The Minister says the Conversion Practices Bill respects parents. The Bill says otherwise.

Max Thompson, Campaigns Officer

23 October 2026

In a letter to the Joint Committee scrutinising the draft Conversion Practices Bill, the Minister for Equalities, Simon Lightwood, claimed that the legislation respects "freedom of religion and parental rights". Nothing on the face of the Bill does any such thing.

An illiberal Bill

The draft Conversion Practices Bill is one of the most illiberal, invasive, and appalling pieces of legislation ever to come before Parliament. It was published on 25 June 2026 and is now before a Joint Committee of both Houses for pre-legislative scrutiny (the process by which Parliament examines a Bill in draft, before its formal introduction). It would carry the criminal law into the most private settings there are: the family home, the therapist's consulting room, and the place of worship.

Its defenders present it as a measure to protect gay young people from being abusively coerced into heterosexuality. That is not what it does. Such coercion, whether by assault, threats, or confinement, is already, and rightly, illegal. What the Bill adds is something quite different: criminal exposure for well-intentioned conversations between parents and gender-confused children, between therapists and the young people in their care, and between religious leaders and the congregations to whom they teach their faith.

What the Bill would criminalise

The Bill defines a conversion practice as any conduct intended to cause a person to have, or not to have, a particular sexual orientation or "transgender identity". It is the second limb that does the damage. A parent who tries to dissuade a sixteen-year-old from embarking on irreversible, dangerous, and life-changing medical pathways is, on any natural reading, acting with precisely that intention.

Whether such conduct is "abusive" is left to the courts, to be decided on all the circumstances of the case. Among the factors to be weighed is "psychological or emotional pressure", which is to say the ordinary currency of parenting. Nor need the conduct cause serious physical or psychological harm. A second, lower threshold is met where it causes serious alarm or distress with a substantial adverse effect on the individual's usual day-to-day activities. A distressed adolescent's account of a fraught evening at the dinner table could, in principle, satisfy it.

The penalties are severe. Tried summarily, in a magistrates' court, the offence carries up to twelve months' imprisonment. Tried on indictment, in the Crown Court, it carries up to five years. A parent could therefore face up to five years in prison for trying to dissuade a child from embarking on life-changing medical treatment before the age of eighteen.

The Bill also creates civil "conversion practice protection orders". Their permissible terms are not limited on the face of the Bill, and breaching one without reasonable excuse is itself a criminal offence carrying up to two years. Nothing in the drafting prevents a court from ordering a parent to use a particular name or particular pronouns.

The Minister's reassurance

On 13 October 2026, Simon Lightwood, the Minister for Equalities, wrote to Alex Barros-Curtis, Chair of the Joint Committee, formally presenting the draft Bill for scrutiny. The letter restated the Government's manifesto commitment to "a full, trans-inclusive ban on conversion practices". It then offered the reassurance on which the Government's defence of the Bill now rests:

"In drafting this legislation, we have taken careful steps to balance the need for robust and adequate thresholds to protect individuals from abusive practices, while respecting freedom of religion and parental rights, and the need to ensure access to appropriate and effective healthcare support for all."

It does no such thing. The draft Bill contains no exemption for parents, nor for teachers, pastors, youth workers, or anyone else acting in good faith. Its only express carve-out protects medical professionals. Even that protection falls away where their conduct falls far below the standards reasonably expected of someone in their position. As Maya Forstater, Chief Executive of Sex Matters, put it: "There is nothing on the face of the bill that does any such thing."

Nor is the letter an isolated assurance. Five days later, Bridget Phillipson, the Minister for Women and Equalities, wrote in The Independent that the Bill would not impinge on freedom of expression, religious practice, or decisions about how to parent, because the legal bar it set was high. But a criminal court applies the words of a statute, not the contents of a ministerial letter or a newspaper column. If the Government genuinely believes that parents should be protected, the protection belongs in the Bill, where a judge can read it.

Parents, therapists, and faith leaders

The threat to free expression does not depend on convictions; it operates through the prospect of investigation. A Bill this loosely drafted invites complaints to the police and referrals to the Crown Prosecution Service. Because the offence is open to private prosecution, it also invites litigation by activist organisations with every incentive to test its limits. Faced with that risk, many people will simply stay silent.

Parents will hesitate before voicing the doubts that every protective instinct tells them to voice. Therapists have a professional duty to explore a young person's distress rather than merely to affirm it, yet they will practise defensively and steer clear of the questions that most need asking. Mental-health professionals interviewed for Criminalising conversations, a recent report for Sex Matters, described exactly this fear: that an ordinary family conversation could end in a prison cell.

Religious leaders are equally exposed. Consider a priest, rabbi, or imam who teaches his faith's settled position on sex and the body, knowing that his congregation includes a young person questioning his or her identity. He may be said to be acting with the intention the Bill prohibits. The freedoms to manifest religious belief and to impart ideas are protected by Articles 9 and 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. They are not ornaments to be acknowledged in a covering letter; they are rights the Bill must actually respect, and on its present wording it does not.

Parents know best

So much for the Labour Government's promise to tread more lightly on people's lives. It is not the state's role to dictate what conversations parents may have with their children around the dinner table. Nor is it the state's role to dictate what a church may teach from its pulpit, or which questions a therapist may put to a troubled teenager.

The Joint Committee now has the opportunity to say so. If it accepts the Minister's assurances at face value, it will have taken the Government at its word on a matter where only the statute's words will count. The Free Speech Union urges the Committee to make two recommendations. The first is that the criminal offence be confined to conduct that is genuinely abusive. The second is that clear, enforceable protections for parents, therapists, and religious expression be written into the Bill itself.

Parents know best — not ministers.

The Free Speech Union's petition against the Bill can be signed here.