Draft Conversion Practices Bill (Joint Committee)
Monday 2nd November 2026
Skip to latest contribution
This debate has concluded
(began 4 days, 23 hours ago)
Watch LiveSkip to latest contribution
This debate has concluded
16:17
Alex Barros-Curtis
-
-
Alex Barros-Curtis
Order. Order! Today we are holding our second oral evidence session on the Draft Conversion Practices Bill. The Joint Committee has been appointed to consider and report on the government's Draft Conversion Practices Bill, which sets out provisions to prevent and criminalise abusive and harmful conversion practices. And I'm very grateful, with many thanks to our witnesses today for attending. The committee is dealing with highly sensitive matters of which people in this room and people watching or listening will have direct personal experience. We understand that some people may find today's evidence session distressing and difficult to listen to.
There are several organisations which can offer support which are listed on our website, and I will just remind everybody in the room that under the rules on Subjudice, we are not to discuss any live cases before the courts. Before I start with questions, I just have apologies from Olivia Bailey, who will be a little bit late. She's stuck in the chamber with the committee business, but she will be here posthaste. And I think Baroness Prentis.
There are several organisations which can offer support which are listed on our website, and I will just remind everybody in the room that under the rules on Subjudice, we are not to discuss any live cases before the courts. Before I start with questions, I just have apologies from Olivia Bailey, who will be a little bit late. She's stuck in the chamber with the committee business, but she will be here posthaste. And I think Baroness Prentis.
16:18
16:18
16:18
16:18
16:19
Speaker 4
-
Speaker 4
Hi, I'm Ian Smith, I'm based in Cardiff, in your constituency, where I believe. I'm here essentially as not a not in any political stance, not in any campaigning stance, but literally to be here as one of the 75% of those victims, if you like, who responded to the to suggest that they needed to see a change in the law. So as one of those victims, that's one of the reasons I'm here. After suffering what I would term as abuse within those contexts.
16:19
16:19
Speaker 3
-
Speaker 3
So I'm currently Deputy Jane Ozanne. I am actually a parliamentarian in Guernsey. I'm state deputy, which obviously is totally separate to this. Many of you will know I set up and chaired the Ban Conversion Therapy Coalition for many years, but I pass that on when I became a parliamentarian. I also set up and chaired the Ban Conversion Therapy Legal Forum, which I passed on to Professor Otis, who you heard from last week, I led, I think it's helpful to say, a debate in the Church of England in 2017 now to ban conversion practices. And that debate which passed it's a private member's motion ended with the Archbishop of York, the then doctor Sentamu, calling on synod to call on the government to ban it.
And that was my starter, a long relationship with the government trying to ban it. I became a government adviser, wearing a hat of trying to ban these terribly abusive practices. But perhaps most importantly and relevant to today, I also set up a foundation. I have my own foundation, but I set up the Global Interfaith Commission on LGBT lives, and one of the things that we sought to do there was to look at how we brought religious leaders, senior religious leaders. I'm talking pope, archbishops, chief rabbis to a point of recognising the harm these practices do.
And many of them signed a statement to call on a ban to. So I'm sitting very much in the religion meets LGBT space.
And that was my starter, a long relationship with the government trying to ban it. I became a government adviser, wearing a hat of trying to ban these terribly abusive practices. But perhaps most importantly and relevant to today, I also set up a foundation. I have my own foundation, but I set up the Global Interfaith Commission on LGBT lives, and one of the things that we sought to do there was to look at how we brought religious leaders, senior religious leaders. I'm talking pope, archbishops, chief rabbis to a point of recognising the harm these practices do.
And many of them signed a statement to call on a ban to. So I'm sitting very much in the religion meets LGBT space.
16:21
Alex Barros-Curtis
-
-
Alex Barros-Curtis
I'm grateful. Jane, thank you so much. And if you need a moment, please just indicate to me as we go through this. But we really are grateful you're here. I'm going to start by obviously, this committee has been established to scrutinise this draft bill. So I wonder if either of you could sort of outline your sort of overarching views on the proposal as it sits currently about banning abusive conversion practices and the importance of doing so. And of course, any reflections you may have from, you know, that inform those overarching views, I think would be most helpful.
