Transgender Conversion Therapy

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2022 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to participate in this debate with you in the Chair, Mr Mundell. I am grateful to the petitioners, and I thank the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) for opening this debate in what has been universally acknowledged as a sensitive and careful manner.

I think we are all aware that this discussion is taking place during the Pride Month—the 50th year since the first Pride march took place in London. This should be a month of celebration for LGBT+ people and their allies, after their history of struggle that was ably described by my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne). It should be a time to celebrate the wonderful diversity of our country and for all of us in this House to recommit to doing what we can to ensure that every person in the UK is treated with dignity and respect, including LGBT people, and that they will always have the ability to love and live as they need to. The calls from my hon. Friends the Members for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) and for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy) were extremely strong in that regard.

The Government had ambitious plans to mark the 50 years of Pride through, as was mentioned, their flagship Safe To Be Me: A Global Equality Conference. However, the resignation of Iain Anderson, and the withdrawal of more than 100 LGBT+ organisations and charities from Safe To Be Me in April, was a consequence of the Government’s decision to reverse their plans to ban trans conversion therapy, which is of course the subject of today’s debate.

The policy process has been chaotic. On 30 March, the Minister told the House that the Government were taking forward plans to ban conversion therapy in all its forms “on an urgent basis”. Just one day later, the news broke that the Prime Minister intended to ditch plans to ban all forms of conversion therapy, and one day after that the Government had to U-turn on that intention, only then to exclude trans conversion therapy from their plans. It appeared that no one covering equalities issues on the Government Benches, from the Foreign Secretary and Women and Equalities Minister down, was informed of No. 10’s intentions, as they changed from hour to hour.

At no point before April had the Government suggested that they were treating trans conversion therapy practices differently from those targeting sexual orientation. Their consultation was in fact explicit that an attempt to change a person from being attracted to the same sex to being attracted to the opposite sex, or from not being transgender to being transgender, would be treated in the same way as the reverse scenario.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) made clear, a ban on conversion therapy in all its forms is long overdue, so I have to ask, as so many have during this debate, why have the Government changed their mind on this subject when so many expert organisations hold a different point of view? The BMA has called conversion therapy

“an unethical and damaging practice that preys on victims of homophobia, transphobia, discrimination, and bullying.”

The Royal College of Psychiatrists says,

“Conversion therapy causes severe physical and psychological suffering”.

Many others have been mentioned in this debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome) mentioned the comments of Mind, the mental health charity. The NHS Confederation and the British Psychological Society were mentioned. I could go on and on. The issue is at not just a national level, but a local one, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones) rightly said when she mentioned the organisation that she has been in contact with.

Many of the organisations that I have just listed have acknowledged, as has the Labour party, the need for clarity when introducing legislation. Labour is clear that a trans-inclusive ban must not cover psychological support and treatment, non-directive counselling, or the pastoral relationship between teachers and pupils or religious leaders and worshippers. The hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) made that particularly clear.

[Alex Sobel]

My hon. Friend is giving a customarily excellent speech. When I went to see one of my oldest and best friends Imran last year, his child was coming out as trans—as Hope. I want to share Imran’s and Hope’s words. Hope told me,

“I’m Hope and I’m 16. I’ve decided to live my life as female. My home has been very supportive and my parents have done everything they can for me. At school it has been supportive, especially my friends and teachers who have been respectful. Some students have been unkind. The attitude that most people have shown me should be the norm. Trans People are treated differently and we need to educate people.”

Imran said to me,

“It doesn’t matter what your child does or says but it’s your job to unconditionally love and support them.”

I hope we can carry their positivity, do our best for trans people and bring forward the ban.