About this site

This website was created to publicly record how many Members of Parliament sitting in the UK Parliament’s House of Commons are LGBT+.

The dataset shows Members of Parliament who are ‘out’ as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans or with another minority sexual orientation or gender identity.

Members of Parliament are only included where it is clear that the individual has made an affirmative decision to reveal their identity publicly. This information has been collated from internet searches and publicly available information. Members of Parliament are only listed if a reliable source has been found to verify the individual’s identity. These sources might include media reporting or personal testimony.

Citations and references

This dataset has been used by journalists at the BBC, Sky News and Quartz, and cited in academic publications. It has also cited as a source on Wikipedia.

Media publications

BBC News, 11 June 2017, Election results 2017: The most diverse Parliament yet
BBC News, 17 December 2019, Election 2019: Britain’s most diverse Parliament
Sky News, 16 December 2019, General election: 2019 heralds the most diverse parliament for gender and ethnicity
Quartz, 17 December 2019, The UK’s new parliament is its most diverse ever
Cosmopolitan, 11 June 2020, Your no BS guide to the Gender Recognition Act reforms
Pink News, 24 June 2022, UK has record number of LGBTQ+ MPs as Labour wins crucial ‘red wall’ by-election

Academic publications

Bönisch, L. E (2021). What factors shape the substantive representation of LGBs in parliament? Testing the impact of minority membership, political values, and awareness. Blogpost and eprint. London School of Economics.
Hertner, I. (2021). Gender and British Politics in B. Jones, P. Norton, & I. Hertner (Eds.), Politics UK : 10th edition (10 ed., pp. 244-265). Routledge-Taylor Francis.

Government publications

Lamprinakou, C et al (2019). Diversity of candidates and elected officials in Great Britain. Equality and Human Rights Commission

Using this data

Quick reference

If you use this dataset, please reference it. The following is a suggested referencing style:

Referencing style
LGBT+ Members of Parliament (2023) ‘A dataset of MPs who define as LGBT+ in the UK House of Commons’, electronic dataset, available at: https://mps.whoare.lgbt (Accessed: 25 July 2023)

License

The data contained in the dataset is made available through the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license.

You are free to:

Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.

Under the following terms:

Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original. No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Who made this

Website

This website was designed and built by John Peart. This blog post explains why the website and dataset were created.