Transgender Conversion Therapy
Debate between Elliot Colburn and Margaret Greenwood(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Elliot Colburn
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her intervention and I absolutely agree with her. Again, it comes back to the general theme of the debate—for me, at least—which is that this is about harmful practices and whether we think anyone, regardless of who they are, should undergo harmful practices. My answer is no.
Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this really important debate; he is making an excellent speech. The United Nations report in 2020 called for a global ban on conversion therapy. The UN said:
“Such practices constitute an egregious violation of rights to bodily autonomy, health, and free expression of one’s sexual orientation and gender identity.”
Does he agree with me that there is real clarity in that statement and that it is very useful for this debate?
Elliot Colburn
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her intervention and I absolutely agree with her. I am conscious of time, Sir Graham, so I will start to wrap up my remarks so that we can get on to other people’s contributions.
Going back to the example of a set of twins where one twin is gay and one is trans, as the proposals stand, the law would only protect one of those two individuals. The other twin would be left open to continually being subjected to the kind of practices that we have been discussing, with no legal protections. By deliberately excluding trans people from the ban, I believe that the message that we would send is that it is acceptable to inflict such behaviour on someone because of who they are, which just cannot be right.