16:21
16:21
16:21
Speaker 3
-
Speaker 3
I go first. Thank you. Well, I think it's been a long journey to this point, and it would be probably churlish of me not to say how how pleased I am that we actually have a bill that we are looking at and debating today. I recognise the challenges of this bill and I will lay that out. But I do want to say up front how grateful I am, not least because the delay which we've experienced for nearly ten, eight years now going, has emboldened perpetrators. And I hate to think of the number of people who have suffered during that time of delay.
So I am grateful to see a bill that looks at overseas provisions. I'm grateful that it is looking at both LGB and T. I think before I get into the bill in granular detail, I think it would be fair to say upfront, just if I may, conversion practices as a term is an umbrella term. It's one in a sense that we've invented. We often called it conversion therapy in the past and recognising it's not therapy and indeed it doesn't convert. We move to the phrase conversion practices, but that is not a term that people who are often undergoing it recognise.
And so when we've done research in the past, I'm not sure we've actually managed to capture everybody because people didn't understand what we were talking about. I think the best example is myself. Many of you may know, sadly, I too am a survivor. I chose willingly to go through 20 years of what I now recognise would be called conversion practices, but it took me actually presenting at an event for the government on this for me to recognise goodness, this actually involves me too. These are things that I've gone through. I have received over 20 years of prayer.
I've gone through many exorcisms, I've fasted, I've prayed, I've gone through all sorts of things which many now would say was, you know, very clear abuse. And I did so willingly. I consented because I thought it would help me. So I think we need to hold this term in all its breadth very broadly. And we'll come back to that. But the definition of conversion therapy is, is probably the hardest thing, which every jurisdiction I've worked with has found difficult. And I have to be honest, and I'm sorry to be critical. I think we've got it badly wrong here, and I can unpack that either now or later.
But I don't think that the route we've chosen to take is a wise one. I agree with Professor Otis from last week. I do wish we'd followed what other jurisdictions have done specifically in in looking at the concept of suppression. Not trying to, I think, focus on causation, which I think has all sorts of challenges in healthcare and in religious settings. What the Cooper Report, which I think many of you may have received. This was a report that Baroness Helena Kennedy chaired a group of US legal academics and quite, quite senior legal counsel. I was involved in pulling together, sought to advise the government on how they could go about banning conversion therapy and.
And I suppose the concept we came up with was it was any practice that had the predetermined purpose of the person practicing that sought to change, suppress, or, I would say, heal someone's sexuality or gender identity. So it started with the mindset of the person with the power trying to change, and it was that predetermined nature that said, you can never be gay or you can never be trans. That caused the problem. And I fear that in the definition we've landed with here, we've slightly moved away with that. And we've focused on the victim, not the perpetrator, if that makes sense.
So the definition is problematic. I know we haven't got all day so I'm going to move on. The second most difficult thing is is what I think. It was unintentional. But you have created two categories an abusive category and a non abusive category. And that's by using this adjective abusive. Now I understand why I think this has happened because you're trying to establish a criminal threshold. But the problem is in saying that you're non-abusive forms don't meet that threshold. You're giving licence to people to say, well, actually what we're doing doesn't really make that much difference.
So we're going to carry on doing it. And that is the vast majority of people who, to coin a phrase, are trying to, I think some would say, pray the gay away prayer goes to the heart of it. And I speak as a Christian. I speak as someone with a deep love of prayer. But not all prayer is healthy or good. And in my case it caused me. Sadly, after 20 years of seeking out prayer , to end up in hospital fighting for my life because my body couldn't take the strain of the constant messaging that who I was was unacceptable, and that I would never seek to have the intimacy that I craved.
I think a lot of people focus on sex. It's not. It's about love. It's about being able to form a family unit, being able to have a satisfying, fulfilled life full of dignity. So abusive Non-abusive I really. The Church of England has already used this distinction this summer to allow an event at the General Synod to go ahead. The Archbishop coined this. Well, it's a non abusive form. So these are already being used and wisely or not to create different camps I do. I've mentioned already that I think the threshold is too high serious, trying to prove serious harm or serious alarm or distress puts all the focus on the victim.
And obviously suicide is serious harm, but we don't want to take someone to that point. We want to intervene before they get to that point. So I do have significant trouble with with with where we set that threshold. I may I think I might disagree with my colleagues last week on that consent. We don't touch on consent. Arguably, you can't consent to abuse. So potentially it's not needed to be in there. But if we want to build that is I think covers everything we ought to be explicit or implicit. And as others have touched on, it doesn't touch on suppression, which is by far the most normal form in religious settings.
