Queen’s Speech

Lord Mackay of Clashfern Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

My Lords, I am sure the House will appreciate that there are many things in the gracious Speech upon which I would like to speak. I am glad to associate myself with what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, has said in that connection.

What I want to do this morning will be very brief. A little phrase in the Queen’s Speech says:

“Legislation will also be introduced to ban conversion therapy.”


I expect that that is absolutely clear to all of your Lordships but it is not at all clear to me. First, “ban” is rather ambiguous, because it could involve criminal responsibility or some other forms of banning. Then there is “conversion”, a word with which I have been pretty familiar all my life. It was always regarded primarily as meaning that a person took more interest in religion at a particular stage in his or her life than they had taken before. On the other hand, it is also used in connection with moving from one religion to another and in connection with, say, changing a car from being dependent on petrol to electricity. The word is somewhat large in scope. Then we come to “therapy”. I have always understood that therapy was about, if possible, making you better. You went along and hoped that you would get some sort of therapy that would make you better when you came out than when you went in, so I find this very difficult. However, it is not without precedent.

I have tried to understand this business over some months and have read an erudite legal report about it—the Cooper Report—which indicates the nature of the problem. I have studied that extremely carefully and think it is talking about a type of banning by criminal jurisdiction, by making something or other a crime. The question is: what is it that is to be made a crime? In that report, very learned and experienced people have set out a whole lot of illustrations. The passing from the one side to the other, from innocence to guilt, is quite difficult to make out from this great learning. I think I read that the definition is so difficult that it should be made a bit wider than what at first sight might appear to catch what may not be quite a crime under this idea.

It strikes me that, if you are starting to alter the criminal law, the last thing you want is to incorporate in crimes things for which nobody regards a criminal responsibility as arising. To make it wider, just in case you cannot catch all that is in this definition, is surely a rather terrible scourge on the idea of a proper criminal situation. It is a mighty difficult subject which is covered by those three small words.

In recent times, the whole scope of this problem has been brought into relief by people asking: does it apply to a change of gender? I do not know the answer to that question because it is not me putting this forward, but it really is quite a question. There are other questions about it too. There was a big consultation and I took quite a lot of time to set out what I thought about it. I do not know that we have heard yet exactly what has been decided as a result, but it is certainly a tricky problem that those three words are supposed to expose.

There will be many other problems apart from that, and I would love to have time to get involved in them. The idea of moving the responsibility from the court to somebody else is always somewhat difficult. I agree that the courts may sometimes have the power to impose responsibility for expenditure on the taxpayer but, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, points out so clearly, if that is thought to be wrong the legislature can correct it quickly. It has a powerful correction mechanism for any such variation.

I put in a fairly detailed answer to the consultation on the Human Rights Act and, on the whole, I do not think it is moving very much. It is rather less in scope than your Lordships might think. However, my scope is finished, so I thank your Lordships for listening.