, some queer seekers fleeing from countries where their very existence itself is illegal.

Source:  https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/11/29/queer-asylum-seekers-home-office-compensation-supreme-court/

The two details above give direct contexts regarding our second request for your requested focused action, on a national (and international) level a matter of the greatest importance. Namely to address the LGB&T human rights & maltreatment context of the Hostile Environment.  On this the LGB&T Dorset Equality Network has extensive expertise and a successful record at national & parliamentary select committee level of support to LGB&T victims of the Hostile Environment and challenging implementers of the latter.  

We have three main requests for your study and investigation with a view to subsequent requested independent inquiry.  These requests are:

• To investigate the operational level substantial multiagency interconnections between especially the directing source of the Hostile Environment (the UKVI and Border Force & IE [Immigration Enforcement] agencies that superseded the UK Border Agency in 2012) and its de-facto effective heart, the Immigration Tribunal, whose record is increasingly compromising the good name of the British justice system itself.  To do so will provide an invaluable service to democracy and accountability and transparency values being restored to all of the agencies involved and counteracting perceived bullying by the state of Hostile Environment victims.
• Current LGB&T engagement & communication E&D training provided to the primary Hostile Environment de-facto implementing agencies (UKVI, IE & Border Force) and secondary and tertiary ones (from IRC/deportation centres to sub-contractors) be reviewed by an independent inquiry and/or appropriate Select Committee.  Effective training is clearly not being provided and government watchdogs whilst indirectly expressing awareness of this, fail to understand its serious significance.
• Home Office statements issued in response to human rights abuses and other scandals: Action on the well-known infamous discord between generally perceived disingenuous Home Office statements on respecting human rights & LGBT human rights and being professional in discharging UK immigration services, and the often horrific very different revealed record of statistics and direct victims of Hostile Environment institutionalised bullying & intimidation. These statements, when unchallenged effectively bring government and politicians into disrepute, and yet we know originate from unaccountable elements within Whitehall. 

In regard to this particular point we wish each of you to be aware of just how deeply offensive our community members and LGBT Allies here and around the world find it when unnamed Home Office Officials make statements about the ‘Home Office having a proud record on LGBT human rights …. etc. etc. ad nauseum’  This in defiance of the grotesque facts and statistics about readiness to send genuine LGBT asylum seekers to their deaths, force them to conceal (as was the case in pre 1967 Britain and even today some parts of rural Dorset) who they are and who they love, attempt to break up marriages, and it appears in some cases to even propose Christianity as a solution to their sexual orientation.  The scale of Home Office ECOs & caseworkers refusals of genuine LGBT community members, and frankly the complicity of in many cases certain elements of the Immigration Tribunal in this (the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal being so different and truly independent of the Home Office) is shocking and should be the first point of call in regard to the training related independent scrutiny we have requested.

Please do all you can to ensure these offensive statements cease, or at least names and posts of those who utter them are given!

We kindly request that you each as leaders of your parties commit to investigate the mechanisms behind this offensive phenomenon, and to take action to end the latter within three to six months of taking office and/or continuing in office alone or as part of a coalition/alliance government. 

We in conjunction with other participating organisations and one business (Lush: that enabled the initial preparation time to be funded), and a much larger group of supportive organisations (national and international, LGBT and other) working to provide dissemination, have led on developing a ‘Need to Know – Immigration UK’ online resource. This to support effective independent scrutiny and auditing of the areas of the Hostile Environment at operational level detailed above, and more broadly. 

This resource is being disseminated in two phases, the first this month of December 2019 and the second in the January/February 2020 period.  We will however be able to provide you each with a more comprehensive e-book, elements of which are being provided in the two-phase released online information resource.  This e-book we will provide to you on 16^th December for your kindly requested direct personal study as both politicians and human beings. 

In their essentials the three requests detailed in regard to investigation of operational level Home Office & Immigration Tribunal led Hostile Environment directly connect to the substance detailed in our first request above – matters of LGBT and broader community confidence in government and accountability and transparency evidencing in those delivering such services.

That common denominator being  to ensure those who carry out Acts of Parliament legal requirements at real-life and operational implementation level on your, our elected politicians and subsequently protectors of our human and civil rights, do so, and that the will of our voters expressed through elections (national and local) are effectively carried out in uninterrupted ways.  

Some further detail in support to the above and important related issues that we believe you may each be aware of:

We do not believe the LGB&T inclusion, equality and anti-discrimination training that is provided to those in the Hostile Environment implementing services, agencies, entities and subcontracted for profit companies such as UKVI caseworkers and ECOs and many Immigration Tribunal judges, is credible – on the basis of extensive unanswerably clear evidence — in terms of respecting international human rights and protections for LGB&T people or conforming with the legal requirements of the Equality Act 2010 in any substantive, clear ways.

There exists a culture in political debate of assuming that immigration (& emigration) is exclusively a matter of overseas nationals looking solely for economic benefit, and this assumption being inadequately challenged. Love knows know borders, whether that be the love of genuine committed partners (including married and civil partners) and of course families.

