The Prime Minister has said in today’s King’s Speech, in which he sets out his legislative programme in this parliamentary session, that Labour intends to bring forward a “full, trans-inclusive ban on conversion practices”.
It’s not clear what that means – and Sir Keir and the two government ministers with joint responsibility for the portfolio of women and equalities, Bridget Phillipson and Anneliese Dodds, may not know themselves.
But we fear any such ban will curtail the speech rights of parents, teachers, religious leaders and health professionals wishing to advise gender-confused children and adolescents to pause and reflect before embarking on a pathway that begins with psychologically harmful “social transitioning” and in many cases culminates in irreversible, life-changing surgery.
Given the severity of the implications of this Bill for free speech, we strongly urge you to voice your concerns about any proposed conversion practices ban by reaching out to your local MP. Please take a few minutes to fill out the form below. It’s a simple, fast process that can have a significant impact. We’ve even provided a template to help, but feel free to personalise it with your concerns. Your voice matters and this is an important opportunity to make it heard.
Of course, there are some forms of ‘conversion practices’ that no sensible person would object to being banned, such as attempts to stop someone from being gay or transgender via exorcism, electro-shock therapy, physical violence or food deprivation. No-one is disputing that ‘treatments’ of this kind are appalling and have no place in a free society. But a bill isn’t required to ban them. Such practices are already illegal in the UK.
Indeed, when the Government commissioned researchers from Coventry University to study the evidence on conversion therapy, they managed to find just 30 people from the past two decades who claimed to have experienced such treatment, and the only examples of “horrific and life-altering practices” they were able to unearth – during the process of, among other things, trawling through “entries for conversion therapy in Wikipedia” – were drawn from the United States.
But if that’s the case, then what is it, exactly, that Labour’s “full, trans-inclusive ban on conversion practices” will end up banning? We fear it will be any attempt by parents and health professionals to talk troubled teenagers out of embarking on irreversible medical pathways.
Over the past few years, a “gender affirmative model” has taken hold in the NHS’s Gender Identity Services (Gids) for children and young people – and a full, trans-inclusive ban on conversion practices could have the effect of criminalizing any alternative to this approach.
It’s true that the new Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, has just announced he intends to make the temporary ban on puberty blockers being given to children by private or offshore clinics into a permanent one. (They are already banned in the NHS.)
But the gender affirmative model also involves ‘social transitioning’, which doesn’t require any medical intervention, merely a change of name and the use of different pronouns.
That might sound harmless enough, but it’s currently unclear what the long-term psychological effects of social transitioning are for children – i.e., how it affects their sense of self and their psychological functioning. Several recent studies (here, here and here) suggest it may prolong feelings of gender confusion rather than allay them.
In fairness to the Labour government, the Minister for Women and Equalities, Anneliese Dodds, does at least appear to be listening to all sides on this issue.
Earlier this year, a Labour spokesperson was forced to defend Dodds after she was criticised by LGBT+ Labour – one of the party’s affiliated societies – for her “appalling” decision to meet with the LGB Alliance, a charity that believes in the biological reality of sex.
According to an X post by the charity, it had a “productive discussion” with Dodds regarding its work. If that is indeed the case, then Dodds must surely now have an inkling as to why the previous Conservative administration repeatedly backed away from legislating in this area.
The problem that various parliamentarians faced when bringing forward bills to ban ‘conversion therapy’ and ‘conversion practices’ was defining what these terms meant. In the bills brought forward to date, they were too vaguely defined to form the basis of a workable new law.
For instance, the Christian Institute obtained a legal opinion from a KC on the question of whether a Private Members’ Bill to ban conversion practices sponsored earlier this year by Baroness Burt would interfere with a person’s Article 9 (freedom of thought) and Article 10 (freedom of expression) rights under the European Convention on Human Rights, and he had this to say about the Bill’s use of the word “practice”:
It is possible that it would be interpreted (as with the Equality Act 2010 definition) to imply an element of potentially continuing or habitual conduct. However, it is also possible that it would be interpreted simply as meaning ‘conduct’. Even if it were interpreted in line with the first meaning essayed above, that meaning remains relatively wide. As noted by the Court of Appeal, a one-off decision might be a ‘practice’ if it was considered to be something that might be done in future (including in a hypothetical future situation). On either interpretation, therefore, a wide range of conduct will be caught.
In other words, a poorly worded “full, trans-inclusive ban on conversion practices” risks catching a “wide range of conduct”, effectively criminalising doctors, religious leaders, parents and teachers who deviate from the “affirmative” approach – even if the deviation is only undertaken as part of a one-off conversation between an adult and a child and irrespective of whether that child is, in fact, their own child.
That might seem like an outlandish fear, but in the Australian state of Victoria, where “suppression practises” have been banned since 2021, a parent who refuses to support their child’s request for puberty blockers is at risk of prosecution and could end up spending 10 years in jail, and in Switzerland, where conversion therapy is banned in some cantons, a 16 year-old girl has been removed from her parents’ custody because they refused to let her take puberty blockers.
Religious leaders in Victoria are also held to be carrying out an illegal act if they tell people “that their gender identity is not real”, or if they say prayers that “ask for a person to not act on their attractions” or “talk about a person’s brokenness or need to repent”.
The Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission even suggests alternative ways that Christian residents of Victoria can “continue practicing your faith without causing harm”, including prayers that reassure people they’re perfect just the way they are, and other similarly suggestions that sound like lyrics from Ed Sheeran’s back catalogue.
We strongly urge you to voice your concerns about any proposed “conversion therapy” ban by reaching out to your local MP.
While certain harmful practices should indeed be banned – and are banned – this legislation could infringe on free speech, parental rights, and the ability of medical professionals to provide appropriate care. It’s essential that we communicate these concerns to our representatives to ensure they understand the potential ramifications and take them into account during the legislative process.