Now that I'm aware of suppression, meaning you may be gay, but just don't act on it. So either you need to be single and celibate for the rest of your life, despite the fact you might yearn to love and be loved. That's what sent me to hospital. Or arguably worse, you've just got to pretend to be straight. Go and get married to someone and it'll all be okay. And what we're seeing now, sadly, are, particularly in the religious world, a lot of broken marriages with families being torn apart because one of the partners finally comes out, often in their 50s after years of anguish.
And that leads to quite broken tragedy on all sides. So suppression has its own problems. I get that some people are called to be single and celibate for the rest of their lives. That's wonderful. But if it's forced on you, and perhaps most importantly, if that's what you're taught when you're growing up, which is what's happening to many teenagers who are perhaps confiding in their youth pastors that they are suffering from same sex attraction. They are told, well, you, you just have to bear that for the rest of your life. You will never be allowed to have a relationship.
And that is what sends so many people to a very challenging place with their mental health. And we've got a lot of studies on that, which I will leave you with. Sorry, it's a very long answer, but it's probably goes to the heart of today.
So I am grateful to see a bill that looks at overseas provisions. I'm grateful that it is looking at both LGB and T. I think before I get into the bill in granular detail, I think it would be fair to say upfront, just if I may, conversion practices as a term is an umbrella term. It's one in a sense that we've invented. We often called it conversion therapy in the past and recognising it's not therapy and indeed it doesn't convert. We move to the phrase conversion practices, but that is not a term that people who are often undergoing it recognise.
And so when we've done research in the past, I'm not sure we've actually managed to capture everybody because people didn't understand what we were talking about. I think the best example is myself. Many of you may know, sadly, I too am a survivor. I chose willingly to go through 20 years of what I now recognise would be called conversion practices, but it took me actually presenting at an event for the government on this for me to recognise goodness, this actually involves me too. These are things that I've gone through. I have received over 20 years of prayer.
I've gone through many exorcisms, I've fasted, I've prayed, I've gone through all sorts of things which many now would say was, you know, very clear abuse. And I did so willingly. I consented because I thought it would help me. So I think we need to hold this term in all its breadth very broadly. And we'll come back to that. But the definition of conversion therapy is, is probably the hardest thing, which every jurisdiction I've worked with has found difficult. And I have to be honest, and I'm sorry to be critical. I think we've got it badly wrong here, and I can unpack that either now or later.
But I don't think that the route we've chosen to take is a wise one. I agree with Professor Otis from last week. I do wish we'd followed what other jurisdictions have done specifically in in looking at the concept of suppression. Not trying to, I think, focus on causation, which I think has all sorts of challenges in healthcare and in religious settings. What the Cooper Report, which I think many of you may have received. This was a report that Baroness Helena Kennedy chaired a group of US legal academics and quite, quite senior legal counsel. I was involved in pulling together, sought to advise the government on how they could go about banning conversion therapy and.
And I suppose the concept we came up with was it was any practice that had the predetermined purpose of the person practicing that sought to change, suppress, or, I would say, heal someone's sexuality or gender identity. So it started with the mindset of the person with the power trying to change, and it was that predetermined nature that said, you can never be gay or you can never be trans. That caused the problem. And I fear that in the definition we've landed with here, we've slightly moved away with that. And we've focused on the victim, not the perpetrator, if that makes sense.
So the definition is problematic. I know we haven't got all day so I'm going to move on. The second most difficult thing is is what I think. It was unintentional. But you have created two categories an abusive category and a non abusive category. And that's by using this adjective abusive. Now I understand why I think this has happened because you're trying to establish a criminal threshold. But the problem is in saying that you're non-abusive forms don't meet that threshold. You're giving licence to people to say, well, actually what we're doing doesn't really make that much difference.
So we're going to carry on doing it. And that is the vast majority of people who, to coin a phrase, are trying to, I think some would say, pray the gay away prayer goes to the heart of it. And I speak as a Christian. I speak as someone with a deep love of prayer. But not all prayer is healthy or good. And in my case it caused me. Sadly, after 20 years of seeking out prayer , to end up in hospital fighting for my life because my body couldn't take the strain of the constant messaging that who I was was unacceptable, and that I would never seek to have the intimacy that I craved.
