I congratulate the individual Members who have obtained this debate today, one of whom I studied with at university. I would like to emphasise the support of my party for this motion as a whole. I intend to focus my remarks on point 4, to welcome the progress made in the past few decades on LGBT rights and acceptance, because it’s less than three decades ago since the issue that first caused me to campaign on this issue—when the Westminster Parliament passed clause 28, which legislated against teaching the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship’.

During the 1980s, I felt there was a greater recognition and acceptance of homosexuality and it was an issue that was at least beginning to settle down within our country. I think that that process was, if not halted, at least, I think, set back by up to a decade, by that piece of legislation.

I first campaigned on the issue when I was a parliamentary candidate and there was a couple, a gay couple, in the constituency I was seeking to represent who went on hunger strike. They stuck with this for the best part of a week and established very significant media attention, and they were protesting for the right to register their relationship with the local council. Ken Livingstone, in London, had just introduced a register to allow gay couples to do that and perhaps be able to visit their partner in hospital and have some other rights where some public bodies at least would give recognition to that. I was proud when that couple succeeded and, actually, Medway Council in Kent I think became the second council in the United Kingdom to have such a register.

But it was a double-edged campaign victory, because the couple involved, due to responses at least from some people on their local estate, and homophobic bullying that resulted from that, felt they had to leave their home and the next thing was trying to help them be rehoused with the council. At that time, I think 2001, clause 28 was still on the statute book. In Scotland, when the Scottish Parliament began, one of their first legislative acts was to remove it. In Wales, we did not have the power in this Assembly to do that and, for reasons I’m still slightly puzzled by, it took until 2003 before the Westminster Government legislated to remove section 28 from the statute book.

Perhaps one of my proudest moments, which I felt was most meaningful, as a Westminster MP, was to vote on 5 February 2013 for equal marriage. The party I now represent opposed that legislation, but we now support it, and I think most members within UKIP, as within other parties, would support that. At the time, the majority—or at least more MPs of the party I was then a member of voted against that legislation than voted for it. But I think very few of them would do that today.

I hope, even as we celebrate the progress that we’ve had in such an extraordinarily really short period of time, at least in the span of human history, that we don’t seek to be over critical or condemnatory of people who perhaps have taken a few years longer perhaps than us to revise their view. There’s a lot of criticism of Donald Trump, much of which I agree with, but, on this issue, he did, in a Republican convention, insert parts in his speech that got that audience to stand up and to applaud gay rights and to recognise the gay community in a way the Republican party in the US never had before. And, in 2008, Barack Obama certainly wasn’t campaigning for equal marriage on the terms we understand it today.

I also note that, in the vote when we had equal marriage, there were four Liberal Democrat MPs who voted against that and I think at least a couple of dozen Labour MPs who did that. I hope it’s possible for people to maintain, at least in the private sphere, religion, and many people and MPs found that vote incredibly difficult because of either their religious views and conscience or because of the pressure they felt under from some constituents and those who spoke out most strongly about it to them. We saw, I think, with the new Liberal Democrat leader last year, him coming under great pressure, being asked whether he considered gay sex to be a sin, and that was a question he didn’t want to answer and I think that should be respected. I don’t think anyone really thinks that the Liberal Democrats are insufficiently committed to LGBT rights. And similarly, when Jeremy Corbyn, I think a few weeks ago, said that people chose to be gay, I think that was unfortunate and I think he misspoke and is from a generation and has a view as to what things are. I don’t for a moment think that he is insufficiently committed to LGBT rights and I wouldn’t want to criticise him in any way. So, I just hope we also don’t look back to the past, while we try to do as Adam Price says and celebrate LGBT people and what they contributed in the past without being able to be open about their sexuality—I hope we won’t overly try to condemn previous generations who, on this issue, had a different perspective than we did and, instead, celebrate how quickly things have changed and welcome this motion. We should have Wales as a welcoming place for the LGBT community and do as Hannah Blythyn said—particularly what you said about work in schools—compared to how I started my contribution, with what was done 29 years ago. How far we have come.