Britain needs more trans people in public life, including the Commons

The government’s new LGBT rights champion has warned his fellow Tories against fighting a culture war, he tells Tom Newton Dunn

Interview in The Times and on Times Radio

Haileybury, Cambridge, the Countryside Alliance, the Conservative Party, the Home Office and the Privy Council. The Right Honourable Lord Herbert of South Downs CBE PC doesn’t have the usual CV for a gay rights champion. Yet that is what Boris Johnson has just appointed him. The 58-year-old former policing minister is the first special envoy on LGBT rights. And he says that he has every right to be it.

“I was on the lead float at Warsaw Pride in 2010 when we were pelted with rocks and stones,” he says. “I set up the all-party parliamentary group on global LGBT rights, and I’ve travelled all around the world talking to governments about how they can make progress on these issues,” Herbert says.

“LGBT people aren’t owned by any political party. We have a variety of views and opinions, just as any other citizen should do.”

Nick Herbert was the first Conservative MP to be openly gay when he was elected to represent the West Sussex seat of Arundel in 2005. He stood down in 2019 and took a peerage. He is now back in frontline politics and was asked by Johnson to brief the cabinet this week on what his new role meant. Inevitably, transgender rights — the latest battleground in Britain’s culture wars — came up.

Speaking to The Times to mark the end of Gay Pride month, Herbert says that he delivered a stern warning to his colleagues in government wanting to join the battle against the LGBT activism. A warning he says that Johnson echoed.

Liz Truss, the equalities minister, is reimposing a more traditional line over whether trans people should be able to self-identify their gender. Last month she said that “women have vaginas”. She is also pushing behind the scenes for government departments to withdraw from Stonewall’s diversity champions programme after a row over its transgender demands.

Herbert hits back: “I don’t like the idea of any kind of culture war on these issues on either side, and I am concerned about that. I think that ends up hurting LGBT people. It distracts from the practical things we need to do to support people. I wouldn’t like to see the government in any way take a side in what some are seeing clearly as a culture war on these issues.

“I don’t think that’s what the government should be doing. I don’t think that’s what the prime minister wants us to do. I believe that that’s the view the prime minister takes and that’s why he said to the cabinet this week that he wants to see kindness, tolerance, openness. That’s why he held the Pride reception. That’s why he’s appointed me as envoy. He is sending a very clear message about this, and I think he’s right to do so.”

He also says that Johnson pointedly invited Stonewall to No 10’s Pride reception last week. So are some government departments right to pull out of the Stonewall programme, as the Ministry of Justice is already doing? No, he says.

“One or two departments have, and they may have particular reasons for doing so. But there has been no edict that they should. I think Stonewall has done brilliant work over the years to promote equality. Not every position Stonewall has is agreed with by the government. There are certain things that they might be pressing for that we’re not willing to do. Self-certification in relation to gender identity and trans issues was one of the disagreements. It shouldn’t stop us in all the areas where we do agree. They do important work, and we should continue to have a dialogue with them.”

Herbert’s own path to coming to terms with his sexuality was not an easy one. He didn’t come out as gay until he was well into his thirties, some time after he began working in Westminster as a political campaigner. He had known he was gay from childhood. “I came out relatively late. I come from a generation where it was kind of harder to come out. People wrestle with it, but when you come out, you do feel kind of honest and powerful. And I think it changes the person you are.”

As with many gay people, Herbert says the hardest he found to tell were his close friends, and his parents. His background and upbringing were rural; his grandfather farmed and his father worked for Shell.

“You look back at it afterwards, and you wonder how you could possibly have been concerned when your parents — as mine were and are — so absolutely brilliant about it. But it is also true that there are some kids that come out whose parents are not supportive. I’ve met gay people who have been ostracised, perhaps because of very strong religious views. In the main, there has been a change in attitudes and most families continue to be loving. I would never want to discourage someone from coming out. But there is still lots of work we need to do with young people in schools.

“What we’ve got to do is ensure that we can pick up and support the exceptional cases where that isn’t so, and that can lead to real problems like homelessness, and so on.”

Meeting his future husband, Jason Eades, a solicitor, at a party was “a life-changing moment” and what finally persuaded him to tell his friends and family that he was gay. They have been together since 1999, entering into a civil partnership in 2008, which has since been upgraded to a 13-year marriage. “Isn’t that cool?” Herbert declares.