I think a lot of people focus on sex. It's not. It's about love. It's about being able to form a family unit, being able to have a satisfying, fulfilled life full of dignity. So abusive Non-abusive I really. The Church of England has already used this distinction this summer to allow an event at the General Synod to go ahead. The Archbishop coined this. Well, it's a non abusive form. So these are already being used and wisely or not to create different camps I do. I've mentioned already that I think the threshold is too high serious, trying to prove serious harm or serious alarm or distress puts all the focus on the victim.
And obviously suicide is serious harm, but we don't want to take someone to that point. We want to intervene before they get to that point. So I do have significant trouble with with with where we set that threshold. I may I think I might disagree with my colleagues last week on that consent. We don't touch on consent. Arguably, you can't consent to abuse. So potentially it's not needed to be in there. But if we want to build that is I think covers everything we ought to be explicit or implicit. And as others have touched on, it doesn't touch on suppression, which is by far the most normal form in religious settings.
Now that I'm aware of suppression, meaning you may be gay, but just don't act on it. So either you need to be single and celibate for the rest of your life, despite the fact you might yearn to love and be loved. That's what sent me to hospital. Or arguably worse, you've just got to pretend to be straight. Go and get married to someone and it'll all be okay. And what we're seeing now, sadly, are, particularly in the religious world, a lot of broken marriages with families being torn apart because one of the partners finally comes out, often in their 50s after years of anguish.
And that leads to quite broken tragedy on all sides. So suppression has its own problems. I get that some people are called to be single and celibate for the rest of their lives. That's wonderful. But if it's forced on you, and perhaps most importantly, if that's what you're taught when you're growing up, which is what's happening to many teenagers who are perhaps confiding in their youth pastors that they are suffering from same sex attraction. They are told, well, you, you just have to bear that for the rest of your life. You will never be allowed to have a relationship.
And that is what sends so many people to a very challenging place with their mental health. And we've got a lot of studies on that, which I will leave you with. Sorry, it's a very long answer, but it's probably goes to the heart of today.
16:29
Alex Barros-Curtis
-
-
Alex Barros-Curtis
So no, it's incredibly helpful, Jane. And I think some of the points you've gone into, I know colleagues will want to go into, and I'll turn to them in a moment. I don't know if there's anything sort of just in broad brush you wanted to say about the sort of position of the bill and the importance you attach to it, assuming you do.
16:30
Speaker 4
-
Speaker 4
I think, agonize over the kind of legal detail. I can absolutely understand and also understand how much time people have put into to going over the legislation. And, and also, as Jane's been working on this for, what, eight plus years? I haven't been working on it for that length of time in in the least, I think for me, what would have helped me at the time I was going through what I was going through. The institutions were held accountable because the the country that they found themselves a part of took it seriously. I mean, I consented to the practice, the practices that I went went for, which included exorcism, which included writhing around on a floor whilst I was being prayed for by caring individuals.
These were organisations being and also consented to therapy. And these were organisations such as the Association of Christian Counselors who were. Was overseeing that teen challenge, assemblies of God Evangelical Alliance. But those institutions had no, no sense that the individuals carrying out these practices, that there was something wrong with those practices. And I think when you look at the institutional respondents to the to the original call for evidence, it was institutional respondents who were more opposed to this than, than individuals, because on the whole, individuals were saying enough's enough. And the same when it comes to victims.
Enough's enough. The fossa for me, I think if if as a country, we're saying we value individuals and we value we value their liberty over the liberty of the institutions that carried out this abuse, then that makes me happy. And the institutions that were apparently overseeing the kind of practices that I was involved in still exist today. And I echo what Jane said about the suppression organizations I was I designed, strangely enough, True Freedom Trust, second website. They still exist. From my perspective, it's a suppression. It's it's suppression. But it took it was only five years ago, strangely, that I recognized there was a victim because before that it was I believed it was me.
Oh, I should I was so silly. I shouldn't have got involved. I shouldn't have done this. And it was only by watching the documentary Pray Away on Netflix when I recognized how Exodus International, which is an organization in the US, had funded organizations and church institutions in the UK. Where I thought, hang on a minute, I was a victim. It took me a long time to recognize there was a victim and even say the word victim. Yeah, but I can hold that word now, or I couldn't have done that before. It was just, oh, especially when you're male.
