Labour candidate Ken Livingstone has stated that he would
appoint an LGBT advisor if successful in May's London Mayoral
election. He also proposed to restore funding for Soho Pride,
celebrate Pride at City Hall and submit an application on behalf of
the GLA to ensure its place on Stonewall's list of the country's
top 100 gay-friendly employers.
The comments were made at The London Mayoral hustings, hosted by
Stonewall, which took place at the British Film Institute on
Saturday.
Ken Livingstone (Labour), Boris Johnson (Conservative), Brian
Paddick (Liberal) and Jenny Jones (Green) were all in attendance to
present their manifestos to the assembled LGBT audience and to
convince members of the LGBT communities to vote for them on 3
May.
Discussing his involvement with the Gay Liberation Front in 1974,
Ken Livingstone congratulated the Conservative party on their
pro-gay stance which has paved the way for more greater openness in
parliamentary affairs since being elected in 2010.
Criticised by Livingstone for removing the Greater London
Authority from Stonewall's Diversity 100 list, Boris Johnson
responded stating that he would consider submitting to the
workplace equality index for this year's listing.
Boris Johnson also promised to create more housing, develop
automated rail systems and reduce council tax.
Liberal candidate Brian Paddick told the audience of 500 present
at the hustings he believes a "culture of change" is needed at
Scotland Yard and confirmed his commitment to rooting out
homophobia and racism in the police.
In 2001 Paddick came out as the first openly gay senior police
officer. Ending his speech, Paddick stated: "If you vote for me on
3 May, you would make this mayor the proudest gay in the
world."
The Green party's Jenny Jones received an enthusiastic response
from the audience when she said she wanted to get rid of 'macho
politics' and urged voters to closely research the manifestos of
all candidates and pledged that she would fulfill the promises she
makes to the electorate.
Jones added: "The Green Party wants to get over the lazy concept
that LGBT communities are only interested in issues that
discriminate against them or tackle discrimination against
them."
Ben Summerskill, Chief executive of Stonewall who was also present
said: "It's really impressive that all of the main mayoral
candidates wanted to engage lesbian, gay and bisexual Londoners -
something that would have been unthinkable 15 or 20 years ago. What
was particularly interesting was that many of the people in the
audience were completely undecided about how they were going to
vote, so clearly no-one should take London's 350,000 gay voters for
granted."
Check out the video of the hustings below
The Mayoral elections take place on 3 May 2012.
Registration to vote closes on 18 April.