Herbert describes Jason as “a rock solid Conservative” who often joins him on his international travels to promote LGBT rights. The couple still live in Arundel.

It has been little more than 15 years since he broke the mould to be the first openly gay man to get selected for a safe Conservative seat, but today’s House of Commons is now a very different place. Herbert says: “There are many openly gay members of parliament on all political parties now, and I think parliament is quite representative now.”

Britain has not yet elected a transgender MP and Herbert is keen to see that. “Where I think it would be great if we could make progress would be if we had a transgender Member of Parliament, which they do in other parliaments around the world. It would really help to change the debate in this country if we could have more trans people in leading positions in our national life here.”

Herbert takes a strong line on conversion therapy, which he describes as “insidious” and “an abhorrence”. The government has announced that it is banning the practice, but is consulting on whether religious groups should be exempt on the grounds of freedom of worship.

Herbert insists: “I don’t think that’s right. These so-called therapists that aim to erase or repress someone’s sexual orientation or their gender identity, people are coerced into taking part and they do tremendous harm to people. We can’t allow the idea that simply because something is called a religious practice it can do no harm. We don’t allow hate speech. Where it does harm there has to be limits to religious freedom, and I think we have to be clear about that.”

Today is also the anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York, an event recognised as the start of the modern day gay liberation movement. How much the movement has achieved in the past 52 years was summed up for Herbert at Wembley last Tuesday night. He watched some of England’s game against Germany with Johnson, who had a TV set up in No 10’s garden as it clashed with his Pride reception.

Herbert says: “Watching Harry Kane this week with a rainbow armband, I found that incredibly moving, because there can be no more potent symbol in our country at the moment than England’s captain.

“The fact that he did that shows the change in football, the change in our national life, the change in attitudes. What more powerful message could you be sending to young people that it really is OK, and it will be OK.”

Yet the fight in not over, Herbert also says, as another guest to the No 10 reception demonstrated.

“Also there was a young man called Josh who just two weeks earlier had been horribly mugged outside a nightclub in Liverpool. And the prime minister talked to Josh. I think it was a powerful reminder that in spite of the huge progress that we’ve made, there is still some residual prejudice and work to do.”

There is a lot of work still to do abroad, Herbert says. As part of his remit, he is also hosting an international conference of government ministers in the UK next June called #SafeToBeMe, to promote LGBT rights globally, including in the 69 different countries where homosexuality is criminalised. Thirty-five of those are Commonwealth countries.

Herbert says: “A lot of those are countries where frankly, it is the legacy of Britain’s colonial laws. So we have a moral responsibility here.”

The prime minister in years past has been accused of homophobia over comments he made in his column for The Daily Telegraph, on one occasion deriding “tank-topped bum boys in the Ministry of Sound”. Would an apology from Johnson for that help Herbert’s cause?

“All I can tell you is about the Boris Johnson that I talk about these issues with and the action that he’s taken. I’ve walked with Boris on pride marches.

“I saw his record as London mayor. I know how he spoke this week to the cabinet. I’ve been appointed the UK’s first ever envoy by him, and that’s how I judge him. That’s how I hope other people will judge him.”

Nicholas Le Quesne Herbert

Curriculum vitae
Born April 7, 1963
Education Degree in law and land economy Cambridge University
Career Started out at Business for Sterling and hired Dominic Cummings to launch the No campaign against the euro. Co-founded the think tank Reform in 2002. Elected MP for Arundel & South Downs in 2005 and became the first openly gay Tory MP. Held the seat for almost 15 years. Served in the shadow cabinet under David Cameron, and after the 2010 election was appointed policing minister. Started the Freedom to Marry campaign that led to the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013. Appointed Boris Johnson’s special envoy for LGBT rights last month.
Family Lives with his husband, Jason Eades, in Arundel

Quick fire
Peloton or pilates? Pilates
Ale or Aperol spritz? What’s Aperol spritz? I gave up drinking ten years ago
Barbour or Burberry? Barbour, of course
Football or fox hunting? Neither
St Ives or St Lucia? St Ives
Boris Johnson or Dominic Cummings? Boris!
Raheem Sterling or Bukayo Saka? Sterling

Read the original version of this article in The Times here.

Watch the complete Times Radio radio interview here.