Conversion Practices

Debate between Anneliese Dodds and Ian Paisley

Wednesday 6th December 2023 Westminster Hall

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to participate in this debate with you in the Chair, Ms Fovargue. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bury South (Christian Wakeford) for securing such an important debate, for his powerful contribution and especially, as many Members have mentioned, for ensuring that Sienna and Ben’s testimonies were heard in this place.

I do not know how others are feeling, but I have to confess to a certain sense of déjà vu. Just 18 months ago, we were in this Chamber considering a Petitions Committee debate on transgender conversion therapy. That debate, like this one, featured contributions from Members on both sides of the House concerning why a ban on all forms of coercive conversion practices was urgently needed. We have seen that again today, although this discussion has covered a wide range of other matters, which I will come back to. Here we are, a year and a half since that last debate, and there are still no legislative proposals before the House for a ban on conversion practices. When we met in June last year, I described the policy process towards developing a legislative ban as chaotic; today, I can emphatically say that it has been shambolic.

Let me briefly recapitulate the merry-go-round that Ministers have been riding on—the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) has gone through some of that. It is more than half a decade since the ban on so-called conversion therapy was first promised in the Government’s ill-fated LGBT action plan, which was published back in the summer of 2018. After commissioning research and setting up an LGBT advisory panel to develop proposals, a draft conversion therapy Bill was first promised in the 2021 Queen’s Speech. In March 2022, it was reported that the Government planned to drop the plans entirely, only to U-turn and recommit to a ban in the Queen’s Speech that year, but one that would exclude transgender conversion practices. Then, at the beginning of this year, the Government U-turned again by committing to a trans-inclusive ban, but when the King’s Speech finally arrived, there was no draft conversion therapy Bill. If hon. Members are a bit lost, that reflects the chaotic nature of what has happened. Four Prime Ministers and more than five years since a ban was first promised, we are no further along.

I suspect the Minister may join me in lamenting this sorry saga, but ultimately it is LGBT+ people I feel sorry for, because they have not been kept safe. I look forward to the Minister explaining what his Government’s policy on conversion practices actually is now, because I want to understand why no draft Bill has been introduced and why the Government find it all so difficult. Is this really about policy differences, or is the problem that personalities in the Minister’s Department simply do not want to deliver on what was promised? Can he confirm that there is a draft Bill ready to go, sitting in No. 10 waiting for sign-off from the Prime Minister? Does he welcome the move by my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle), backed by Members of the Conservative party, to introduce a private Member’s Bill to do what the Government seem unable to do and ban conversion practices once and for all?

[Ian Paisley]

The hon. Lady can probably anticipate my question. As legislators, we are entitled to know what the Opposition’s policy will be, if there is to be a different Prime Minister—a different personality—in place in the next year. Can we have clarity on puberty blockers, which form part of the proposal? Will there be a lower age limit? Will parental consent be required?

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising those issues. However, they are distinct from a ban on the practice of conversion therapy. I will come back to the exact drafting and how a ban should operate. I am slightly surprised that no one has mentioned that a review is being conducted by the paediatrician Hilary Cass into the treatment of children and young people in gender identity services. It has already produced an interim report and it is producing additional research. I think it is sensible to follow what that expert review produces. We will certainly examine its findings very closely, as we have its interim report.