Section 28 repeal back on agenda

Section 28 has long angered gay rights groups

The government is to back calls to scrap the law which bans local councils from promoting homosexuality, it has been announced.

Plans to repeal the controversial Section 28 do not appear in new legislation but Local Government Minister Nick Raynsford said he was prepared for a backbencher to sponsor the change.

That stance has been called "gutless" by Conservatives, who could face divisions in their own ranks if the issue re-erupts in Parliament.

Ministers tried to outlaw Section 28 in the last Parliament but ran into strident opposition in the House of Lords.

'Undesirable'

Mr Raynsford said he was prepared to accept a "suitable amendment" to the Local Government Bill which would repeal the legislation.

He called the law, introduced 15 years ago by Margaret Thatcher's government, "unnecessary and undesirable".

The minister said the bill was primarily about finance measures and he did not want to overload it.

It therefore made sense for an MP to introduce an amendment to which ministers would give "sympathetic consideration", he argued.

Former Local Government Minister David Curry branded the reliance on backbenchers "sheer gutlessness".

'Fairness and decency'

Former Tory MP John Bercow described Section 28 as "gratuitously offensive".

Mr Bercow recently resigned from the shadow cabinet over his party's opposition to adoption by unmarried heterosexual and gay couples.

He said the clause caused "justified resentment and should be repealed in the interests of fairness and decency".

Other Conservatives, however, want the law to stay and the issue could become another totem of Tory attempts to modernise.

Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith has indicated he is prepared to back the law's repeal if a viable alternative which will protect children without causing offence can be found.