[Relevant Documents: e-petition 613556, Ensure Trans people are fully protected under any conversion therapy ban; e-petition 300976, Make LGBT conversion therapy illegal in the UK; Correspondence from the Chair of the Petitions Committee to the Minister for Women and Equalities, relating to conversion practices, reported to the House on 21 November 2023.]
That this House has considered Government policy on conversion practices.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Fovargue—perhaps I will refer to you as Madam Chairman for simplicity.
Colleagues, let me tell the House about Sienna. Sienna, 31, is non-binary and was sent to conversion therapy by her father every summer between the ages of 12 and 15. Sienna has known that she is a lesbian since the age of 8, but her devout Catholic father planned for her to “pray the gay away” at camps. She recalls the worst part of the experience as being when the practitioner or administrator were abusive towards her when she was 14.
“They would often try to beat the ‘queer thoughts’ out of us. During my father’s last attempt at conversion therapy, I knew that these camps would never end if I didn’t pretend to be straight. So, I put on a facade of being ‘normal’ for him. It’s only then that the abuse ended.”
Siena did not tell anyone about what she had been through until her late 20s. Instead, she turned to alcohol, drugs and sex as coping mechanisms.
“I didn’t care about what I was using to cope because it felt like no one cared about what happened to me. Eventually, I did talk about it with close friends and then my mother, years after she got divorced from my father. It was so difficult to open up about.
I’ve always known that I was different. I’ve struggled with my identity for years, but deep down I know who I am. I want countries that are yet to ban conversion therapy to know how damaging it is. It’s a barbaric practice that does more harm than anything else. I’ve known people who killed themselves because they weren’t allowed to be their true selves. Conversion therapy doesn’t work and should never be thought of.”
Ben, 34, is a gay man who also endured conversion therapy in a religious setting, which they describe as “brainwashing”. They say their religion seemed very friendly on the surface. However, there were rules, and mixing outside the religion was frowned upon. Doing so could result in being publicly reprimanded or, more dangerously, disfellowshipped. That meant being shunned by all in the religion, blacklisted and losing all support from friends and family. Their religious parents forced them into studying the Bible daily, attending regular meetings and completing study activities.
I thank my hon. Friend for making such an important point. Does he recognise that some of us who are religious and have religious belief know that this practice is abhorrent?
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I would go one step further and say that not only is it abhorrent; it is evil, and there is no place for it in any part of society.
As well as study activities, Ben also had to go door to door and preach on the streets every week.
“From a very young age, I knew I was gay. However, I had been taught that homosexuality was disgusting in the eyes of God. I felt so alone with the feelings I had.”
Ben was outed by another member of their faith group, who found out that they had a boyfriend. Ben was 21.
“He gave me the ultimatum that I had to tell my parents before he did. We were dealing with a family bereavement, so it wasn’t the right time. I was petrified of the repercussions of coming out, so I initially did it by text message. I hoped it would soften the reaction when I was face-to-face with my parents. However, I was accused of deceiving my parents, and their reaction was hateful. They told me I was ‘disgusting’ as they feared what other people would say. Our family environment became a warzone.”
Ben’s parents tried to tell them that they were going through a phase and had just not met the right girl yet. That went on for months, destroying Ben’s mental health and leaving them with no choice but to endure religious study activities.
“They wanted to ‘make me see sense’. Over a year I had to talk about my sexuality in detail, as I risked being made homeless. I was even made to change my dress sense to stop wearing bright colours and have my hair cut short to appear more ‘masculine’.”
Ben had to read the same scriptures over and over again, even being given “homework” of watching heterosexual pornography, which they did in an attempt to regain stability over their life. Eventually, Ben hit rock bottom and repeatedly ran away from home.
The hon. Member is raising some very deep points that need to be in a conversation and considered. Bad parenting is exactly that: bad parenting. But does he believe that, when addressing issues to do with conversion therapy—and therefore issues that go to puberty blockers and issues like that, on the other side of the debate—there should be a policy that says to parents, “You’re not allowed to have a say in that matter for your children, your infant”? Secondly, would it be his party’s policy not only that parents would not have a say on puberty blockers, but that there should not be a lower age limit at which puberty blockers should not be administered and that they should be administered at any age that it is thought they are required?
I disagree with the hon. Member. This is about conversion therapy, not about some practices or whether or not someone is trans. I do not think that is relevant.
My hopes and prayers are that we will listen and recognise that outlawing conversion therapy can never have any get-out clauses. Anything else is a ban in name only.
Normally at this point I would finish my speech and sit down; however I want to finish by offering a hand of friendship to the Minister, in good faith. I know that he cares deeply and passionately about this issue. I have heard him speaking in the Chamber and spoken to him outside, and I know how passionately he cares about all this. I really hope that we can work together on this, so let us please work together on a ban on all forms of conversion therapy. Let us not look back at this time as a missed opportunity; let us do the right thing and ban this evil practice.
Order. I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called in this debate. I will be imposing an informal time limit of five minutes on speeches, and interventions should be short.
