Diolch, Llywydd. June is recognised in places around the world as Pride Month: a chance to reflect on how far we have come and what we have achieved together, to celebrate our LGBTQ+ communities, and to pay tribute to the trailblazers who came before us—the activists and allies that have made what once seemed impossible possible. It's also a time to take stock and redouble our efforts to create a more equal Wales, where everyone is safe and supported and feels free to simply be themselves.

This Pride Month, I want to take the opportunity to reaffirm the commitment and determination of this Welsh Government to advancing LGBTQ+ equality in Wales. The last time a Pride parade took place through our capital city, I was proud to join our First Minister at the front of the parade. 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 that Pride plays as a grass-roots movement. We will be making £25,000 of new funding available for Pride Cymru this year and will be embedding this support, and substantially more, in the future. 

Importantly, alongside this, we will also be establishing a new Wales-wide Pride fund to support grass-roots events across the country. We will support smaller movements to thrive and to help ensure that every LGBTQ+ person can take part in what Prides have to offer. Further information about the new funding will be published as soon as possible, and I will share that information with Members and organisations when available. This builds on our record of support for the LGBTQ+ community here in Wales, from pushing forward with curriculum reform that embeds LGBTQ+ education, to establishing a gender identity service and becoming the first nation in the UK to offer pre-exposure prophylaxis free in the NHS. During COVID-19 we set up a bespoke LGBTQ+ venue grant and, just this month, our First Minister donated blood side by side with a gay activist who until this point had been prohibited from doing so.

In the past few years alone we have made remarkable progress, but there is still work to be done and minds to be won. We know all too well that LGBTQ+ people still face very real challenges against disadvantage, inequality, discrimination and hate. In January this year we established an independent expert panel to help set out and shape 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, and 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 make Wales the most LGBTQ+ friendly nation in Europe.

This plan will go out for consultation at the end of July, but ahead of this I wanted to share a few key points. We will formally establish an LGBTQ+ expert panel to help put our plan into action and hold the Government to account on progress. As set out in the programme for government, we intend to seek the devolution of powers in relation to gender recognition and actively explore the best approach to enable us to ban conversion therapy in Wales, regardless of any UK Government delays. We will also appoint a national Pride co-ordinator 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 so 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.

Almost 52 years ago to this day, on 28 June 1969, what is now known as the Stonewall riots took place. Trans people were at the forefront of these protests, yet today still face significant prejudice, hate and discrimination. The trans community stood up for the rights of everyone in our movement then, paving the way for people like me to be able to be ourselves, and today we stand with the trans community. The expansion of the rights of one group does not mean the erosion in rights of another. We are always stronger together. On the anniversary of the Stonewall riots in June 1970, the first Pride parade took place. Pride was born out of protest, and whilst it is right we recognise and celebrate how far we have come, progress is not inevitable, and Pride remains as central today as it was half a century ago. As this Pride Month draws to a close, let’s remember that together we can continue to create change and progress, with a renewed collective ambition to realise a more equal Wales. Diolch.