King’s Speech

Baroness Stedman-Scott Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to welcome the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, to his job. We have worked together in the past and he is well placed to do everything that he has set out to do. I have never met the noble Lord, Lord Hanson, but I welcome him. We will come back and endorse his approach later.

I ask the Minister to look at projects from other countries. A tip would be to look at the Delancey Street Foundation in San Francisco—magic. It provides accommodation, mentoring and tutoring in running a business and trading for profit. It has a Christmas tree planation in Oregon and does all the Christmas trees for the corporates in San Francisco. Tiffany’s has let Delancey’s people in to decorate its store, which shows its track record. So please have a look at that. It is very good and does not cost the Government anything. It does not take one dollar of government money—and you are not going to get too many offers like that.

I turn to the promise of a draft conversion practices Bill, which would create a new criminal offence. I should begin by saying that I am pleased that, because it is a draft Bill, there will be much-needed scrutiny of the proposal—although there are some in the House who would sooner be rid of it entirely.

It will not have escaped your Lordships’ attention entirely that this very thorny issue has been under discussion for six years. Over that time, it has become more problematic and not less. The previous Government decided to wait for the Cass report before publishing a Bill. Given the warnings issued by Doctor Cass on the issue, this was, in my opinion, the right decision. The Cass report and the subsequent remarks of Hilary Cass on the prospect of a criminal ban on conversion therapy have probably shown it to be impossible to safely legislate on this issue.

Many noble Lords have raised their own concerns. Indeed, when we debated the Private Member’s Bill from the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, some two-thirds of the speakers in the debate did not support it. My noble friend Lord Forsyth observed:

“in nearly 40 years in Parliament, I have never seen a more badly drafted or dangerous piece of legislation.”.—[Official Report, 9/2/24; col. 1845.]

This was the first of more than two dozen speeches raising concerns about the Bill, and when the concluding remarks were made there was an admission that it was not well drafted.

This is not just a problem with the quality of the various proposals put forward; it is also a problem with the inevitable effect of this type of legislation. The Equality and Human Rights Commission quite rightly warned of unintended consequences. It would not be the first time that good intentions delivered harmful consequences for our young people, and it is those young people who we must protect. Increasingly, we are hearing of young people—often young women, although it can be young men too—who have been harmed by medical interventions that are supposed to alleviate gender distress. Several noble Lords have cited the story of Keira Bell in this Chamber. She is just one of many whose lives have been permanently scarred.

The great risk of the conversion therapy law is that we prevent people like Keira from being able to have the kinds of conversations troubled young people need to have, whether with parents or professionals. This is precisely the effect of criminal laws on conversion therapy in other countries. Inordinate care must be taken in this area. The role of criminal law is surely to protect the vulnerable, not to push them towards harm, or to restrict those who would protect them. We must not pursue a law that contradicts the Cass review. We must protect our young people. My father was a furrier; he made fur coats—do not have a go at me—and on this particular Bill I would adopt his mantra, which was measure twice and cut once.