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

Lord Herbert of South Downs Excerpts

Friday 9th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Herbert of South Downs (Con)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my unpaid interests declared in the register as the Prime Minister’s special envoy on LGBT rights and chair of the Global Equality Caucus.

To try to change, cure or suppress someone’s innate sexual orientation is harmful and cruel. While in a medical setting conversion therapies are now declared unethical, they continue in the private sphere. If they reach the current legal threshold of physical or sexual violence, they may already be criminal, but some systematic attempts to convert gay people fall below that threshold, so damaging practices cannot be prevented. We know this through survey evidence as well as the powerful personal testimonies of victims.

The Government themselves have said that there are gaps in the law and have promised to close them. In doing so, a new law needs to set the bar in the right place. The mere expression of disapproval, the exploration of someone’s identity or genuine help for people with no predetermined outcome in mind should not be criminalised, and nor should private prayer. We should never legislate lightly in the religious sphere, but Parliament has done so before in order to prevent harm. For example, we do not allow any faith group a licence to promote hate.

A growing number of countries around the world have passed various forms of prohibition on conversion therapy, usually without the opposition we have seen here. The vast majority of bans explicitly allow for conversations, medical procedures and therapies that aim to explore or affirm a person’s identity, including those in Belgium, Canada, France and Germany. Canada’s Conservatives did not blink at passing a ban. Many other countries are in the process of legislating or are considering legislating.

Yet here we are paralysed by the conflation of the need to protect vulnerable people who are being exploited by coercive and abusive practices with a separate debate about medical provision for young people with gender dysphoria. I agree that we need to ensure that children are protected. It should be perfectly possible to write in safeguards ensuring that family conversations and neutral professional interventions are not outlawed. Legislation in New Zealand, for instance, clarifies that questioning someone’s gender identity does not fall under a ban.

We should not allow, and there is no need to allow, people on either side to use legislation as a vehicle to promote their particular views on gender. I hold no brief for gender ideology. I am no fan of the language police and their ever more absurd acronyms. I have argued that to dismiss out of hand the genuine concerns of women about fairness in sport or safe spaces, or of parents about the welfare of their children, is ill-advised and wrong. However, it is equally wrong to vilify transgender people or to use language that denigrates them. We need a compassionate, respectful and moderate debate about the real issues that arise through a potential conflict of rights. I have called for a royal commission to investigate these issues calmly and dispassionately, to get to the facts and to make recommendations for any changes in law or practice that are needed. I am not referring to today’s debate, but the more that I hear of the wider discourse, and the more that I see crude culture wars carelessly fought, the more sure I am that such an inquiry is needed.

If noble Lords had met, as I have, people who were subjected to conversion therapy and who still bear the mental scars of what, frankly, amounted to a form of torture, I do not think they would be so dismissive of the need for greater legal protections. If they find it impossible to put themselves in the shoes of a young man who is struggling with his sexuality being told that his feelings are wrong and being beaten down, I ask them to engage in this thought experiment: imagine a different world in which homosexuality was the norm. I appreciate that for most of my noble friends this would be a definition of hell, but imagine that parallel universe nevertheless. Imagine yourself growing up with strong heterosexual feelings but being told that they were profoundly wrong. Imagine what it would do to you to try to suppress or deny those feelings. Imagine if those around you were determined to change you, to make you gay, and could bully you with impunity with that objective. How do noble Lords think they would feel?

In his autobiographical novel, Boy Erased, which was made into a moving film, Garrard Conley, who was subjected to distressing conversion therapy in a Christian institution in the US, writes that

“even if I no longer believe in Hell, I will continue to struggle with the fear of it”.

We should not stand by and allow these harmful practices to continue. Yes, we must frame the law carefully, but the time to outlaw this abuse is long overdue.