Conversion Practices (Prohibition) Bill

Debate between Lloyd Russell-Moyle and Liam Fox

2nd reading
Friday 1st March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con)]

It is, as always, a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for West Ham (Ms Brown), although I feel that I must correct her on one point. The House was not denied the opportunity to take the Bill forward. The fact is that only 68 Members supported the closure motion: that is the measure of support for it in the entire House.

There has been a fair degree of consensus on a number of issues today. Most important is the consensus that coercive practices which attempt to change by force the legitimate and legal beliefs and practices of any individual in our society have no place in the 21st century. It is worth reiterating that at the outset. It is also, in my view, not for the state to interfere in the non-harmful behaviour of any citizen—including the right to freely express one’s sexuality, which, as a doctor, I consider to be simply part of a natural spectrum of human behaviour, and it is worth making it clear that we have a consensus on that as well.

I do believe, however, that we have a duty to protect the vulnerable from undue pressure, from whatever direction and for whatever reason it may come. I strongly agree that we need to protect individuals from undue pressure to express themselves in a way that would be untrue to their natural character, which is not acceptable in a civilised society; but, in the wider debate about trans issues, we must be willing to protect young people from undue influence exerted by those who may have different motivations so that they do not make decisions that might be irreversible and which, with a different level of maturity and experience, they might choose to make differently for themselves.

A couple of contributions have been of particular value. The hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) talked about the risk of people being drawn inadvertently into the scope of the Bill through behaviour that they believed to be legitimate—for example, challenging young people so that they could gain the benefit of experience, in terms of what their parents might advise them to do. There is also the possibility of the medical profession being inadvertently involved if a practitioner expressed a particular view in private and was then asked to give advice. These are very complex issues.

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle), who I think has genuinely tried to get round some pretty immoveable objects when it comes to law in this area, and I am grateful to the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Neale Hanvey) for reminding us that the debate is about people. It is not about abstract issues; it is about individuals and the impact that it has on their lives, and also how elements, at least, of the medical profession can be just as subject to the whims of fashion in politics as any of the rest of the population.

I am glad that the debate has been conducted, in general, in a thoughtful tone. It could easily have degenerated into what we might call strongly held views or inadvertent self-righteousness, but it did so at very few points. It is a debate that needs to be dealt with in a proper tone, but in the wider debate we have seen too much assertion and too little rational discussion. The best example I can think of is the treatment handed out to J. K. Rowling and her row on Twitter. Of course, our assessments of the volume of the response must take account of the fact that this is the world of the Twittersphere—or the X-sphere, as I suppose it is now—but such vicious, extremely aggressive and often threatening language really has no place in our discourse on serious issues in this country.

What struck me about that intervention was not that the writer herself was not entitled to post her views because of her background—as one critic put it, because

“her cis-identity and its majoritarian privileges are overwhelming”.

The sinister part was it was not a counter-attack or riposte to the views she had posted, but an attempt to delegitimise her and thus her intervention. Although the Bill will not go forward, I hope that across the House we can understand and agree that, wherever we come from on the political spectrum, we need to make it clear that the views of those like J. K. Rowling are just as legitimate as the views of anyone else. The aim to silence, cancel and delegitimise individual views has no part in proper democratic debate in our country.

The hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown worked hard to try to get the Bill into a better position, and good law needs to be necessary, clear, effective and enforceable and to avoid unintended consequences. Like many in the House, I am not clear exactly what the necessity is for the Bill, because I did not hear described in any clarity the sort of offences that are not covered by legislation already and that would require yet another piece of legislation. When the Minister comes forward with the Government’s legislation, I look forward to its being clear about what exactly we intend to outlaw. We all understand the extreme elements that are the background to the debate, such as violent enforcement and so on. It disturbed me that part of the explanatory notes to the Bill, given to us by the House of Commons Library, said,

“techniques can take many forms and commonly range from pseudo-psychological treatments to spiritual counselling.”

That is where I had real reservations about where we are today and where I felt it was unclear what the necessity for the legislation was.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

The right hon. Gentleman says he does not understand or has not heard scenarios in the debate that would be covered by the Bill but are not covered by existing legislation. I give him the scenario of an unregulated therapist—that is, someone who is not part of any registered body, of which we have many in this country who do significant harm, and there is another debate, possibly, about registering them. That unregulated therapist can take a vulnerable person—to some extent, anyone questioning their sexuality or transgender identity is vulnerable because they are questioning—and repeatedly tell them that they cannot be that, they should be ashamed of that, and they should be disgusted about that. That does not meet a criminal threshold. It might meet a threshold many years down the line of a psychological harm that we will not know. Surely that is a clear example where this Bill, or a Bill like it, would act, but he suggests there are no examples.

Export Licences: High Court Judgment

Debate between Lloyd Russell-Moyle and Liam Fox

Thursday 20th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The joint incidents assessment team was set up by the Saudi Government in February 2016 to help with that. It examines military activity in civilian areas to minimise possible civilian casualties and assesses the coalition’s rules of engagement. We have had input into that to ensure that the coalition is operating in a way that we would find acceptable.

Of course, we simply would not take that as being the end of the matter when it comes to information. As I have said, we look at a range of information from foreign Government sources, from our own Government sources, both those in the public domain and those that are restricted, and from NGOs and the media. It is in taking that complete picture that we are able to assess what we believe the risks to be, but we are always looking to see whether further sources of information may help to improve our decision making, alongside the decision making of our allies.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

I have just returned from the Court of Appeal, where I listened to the judgment. The judges, in paragraph 141, say there was a decision in 2016 no longer to apply criterion 2 on the checking of IHL. This resulted in 100,000 deaths. Who made that decision?

My Committees, the Committees on Arms Export Controls, have manifestly failed to hold the Government to account. We now need urgent reform of the Committees’ powers, including creating a standalone Committee. Will the Minister confirm that he will not allow the use of any existing open licences to coalition partners during this review?

Finally, after the arms scandals of the 1980s and ’90s we had the Scott inquiry, and we now need an independent judge-led or parliamentary inquiry not just on this particular issue but on the failings of our arms control system—taking it away from the political interference and political control of Ministers to a truly independent and world-class system, which we do not have at the moment.

[Dr Fox]

We are ultimately accountable in the courts, as we have been, and the divisional court was clear in its praise for how Government rigour was applied to this process. We are not in breach of the consolidated criteria, nor has the Court of Appeal said that. What the Court of Appeal said is that the process by which decisions are reached needs to change, and needs to take into account the possibility of international humanitarian law having been breached. To compare that, for example, to the incidents in the Scott report is simply not credible.

Of course, we will review all licences in light of today’s judgment, as we are required to do. That will include open licences.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lloyd Russell-Moyle and Liam Fox

Thursday 23rd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

Yes. The Government are committed to ensuring as smooth as possible an exit from the EU, including for all our business sectors, which obviously covers agriculture. Beyond that, the Department is particularly focused on finding new markets for our agricultural sector. There is substantial growth in demand for agricultural products in countries such as China and India. Given that the UK’s are the finest in the world, we should be at the forefront of those export markets.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

4. What assessment he has made of the potential merits of revising the basis of economic partnership agreements better to incorporate the aims of the UN sustainable development goals.