Welsh Gov wants to make Wales the most LGBTQ+ friendly nation in Europe
As Pride Month draws to a close, the Welsh Government has said it wants make Wales the most LGBTQ+ friendly nation in Europe.
Deputy Minister for Social Partnership Hannah Blythyn, has outlined a package of measures to help towards this aim, which include supporting grassroots events across the country, as well as commissioning legal advice on available powers to ban Conversion Therapy in Wales “regardless of “delays” from the UK Government.
She added that the Welsh Government will “work to secure the devolution of as many aspects as possible of the Gender Recognition Act”, which is currently controlled from Westminster.
The Deputy Minister said: “The Welsh Government has supported Pride in the past, but now we are putting this support on a firmer footing, to help with long-term planning and sustainability, not just for a single event but in recognising the role Pride plays as a grassroots movement.
“We will be making £25k of new funding available for Pride Cymru this year and will be embedding this support, and substantially more in the future.
“Alongside this, we will also be establishing a new Wales-wide Pride Fund to support grassroots events across the country. We will support smaller movements to thrive and help ensure that every LGBTQ+ person can take part in what Prides have to offer.
‘Panel’
The Minister added: “At the beginning of the year, we established the Independent Expert Panel to help set up the next steps for advancing LGBTQ+ equality.
“In March, this Panel presented their report, which included 61 recommendations under six main themes: Human Rights and Recognition; Safety; Home and Communities; Health and Social Care; Education; and the Workplace.
“The work of this Expert Panel has been used to develop an Action Plan for Advancing LGBTQ+ Equality in Wales.
“This ambitious, cross-government plan will set out the concrete steps we will take to improve the lives of LGBTQ+ people, to tackle discrimination and to, ultimately to make Wales the most LGBTQ+ friendly nation in Europe.
“This plan will go out for consultation at the end of July, and ahead of this I wanted to share a few key points.
“We will formally establish a LGBTQ+ Expert Panel to help put our plan into action and to hold the Government to account on progress.
The Welsh Government will work to secure the devolution of as many aspects as possible of the Gender Recognition Act.
“We are also commissioning legal advice on all available powers to ban Conversion Therapy in Wales regardless of UK Government delays.
“We will seek to appoint a national Pride Coordinator to support all our work in this area, the details of which will be scoped in the coming months.
“We know that issues being faced by the LGBTQ+ community, like others, are often multidimensional and that is why this action plan will have an unprecedented focus on intersectionality and align with our work to advance human rights including the strategic equality plan, the Gender Equality Plan, the Framework for Action on Disability and of course our pioneering Race Equality Action Plan.
“We’re committed to showing that forwarding the equality agenda isn’t simply about slogans and warm words, it’s about our actions.
“Our ambition, has always been and will always be to ensure that Wales is the most LGBTQ+ friendly nation in Europe. Today’s announcements are a step towards that.”
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I wonder what Daniel Kawczynski will make of this!
Nothing to do with him.
Not sure it should be a competition. Seems a bit of a Boris thing to say.
But yeah, some countries will lead and hopefully bring the others along. Be nice to see Cymru being the inclusive place it was before the evil Empire struck back in 2016
+ what?
Before dealing with all these wonderful ‘plans’ , what about sorting out the Welsh housing crisis? Do something practical with our funds instead of tokenism and showing how virtuous you’d like the Assembly to appear.
Must we only do one thing at a time? We have lots of people, many of whom can multitask. Doesn’t have to be one thing or the other. It’s a false dichotomy.
With limited funds let’s do one thing properly rather than several poorly
…Why illustrate the story with a picture of a Gay Pride parade in London? Didn’t they hold one in Cardiff?
You grizzle about the Prince of Wales supporting the England football team then show a photograph of a London parade!
Double standards.
Why are you grizzling about where a photo was taken? And the English prince is not relevant to this story or this nation so why bring him up?
One of the stories e-mailed out today was complaining that the future Prince of Wales was supporting the English football team’s victory over Germany, suggesting that he supports England more than Wales.
I’m merely pointing out that the same website used an image of a Gay Pride march in England rather than one of the event in Wales.
I still maintain that shows double standards.
Please start by getting rid of the letter Q. The word ‘queer’ is not an acceptable term, it is a hate term, a homophobic term!
In schools we are working really hard to try to eliminate homophobia and when words like this are being ‘normalised’ it is making it so much more difficult.
I will give an example: a child comes to me, upset, saying another child called him / her a ‘queer’, I go to the other child to put a stop to this and explain that he / she should be more careful in how he /she speaks. The child responds “but I thought that was what gay people call themselves.”
How am I supposed to deal with that??