Phillip Lee: Lib Dem LGBT+ members revolt over decision to let Tory MP join party
Phillip Lee ran a campaign to bar people with HIV from being able to move to the UK
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Your support makes all the difference.The Lib Dems are facing a members’ revolt over the decision to allow a Tory MP with a poor record on LGBT rights to join the party.
Phillip Lee dramatically crossed the floor on Tuesday over Brexit, costing the government its majority and bolstering the liberals’ ranks ahead of crucial votes on stopping no-deal.
But their new MP is a longstanding skeptic on same-sex marriage, and also ran a campaign to bar people with HIV from being able to come to the UK.
Jennie Rigg, who chaired Liberal Democrats LGBT caucus, quit the Lib Dems upon hearing the news, describing Mr Lee as “a homophobe, a xenophobe, and someone who thinks people should be barred from the country if they are ill”.
“I thought the Lib Dems were not a single issue party,” she said. “I thought we had a soul and principles.”
“But apparently as long as you are on the right side on Brexit we’ll take you. Well, I’m sorry, but no.”
She said the new MP believed that “people like me are a lower class of human”, adding: “I will not share a party with him.”
Other members also spoke out on social media. One, Luke Graham, wrote on Twitter: “I’m very emotional writing this, but today is my last as a Liberal Democrat.
“The rolling out of the red carpet for Phillip Lee has shown me the party lacks even the most basic of values it espouses in its constitution. No longer can I support it with either my time or my money.”
A Liberal Democrat spokesperson said: “We are always sorry to see members leaving the party and wish them all the best.”
In 2013 when Dr Lee abstained on same-sex marriage, at at time when his party leadership backed the policy, he said: “I believe marriage should be left to churches, other religious institutions and humanist groups”.
In 2014 he personally tabled an amendment to the Immigration Bill that would have seen immigrants tested for “prescribed pathogens” including HIV before getting immigration permission.
“Persons who apply for immigration permission must demonstrate that they are not carriers,” the proposed law text drawn up by the MP read.
LGBT and health campaigners criticised the amendment, which was also signed by the foreign secretary Dominic Raab. At the time Liberal Democrat MP Julian Huppert described the proposal as “rather astonishing”, while the National AIDS Trust said it showed a “shameful lack of understanding about HIV among some of our elected representatives”.
The row follows controversy over the Lib Dems’ former leader Tim Farron’s views on homosexuality.
Leader Jo Swinson said of the defection: “Phillip brings almost 10 years of parliamentary experience and decades of professional expertise. He shares our commitment to prevent a disastrous no deal Brexit, and to stop Brexit altogether.”
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