Conversion Practices

Debate between Florence Eshalomi and John Hayes

Wednesday 6th December 2023 Westminster Hall

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Fovargue. Men and women are peculiar. All of us are characterised by as many particularities, preferences and preoccupations as can possibly be imagined. When we look from a distance, the beach looks uniform; when we get closer, every pebble is different, and so are we. Yet there is a constant in all our lives, and that constant is change, with all its joys and sorrows.

Change is at its most profound when we are growing, maturing and developing, as the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) said. Some changes are permanent and some are ephemeral, but coping with both means learning from others—often others who know much more. Sometimes we need to ask; sometimes we need to question. If, in the secret garden of love, which is adorned with flowers of all kinds, some blooms are perpetual and some fade, and if we are told that what we choose is no longer permitted and that we need to be forced to grow a different flower altogether, can that be right? Can that be squared with the eclecticism, the strangeness and the particularity of life? For me, it cannot.

Exploring desire is a journey that we all travel. Being guided, counselled and advised sometimes helps us to navigate our way on that difficult journey. Prohibiting guidance, in my judgment, is a short step from a ban on friendship—friendship, which may make burdens lighter and suffocate the fire of fear. Could we, in conscience, really want to make consensual, quiet conversations illegal? No one in this Chamber and no one who contributes to this debate wants cruel, inhumane and spiteful interventions in people’s particular and very different lives. Surely, we cannot ban the freedom to speak, to put our case, and to converse.

I glory in our differences in all its richness, and I congratulate in particular the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Neale Hanvey) on what I thought was an outstanding speech. Life is complicated, and in the mists of its confusion is the torch of free speech and free thought, which burns brightly.

[Florence Eshalomi]

On the right hon. Gentleman’s point about life being complicated, it is complicated for a number of people, including the many black and minority ethnic people who still, to this day, have not had the courage to come out because of the stigma and fear. Does he not appreciate that those practices make it even harder for those people to speak out and be their true selves?

[Sir John Hayes]

If the hon. Lady is speaking of what I described as cruel and spiteful interventions in quiet, or sometimes less quiet, lives, then yes, of course. However, if she is referring to the kind of conversations that I described, which help people to navigate their way through life, would she really want those prohibited and made unlawful? I cannot think she would.

When we consider cancellations, bans and prohibitions —on whatever grounds, but particularly on the grounds of activists who legitimise them on the basis that they are progressive and that anyone who opposes them is a heretic—I say that if to be part of a crusade against puritanical militant transsexuals is heretical, then sign me up. If it is heresy to say that sex is a biological fact, then count me in. On that basis, I am proud to be a heretic.