It is a pleasure to serve under you chairmanship, Ms Fovargue. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bury South (Christian Wakeford) on leading today’s debate. I thank him particularly for sharing the deeply moving stories of Sienna and Ben. I also want to thank the 213 people from Darlington who signed the petition to ensure that trans people are protected under any ban, and the 325 residents of Darlington who signed the e-petition to ensure that LGBT conversion therapy is made illegal.
I cannot believe that we are still having a debate about this. It has been announced in two previous Queen’s Speeches. It has been relentlessly pursued by a team of dedicated Members on this side of the House, including, most notably, my hon. Friends the Members for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns) and for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn). It has been raised in dozens of written parliamentary questions, and it has been raised many, many times in the Chamber. Indeed, it has been promised by countless Ministers at the Dispatch Box.
I know that the Minister is a good man. Indeed, he was described as an angel in a debate just last week. I know his personal intentions on this matter, and I know a good number of other Ministers who also want to see this policy delivered. The role of any Government is to protect their citizens, and Conservative Governments have a great track record: the Children Act 1989, the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, the Modern Slavery Act 2015, the Serious Crime Act 2015, the Stalking Protection Act 2019 and the Domestic Abuse Act 2021. To my mind, banning conversion practice abuse falls firmly within the remit of those Acts by protecting our citizens.
Our country has made significant progress in many respects on LGBT rights, but with rights come responsibilities, and we cannot be said to be in favour of equal rights if we are giving rights without balancing them with the responsibilities of protection. I have spoken on this issue many times in this place, yet despite the support right across the House for banning this dreadful practice, there has sadly been no progress. There is an argument that this abuse is already covered by the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, but there is no guidance for the police and the Crown Prosecution Service. Will the Minister please look into that?
I will struggle to get what I want to say into five minutes, but I will certainly have a stab at it. I will focus principally on the assertion that there is a need for a ban on conversion therapy, including for the conversion of trans people, and I want to look at it through a slightly different lens.
I will start with a quote from Kierkegaard:
“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”
That is, in essence, the point I want to make. Legislation is supposed to fix a problem, not create a new one, and where evidence of conversion practices exist, they will not be mitigated but exacerbated by such proposals. The true scandal that needs to be addressed is the medical and surgical conversion of young lesbians and gay males by affirming and transing away the gay.
This proposal rests on a bed of dangerous lies, and it is but one part of an assault on the sex-based rights of women, lesbians, gay men and bisexual people. It is perpetrated by and done under the cover of once-important LGBT organisations such as Stonewall, which are erasing gay identities and are complicit in using the T to erase the LGB.
There are three legislative conceits that form part of this movement: gender self-ID, amendments to hate crime and public order legislation, and so-called conversion therapy bans. Each is the antithesis of what it purports to be. Self-ID is not about equality but about promoting supremacy, hate crime legislation is about silencing the raising of valid safeguarding concerns, and preventing conversion therapy is promoting the very thing it aims to stop. The planned Bill is today’s modern conversion therapy scandal, and it is affecting vulnerable children and young people who may be gender non-conforming or struggling with normal yet distressing pubertal body dysmorphia. It would embed the lie that those young people have been born in the wrong body, that the normal development of puberty should be arrested with chemicals—something that can never be restarted or repaired—and that emotional distress can be fixed with hormones and irreversible radical surgical intervention.
This is not a debate about trans rights; it is about conversion therapy. I think we have all acknowledged that conversion therapy is abhorrent and evil. If it abhorrent and evil for gay and lesbian people, it is abhorrent and evil for trans people. How this conversation keeps descending to an anti-trans position is wrong. Will the hon. Gentleman think on that point: that conversion therapy is evil and just needs banning?
I cannot really respond to the hon. Gentleman constructively because he is obviously not listening to the points I am making.
When I was a young lad—this might stretch Members’ imagination—I was a very pretty boy. In the 1970s, I had long hair and flared trousers, and I was often confused for a girl. The question I am struggling with is this. Is it possible that I would have been open to this form of conversion therapy, and would not have become the successful, happy, gay man that I am today? I can only conclude that, yes, that could easily have happened to me.
We had plenty of struggles growing up, such as section 28. My friend the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) and I attended the first ever Pride event in Edinburgh, Lark in the Park. We have faced these struggles and now we face them once again. I am absolutely exhausted from listening to people using my history and my struggle against me, when I am when I am attempting to stand up for the rights of young LGB people and protect their futures.
I appreciate that I need to draw to a close, so I will conclude with this. It is not a ban on conversion therapy that the Bill proposes; rather, it is rocket fuel for radicalised ideologues, to trans away the gay, depriving a generation of young LGB people from becoming the fabulous, vibrant and unique, gender non-conforming people they have every right to be.
It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Ms Fovargue. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bury South (Christian Wakeford) for calling this debate. I come to this debate from a religious perspective. I am a serving Roman Catholic. I have worshipped at the same church on Brixton Road all my life. My life revolves around that church. I was not baptised there, but my sisters were. I met my husband there, and my children and my mum were baptised there.
