A proud and inclusive Scotland for all
From equal marriage to making the school curriculum more inclusive.
The Scottish Greens have led the way in advancing the rights and treatment of LGBT+ people during the devolution era.
But despite significant improvements, the community are still more likely to experience poor mental health and delays in access to essential healthcare, and ongoing discrimination in day to day life.
Trans people are amongst the most discriminated against people in our society. With the hate campaign against them a major cause, there has been a shocking rise in hate crimes against trans people, whilst some are effectively denied access to healthcare with waiting lists of over 200 years for essential gender-affirming care.
In the next Parliament the Scottish Greens will continue to be the champions of LGBT+ people as we always have, delivering the much-delayed ban on so-called conversion therapy, ensuring access to gender-affirming healthcare, and taking action on transphobic, homophobic and biphobic hate crime and bullying.
- Introduce a comprehensive ban on conversion therapy covering all settings, such as religious, informal, community, family-based and therapeutic, with clear protections for affirming healthcare, and inclusive of trans, non-binary, and asexual identities. This ban will be backed by appropriate criminal and civil penalties, and a statutory right of survivors to support and advocacy.
- Ensure and expand inclusive education and anti-bullying programmes in Scotland’s schools and youth programmes; provide targeted support to promote LGBTQ+ young people staying in education and roll out a national programme to address transphobic, homophobic and biphobic hate crime across society.
- Introduce statutory homelessness strategies for all groups facing particular barriers to housing, including LGBT+ people.
- Address inequalities in LGBT+ healthcare, such as improving access to specialist mental healthcare; care for intersex people, and speeding-up the rollout of injectable anti-HIV medication.
- Publish a gender-affirming care action plan within 6 months, to turbo-charge efforts to bring down shocking waiting times. Action we will consider includes funding more training places; providing funding to health boards that do not currently provide gender identity healthcare to start doing so urgently; supporting people to seek NHS-funded care in other countries, and bringing it into line with the 18 week guarantee that applies to many other areas of healthcare, including youth pathways aligned with international standards.
- Work with NHS boards – including Public Health Scotland – and social care providers to address LGBTQ+ health and care inequalities. This will include providing training for frontline health and social care staff to understand the needs of LGBTQ+ people, and increasing the collection of data relating to sexual orientation, gender identity and health outcomes to inform better evidence-based policies.
- Recognise the rights of LGBT+ families to access IVF and IUI on the NHS, and develop national guidance and a standard treatment pathway specifically for LGBT+ families accessing assisted conception.
- Revisit all NHS policy changes made as a result of the Cass Review to ensure they are aligned with international evidence-based best practice. Where there are evidence gaps about treatment options, introduce robust, accessible research trials to ensure that these are filled. We will involve trans children and young people directly in decisions about their healthcare in age-appropriate ways in-line with their evolving capacity, and immediately ensure young trans people have access to mental health and other support.
- Ensure trans people have the same access to Hormone Replacement Therapy as cisgender people.
- Continue to call on the UK Government to remove its block on much-needed Gender Recognition legislation and update it with international best practice.
