Conversion Therapy Prohibition (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity) Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Hunt of Bethnal Green and Lord Young of Norwood Green

Friday 9th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, on introducing the debate. I may not agree with her analysis, but it has given us an opportunity to have this debate. The noble Baroness, Lady Meyer, should not worry about repeating what has been said before; it is the divine right of the House of Lords for everybody to do that. Long may it reign. I will try to avoid it, but I am sure that I will fail.

I declare an interest; I am a board member of the lesbian, gay and bisexual alliance. In fact, I am the only straight member on the board, but I sort of try to get over that by saying, “Well, my late brother was gay”, as though that gave me some added credibility. I am not sure whether it does, but it is an interesting organisation.

Why did I get interested in this topic? I was not interested in it at all; in fact, I had no knowledge of it whatever until JK Rowling said: “People who menstruate? Wasn’t there a word for this? What was it? Oh, it was women, wasn’t it?”. The very people she had made multi-millionaires, whose careers she had fostered, then turned on her and accused her of being transphobic. This lies at the heart of some of this debate. If you assert that there is a biological identity of people—male and female—you are liable to be accused of transphobia. Actually, it has not happened to me; the people who get accused are mainly women.

Transgender people are a very small section of our country and community, as the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, reminded us. That does not mean to say that they should be ignored or in any way discriminated against, and I hasten to add that I would defend to the death their right not to be discriminated against. But that does not mean to say that we should underestimate or ignore the impact on other groups, if we pass the wrong legislation or do everything that some transgender people want us to do. The groups that concern me are obviously children and women. It is women’s safe spaces that have been put at risk. Time and again this has been done, whether in hospitals, mental hospitals or women’s refuges; there have been real risks.

My noble friend Lady—sorry, I have changed his gender—Lord Cashman said that transgender people do not do any harm. By and large the bulk of them do not do any harm, but some actually do. There was an appalling situation. Unfortunately, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, is not here; she lauded the Scottish legislation. Really? Self-identification at 16? There was the case of the transgender woman, who had already been convicted of sexual crimes, who managed to persuade prison authorities and then raped a woman in the prison. Nicola Sturgeon’s response was, “Well, that’s just one incident”, but there have been other incidents. This is not some marginal issue.

I will tell you something else about this that noble Lords may not be aware of. This is a cult—it really is—and it has invaded government departments and the BBC. It is there. It will be interesting to see, in 10 years’ time, whether people will hold the extreme views that are held today.

I congratulate this Government—not the people who have said that we need this Bill; that is not true at all, in my opinion—on two very important things that they have done. I am glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, is in her place. One of the most important things they did was to appoint her as chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. She had the courage to assert this question of male and female sex. What happened to her? There was a concerted attempt to remove her as chair, which was eventually happily defeated.

The other superb thing that this Government did was the Cass review. The noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, is not in his place, so I cannot congratulate him, but he wins the prize because he was the first person who mentioned the Cass review—a fundamentally important piece of work that the Government commissioned. What a wonderful woman Hilary Cass is. I looked at the review, and this is her letter to children and young people:

“Children and young people accessing the NHS deserve timely and supportive services, and clinical staff with the training and expertise to meet their healthcare needs”.


That is what we ought to focus on, not some vague idea that there might be people at risk. They are not the challenge that we face.

I do not want to go over my time by too long, but what happened in the Tavistock clinic was a travesty. Significant numbers of people who were dealt with using puberty blockers were on the autistic spectrum and needed very careful handling. We saw a massive increase in young girls who decided that they were suffering from being in the wrong body. If you talk to clinicians who know about this, they will tell you that social media had a huge impact on that. We need to be careful about how we proceed in this area.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hunt, is in her place. I did not expect to hear Julian of Norwich quoted today and I am grateful to her for that—an amazing woman, who said:

“All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well”.


We also heard the noble Baroness’s interesting experience. Let me say this: the ability for somebody who is transgender to be here to represent these views is an important part of what we represent. We have moved on from the kind of homophobic situation that was described—

[Baroness Hunt of Bethnal Green (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome the kind remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Young, but I am not trans, although I like accessorising. There are many ways to be a woman. I thank the noble Lord for his comments.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

I sincerely apologise. I knew I was on dangerous territory when I said that. I should not have referred to it, but the compliment was nevertheless genuine, and I sincerely apologise.

I was grateful for the reminder of Section 28 and what we should learn from that. It is ironic, because Stonewall, which started out opposing it, then became an organisation that was captured by the cult I have just described.

My noble friend Lady Donaghy said we cannot criticise a Bill for not being well drafted; most government Bills are not all that well drafted and that is why we are here—to improve them. However, I finish by saying that we do not need another Bill in this area. There are plenty of things we can do to improve the rights of women and young children, and another Bill like this is not one of them.