Have your say on the Government's Conversion Practices Bill

Max Thompson, Campaigns Officer

10 November 2026

If you haven't already, make sure you submit a response to the Joint Committee of MPs and peers scrutinising the Conversion Practices Bill. The deadline for submissions is 5pm on Monday 16 November.

The Bill is currently undergoing pre-legislative scrutiny and the MPs and peers studying it have asked the public to tell them what they think about it. Your response is our best chance of stopping it.

The Bill has been sold as a long overdue bulwark against the abuse of gay and trans people. But what we think of as 'conversion practices' – violent and coercive attempts to force adolescents to be straight – are already against the law, and the government has yet to point to a single abusive practice that is currently permitted and this Bill would ban. What it will do instead is create a new offence, carrying up to five years in prison, aimed largely at criminalising words.

Among those who could go to jail are:

• parents who try to dissuade their confused child from embarking on an irreversible medical pathway;
• therapists who advise a young person who's convinced they've been born in the wrong body to pause and reflect before surgically removing healthy body parts;
• faith leaders who pray with someone who has asked them for help with their confusion about their sexual orientation or gender identity.

A single conversation could be enough. Acting in good faith or in a child's best interest will be no defence – and anyone can bring a private prosecution, meaning LGBT activists may be able to send those who disagree with them to prison.

As the Cass Review made clear, cautious, exploratory conversations are exactly what confused young people need. This Bill could make them a criminal offence. But it is not for the government to tell parents what conversations they're allowed to have with their children. This is one of the most illiberal, invasive and dangerous pieces of legislation ever to come before parliament. It will rip families apart and hurt the very people it purports to protect.

So we need your help. The Committee needs to hear the objections of as many people as possible, and to make that easy we've built a tool that lets you pick the issues that matter most to you and then draft a response in your own name. You can edit it, download it, and then send it straight to the Committee in a matter of minutes.

Every response is written fresh, so yours will be your own, not a copy of a template. The Committee gives far more weight to individual responses than to identical ones and our tool enables you to submit a personalised response.

Have your say here: https://stoptheconversiontherapyban.uk — and please share it with friends, family and anyone else who thinks that parents, therapists and faith leaders should not be sent to jail for a conversation.