The current UK immigration Hostile Environment, Whitehall directed and implemented, has infamously shown itself to target in multiple ways such partners or family love that crosses borders, to the shame of the British name.  We where you stand or will stand in the post 2019 General Election context on ensuring the implementers & enforcers of the operational level Hostile Environment revoke in transparent, measurable ways the culture they have creating of targeting those (including British Citizens who have love & marriages that cross borders) whose ‘crime’ is to love somebody who is not a British national. 

The Whitehall so-called ‘Mandarins’ (Permanent Secretaries) and the senior directors and chief operating officers of  Whitehall adjunct agencies such as Immigration Enforcement [IE] and the UKVI, and those with executive authority in close operational level contact with the UKVI at the Immigration Tribunal, responsible for planning the implementation and in charge of the delivery of the Hostile Environment are ultimately public/civil servants that should be acting to implement the will of parliament and elected politicians party political manifestos. 

We believe that in Whitehall and the agencies and Tribunal that there is an unstated, but very real culture of pre-Equality Act 2010 (and some may even feel pre 1967) attitudes and unstated perspectives where LGBT safety and human rights inclusion are concerned.  That many of the malpractices revealed on handling of LGBT cases of known, demonstrably genuine applicants and their British national same-sex partners have been carried out with full knowledge of and de-facto contempt for those who have to bear extreme sometimes fatal costs.

In the case of the Hostile Environment this has never been the case as, almost all effort has gone into (indicating the perceived personal prejudice values and motivations of those involved in planning and operational level delivery) harassing and persecuting those who have been known to be genuine applicants [on partnerships/marriages, and immediate family basis], whilst at the same time as the recent Channel 4 ‘Smuggled’ series has demonstrated, leaving UK borders wide open to terrorists and illegal migration (that is to say nothing about the revelations on the so-called ‘Golden Visas’ regime).  This is a record not only of inhumanity and brutality, but grotesque and dangerous incompetence.  Not one of your manifestos in this or previous general elections ever designated genuine applicants to be targeted and a de-facto ‘open borders’ regime to be put in practice by Whitehall directed our bureaucrats.   

We must give an example of their harm to the state due to inexperience or wilful contempt for diverse communities and the parameters in which all of your political parties’ act in terms of respecting the UK and its electorate as multicultural and diverse.  For a while the ONS actively considered the inclusion of the Sikh community for a potential dedicated entry on the Census 2021 form. 

Unaware or potentially (hopefully not) contemptuous of the race relations and internal UK Sikh community historical dividing lines, their civil servants managed to turn latent friction into real, live major division by seeming to take the side of a minority (25%) of that community that favoured such a dedicated entry, and ignoring the 75% majority that were unambiguously against the latter because of the intra-community divisions it would cause.  We use this example to remind you our nation’s main political leaders that it can be disastrous to assume that Whitehall can be competent or have sufficient essential need to know knowledge to make wise decisions in regard to issues of major importance for minority communities. 

The Hostile Environment implementation has seen such wont of experience and good judgment on a monstrous, industrial scale, particularly in regard to the de-facto but not officially stated targeting of demonstrably genuine British – international same-sex partners & marriages and asylum seekers.

We look forward to receive your responses to our two-part request and representation, which we would like to publish on our website. Your responses are kindly requested to be provided to contact.lgbtdorsetequality@gmail.com.   The Network believes, as do our many partner organisations and other supporters, that our two-part request to your respected selves for the reasons detailed above in the main part of this Open Letter serve Parliament, good government, beyond our LGBT community. 

Concerning publicity / dissemination of this Open Letter, and public dissemination of the formal responses by your respected selves:

We are providing a copy of this open letter on the news page of our LGB&T Dorset Equality Network website news section — http://lgbtdorsetequality.network/news/ — for community members and the broader general public to access, as well as to our extensive partnering networks at national as well as Dorset level. 

The Network will provide copies of this open letter, and also later at the time referred to, the e-book resource mentioned above, and any responses you provide to news media. This will give each of your political parties the opportunity to showcase policies you have in your manifestos that support the two representation areas we ask for your intervention in and action on. We do ask you however to respond to the specific questions and related requests made, and not to respond with more general policy or manifesto statements.

We will publish your respective responses on our website as soon as these are received, which will be most valued by the broader LGB&T community, and shared with the LGBT and broader news media.

We thank you each in advance for your consideration on the requests made, and record that this Open Letter is being provided to the following email addresses (Labour Party and SNP) and message facilities (Liberal Democrats and Conservative Party).

leader@labour.org.uk

firstminister@gov.scot

For Conservative Party Leader link to this open letter is provided to message facility at:  https://www.conservatives.com/contact

For Conservative Party Leader link to this open letter is provided to message facility at: https://www.libdems.org.uk/contact

Sincerely,

Alan Mercel-Sanca

Convenor/Lead Officer: LGB&T Dorset Equality Network Tel: +44 (0)7811 269 454  Email: contact.lgbtdorsetequality@gmail.com