Oh, just get over it. You can get over it. It's it's fine. It's just a bit of prayer. But, you know, it was massively damaging for me. Whether that comes to suicidal thoughts. I tried to take my life, ended up in a psychiatric unit in Newport, just outside of Cardiff, where it took a psychiatrist to turn around to me and say, there's nothing wrong with being gay, which doesn't sound like much, but when you've been institutionalised for so long that it was like, oh, somebody told me something I've not heard before because I spent so much time in these institutions that I didn't know who I was.
And if it wasn't for that psychiatrist who, with those simple words, I probably wouldn't be here. So I think I hope that demonstrates why I believe. That this law is important. And I, and I, and I believe that the 75% of respondents who were victims of what I've gone through, I support them to.
These were organisations being and also consented to therapy. And these were organisations such as the Association of Christian Counselors who were. Was overseeing that teen challenge, assemblies of God Evangelical Alliance. But those institutions had no, no sense that the individuals carrying out these practices, that there was something wrong with those practices. And I think when you look at the institutional respondents to the to the original call for evidence, it was institutional respondents who were more opposed to this than, than individuals, because on the whole, individuals were saying enough's enough. And the same when it comes to victims.
Enough's enough. The fossa for me, I think if if as a country, we're saying we value individuals and we value we value their liberty over the liberty of the institutions that carried out this abuse, then that makes me happy. And the institutions that were apparently overseeing the kind of practices that I was involved in still exist today. And I echo what Jane said about the suppression organizations I was I designed, strangely enough, True Freedom Trust, second website. They still exist. From my perspective, it's a suppression. It's it's suppression. But it took it was only five years ago, strangely, that I recognized there was a victim because before that it was I believed it was me.
Oh, I should I was so silly. I shouldn't have got involved. I shouldn't have done this. And it was only by watching the documentary Pray Away on Netflix when I recognized how Exodus International, which is an organization in the US, had funded organizations and church institutions in the UK. Where I thought, hang on a minute, I was a victim. It took me a long time to recognize there was a victim and even say the word victim. Yeah, but I can hold that word now, or I couldn't have done that before. It was just, oh, especially when you're male.
Oh, just get over it. You can get over it. It's it's fine. It's just a bit of prayer. But, you know, it was massively damaging for me. Whether that comes to suicidal thoughts. I tried to take my life, ended up in a psychiatric unit in Newport, just outside of Cardiff, where it took a psychiatrist to turn around to me and say, there's nothing wrong with being gay, which doesn't sound like much, but when you've been institutionalised for so long that it was like, oh, somebody told me something I've not heard before because I spent so much time in these institutions that I didn't know who I was.
And if it wasn't for that psychiatrist who, with those simple words, I probably wouldn't be here. So I think I hope that demonstrates why I believe. That this law is important. And I, and I, and I believe that the 75% of respondents who were victims of what I've gone through, I support them to.
16:30
Alex Barros-Curtis
-
-
Alex Barros-Curtis
Really gratefully. I'm going to pass over to Sir Jeremy. Thank you. And thank you both for what you've said already. And you've covered some of this territory already. So please don't feel the need to repeat anything you've already said, but you'll know that one of the things that we're wrestling with is the degree to which this bill moves beyond what the criminal law already says. So I guess what I'm interested to know is, is how you feel were this bill as currently drafted, and I take Jane's points about how we might improve the drafting, but as currently drafted, were this bill to have been on the statute book at the time at which you had the experiences you've mentioned to us, what difference do you think it would have made?
16:30
Speaker 3
-
Speaker 3
Well, I think the truth about legislation, I don't mean to tell you it has two effects, doesn't it? One is hopefully a behavioural change. It gives a very clear statement to society. What is expected of us sets a level and what isn't, and what the Cooper Report proposed. And I think in a sense, what you're proposing is a mix of criminal and civil law protection orders for the day to day criminal for those particularly, you know, potentially one off cases where there's been an institutional course of conduct. I don't see us prosecuting, you know, small case.
I know there's fear about parents or single religious leaders that I hope is something that we can step in and warn against. But when you've got repeated course of conduct by large institutions, that is where the criminal bill will come in for me. I'm going to give a slightly longer answer. I often talk about conversion practices in three phases, and this really only helps the third
I know there's fear about parents or single religious leaders that I hope is something that we can step in and warn against. But when you've got repeated course of conduct by large institutions, that is where the criminal bill will come in for me. I'm going to give a slightly longer answer. I often talk about conversion practices in three phases, and this really only helps the third
17:19