Conversion Therapy Prohibition (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity) Bill [HL]

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

Friday 9th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, to what problem is this specific Bill a remedy? We already have strong and effective laws against quackery and mis-selling, against coercion and control, and, of course, against harassment and physical abuse. Some are ancient common-law guarantees, some legislative. The Public Order Act 1986 defines harassment in a way that I think would cover the concerns raised by most of the supporters of the legislation in this debate. The Serious Crimes Act 2015 deals with coercion and control within families. So I am bound to ask: is this Bill a proportionate remedy to an identified problem or a way of sending a signal? Is it a form of declaratory legislation? If it is the latter, it opens the door to all manner of unintended consequences.

Given that we live in an age when people often struggle to distinguish general principles from the specific case, I ought to add that I have always been something of an outlier in pushing for gay equality. When the noble Lord, Lord Moore of Etchingham, was against Section 28, I was a teenager and strongly in favour of it. In fact, I was in favour even when it started life as Section 27, which some will remember before it was amended in legislation. I then went on in the 1990s—again very unusually as a Conservative—to be an outlying supporter of civil partnerships and the equalisation of the age of consent.

At that time I was, in fact, working for the noble Lord, Lord Moore of Etchingham. I was a leader writer at the Daily Telegraph. He is the politest and most civil of men so he did not show any sign that he thought that I was a complete lunatic but, courteous as he was, I could tell that he thought I was quite an extremist on the subject. None the less, I stand by what I thought then, partly because equality before the law is an important principle but mainly because privacy, the recognition of a private space and the dignity of individuals is a key principle, whether we are talking about gay people or about people with religious convictions. What they do is their business unless it becomes harassment or coercion of somebody else.

The noble Baroness, Lady Burt, introduced this Bill by saying that we do not want to trample on free speech but we do want to prevent these abuses. That, it seems to me, is exactly where the law stands now. So, before rushing to legislate further, we need to ask: have we exhausted every existing remedy? We heard some lurid stories from the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, about electric shock therapy and so on. I have never heard any suggestion that that is happening in this country. Are we legislating against something that does not happen in order to send a signal? If we are, that is almost a definition of laws that have unintended consequences.

Legislation should be our last resort, not our first. As Tacitus put it:

“Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges”;


that is, “The more rotten the state, the more laws it passes”. I believe, like our former Member, the third Viscount Falkland, that

“if it is not necessary to legislate, it is necessary not to legislate”.