Stonewall removes ‘misleading’ election manifesto graphic
PinkNews Exclusive
LGBT rights charity Stonewall has pulled an election graphic – after being accused of misrepresenting the views of some political parties.
The rights charity this week shared a manifesto roundup on its Facebook page, giving the Labour party full marks – but PinkNews reported concerns with the ratings of the Lib Dems, Tories and SNP.
Lib Dem Stephen Williams branded the graphic “grossly misleading” for suggesting his party had not pledged on hate crimes and overseas aid – when in fact both issues are in the Lib Dem manifesto – and Tory Vice Chair Mike Freer also criticised the approach for leaving out a number of other pledges made by the Conservatives.
The graphic also failed to note that a lot of the categories are not applicable to the SNP’s Westminster manifesto, because they concern devolved matters in Scotland.
After the criticism, Stonewall has now taken the decision to remove the graphic entirely.
The charity said: “We’re very sorry if the graphic we shared yesterday was confusing in any way. We’ve made the decision to take it down following all your feedback, and because we don’t want it to cloud the issues at hand.
“That is, we want the focus to be on the issues and commitments that will achieve equality for all LGBT people.
“We identified a number of core issues that will be important to LGBT people in the next Westminster government, specifically a commitment to tackle hate crime, combatting homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying in education, increased help and aid to international communities and LGBT activists and reviewing the laws affecting trans people.
“These shaped the asks we included in our election manifesto (see more at www.stonewall.org.uk/election where you can download our full manifesto).
“The graphic was intended to show how far each of the main political parties has committed to our asks, specifically relating to LGBT people, in their manifestos for the next Westminster government.
“It was absolutely not intended to be a record of achievements to date in Westminster and the devolved administrations. Nor was it intended to draw attention away from more than 30 LGBT commitments made by the parties in their Westminster manifestos.
“To see such diversity in commitments is something that we welcome, as it demonstrates an overriding commitment to LGBT equality. More information can be found at www.stonewall.org.uk/manifestos
“However, we’ve only seen one party make a manifesto commitment to review the laws affecting trans people, specifically the Gender Recognition Act. This simply isn’t good enough, and it is clear from its absence that we still have a lot to do.”