We have to be clear that there are a number of people in the Christian faith who are proud of their sexuality, proud to be LGBT. It is important that religious leaders can offer support and counselling, because for many people in our communities, the church is the first support group. They trust the church more than politicians.
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“I have struggled with my sexuality all my life, and what I’ve been through means I now battle constantly with shame, fear, trust issues, needing validation and waiting for people to abandon me.”
I think we will all agree that that is no way to live.
“Everyone deserves a safe space. If I had that, it could have been my chance to escape earlier, and I want that option for anyone in my situation.”
I could go on and share countless testimonies from many people, but I will share the words of just one more person. Penny, 50, from Portsmouth, said it best in 2018:
“Conversion therapy…is abuse of the worst kind and must be stamped out.”
That was not just any Penny; that was our current Leader of the House, who was the Minister for Women and Equalities at the time of those words. Her article in The Independent went on to say that her Department would now consider
“all legislative and non-legislative options”
to prohibit promoting, offering or conducting the therapy in the UK. So as glad as I am to have secured this incredibly important debate, there really should be no need for it. Half a decade has passed, and the Government have betrayed the LGBT community on this issue. There has been U-turn after U-turn because we have had Conservative Prime Ministers who have been too weak to take on the right wing of the party.
Banning all forms of so-called conversion therapy is the right and moral thing to do. A ban on conversion therapy is not woke, left wing or for snowflakes—or whatever other bizarre term certain people opposed to it want to offer up this week. It is not complicated, as some have made it out to be. There has been a failure of leadership. It is the right thing to do.
We sometimes go wrong in this House at times like this. This is not a debate—it should never be a debate. It is a conversation, at best. People are entitled to their own opinions; however, they are not entitled to their own facts. Underpinning this conversation is the fact that conversion cannot be done: we cannot change someone’s sexuality or gender identity, just as you cannot change mine, Madam Chairman. People can go on all the courses and say all the prayers they want, but it cannot be done. It is physically impossible; in fact, it is perverted to think that it is possible.
For someone in a position of power to push their ideas of what sexuality is means that they are imagining what people are doing behind closed doors. It seems to me that that person not only has a problem, but is the problem—it is not the young person who is gay, lesbian or trans. It is not a choice to be lesbian, bi, gay or trans. If it were, why would anyone actively choose to make their life harder? Members should ask themselves the question: “Would I choose to face front-page demonisation almost every single day? Would I have chosen, decades ago, to be jailed for who I fell in love with? Would I choose to be part of a group that saw record levels of hate crime this year?” No, they would not—no one would. Why? Because it is not a choice. We all know who we are in this room. So what gives us the right to tell other people that they are not who they know they are, and to leave the door open for already vulnerable young people to be preyed upon by religious zealots and hateful bigots?
Every child and young person deserves the opportunity to be loved, respected and nurtured—to be a positive force in this world. There is no need for a slanging match on this issue. Not everybody is like the social norms we hold up in society, and that is okay; it is what makes us different, what we should be embracing. We are talking about real people—normal young people—but if we continue on the current path, they will only grow into adults who are severely damaged or, in some cases, dead. They will be dead because the Government did not change something from wrong to right with a flick of a pen on a piece of legislation. We need a meaningful ban on an abhorrent and evil practice.
I came to this House to do what I thought was the right thing—to protect those who are the most vulnerable—and I would like to think that every single Member in this room made that same choice: not to take sides and to argue this to the death, but to find solutions to these problems. That is why we in Labour have said that we will ban all forms of conversion therapy—no excuses, no loopholes; no one can consent to abuse.
It was disappointing to hear some of the accusations from the Government that a ban would inevitably criminalise parents talking to their children. That is a ludicrous suggestion. Parents should always be able to speak to their children, just as I am very fortunate to be able to speak to my daughter. What we do not want, however, is parents sending their kids on a course to have the gay prayed out of them. The Government cannot afford to get this wrong; too many lives are literally at stake. My hopes and prayers are that we will—
There are jurisdictions around the world that have made progress on a ban, so I ask the Minister: what is so difficult? Why can we not make progress? Why is the UK so unique that we cannot do this? The Minister will say that it is difficult and complex, and that the Government are looking at it, but I encourage him to stop looking and, please, start doing.
That is being facilitated in Scotland and elsewhere by Government non-statutory guidance, promoted by activist teachers and enabled by others who are bamboozled, threatened and afraid to speak out because of the attacks carried out by radicalised gender activists. Social transitioning is being arranged and encouraged in schools, with parents and carers being completely excluded from their own child’s care. The NSPCC recognises that as a form of grooming, stating:
“Groomers may introduce ‘secrets’ as a way to control or frighten the child.”
Teachers prepared to keep secrets with children, to the exclusion of their parents or child protection teams, is not only dangerous to the child but legally precarious for that teacher, and they should be open to prosecution. None of those teachers are employed as experts in psychological therapy, dysphoria or complex gender assessment. What they are doing is top-to-tail dangerous and wrong. In their zeal, and in secret from parents, they are effectively denying vulnerable children access to the very therapeutic support that they so desperately and obviously need, from real experts, not gender ideology radicals. That is chilling.