Conversion Practices (Prohibition) Bill

Robin Millar Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 1st March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Neale Hanvey (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Alba)]

Let me begin by telling a little story that may surprise some Members who have made assumptions and judgments about my position on policies of this type.

When my party leader, Alex Salmond, introduced equal marriage to Scotland, it was done in a collaborative and supportive way, involving proper engagement with all members of the community. All the Churches were involved, through an assembly process. It was a smooth and positive campaign that delivered real, meaningful change. I have not availed myself of it, because I am happy to stick with the old-style civil partnership—my partner and I are very comfortable with that—but for those who want a marriage ceremony, it is brilliant.

After the introduction of equal marriage at the beginning of 2015, the Equality Network, which had led the campaign for it, organised a consultation on what the priority should be for equalities campaigning in Scotland. So I trundled off to Edinburgh on a cold dark March evening to sit in a room with a large group of people—transexual people, transgender people and gay people. I was the only politician who had turned up on that cold evening, and I was full-throated in my support for advancing disability and inclusion rights and the rights of transgender people. What I had never signed up for, however, was the insinuation of queer theory into the rights movement and the equality movement, and the pernicious effect that it would have. I had not realised how dangerous and disruptive that movement was until I spoke up, very politely, and said a simple thing: “Women are not being listened to in the trans debate.”

The response that stemmed from that simple statement of absolute fact has been horrific. People describe me as gender critical, but I am not transphobic—absolutely not. I have led my local Pride march for two years, I have introduced safe spaces for trans people, and I have relationships and friendships with people who are transgender and transexual. However, when I look at a policy through the lens of someone who has been involved in safeguarding and child protection throughout his professional life and I see a risk in that policy, it is my duty to point that out to legislators and to say, “This is dangerous.”

The reason I have brought that up and the reason it is relevant to the debate—I am coming to that; I can see that the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) is getting anxious—is that this policy does not sit in isolation from queer theory. It is part of the queer theory movement, and despite all the reassurances and despite the hon. Gentleman’s best efforts—and I believe that his speech and his engagement have been entirely sincere—he cannot divorce what he is attempting to do with this legislation from the activists who will have a very different reading of the words that he has spoken today, and the reassurances that he has given us. That is my great fear and concern.

I have risen to oppose the Bill not despite but because of the fact that I am a gay male who can see the dangers that it presents to gender non-conforming young people. I came out in the 1980s, when being gay was not fashionable and people could still be sacked for it, with no recourse or redress in employment law. In those days, my greatest allies were women: Women in the Workplace, the feminists who volunteered alongside me at Scottish AIDS Monitor, the women who worked alongside me in schools delivering drug and sexual health education to young people in response to the particular AIDS problem that we had in Edinburgh, and the women who walked alongside me on Pride marches. I remember that, and I value it.

It is so sad that the cause of improving the lives of transgender and transsexual people in the UK has been blighted by a campaign that can be described as, at best, divisive and aggressive. My family and I have been subjected to the full force of that campaign, which is the problem with this Bill. I believe the intentions of the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown are genuine, but it is against a backdrop of queer theory activists and heterosexual people telling me how I should define myself and what I should accept as a gay man. That is unacceptable. It is homophobia, and I do not care what anyone says.

Balancing rights and protections requires the consideration of every affected community, and every affected category within each community. Despite what is often said, neither queer theory nor gender ideology is about inclusion or diversity. It is an anarchic, authoritarian movement, the purpose of which is to disrupt and silence. Speaking up has not been easy, and the impact on my family has been enormous.

As a voter, I want to vote for a politician who I believe is telling me the truth. I do not want to vote for a politician who lies to me, who says that black is white or that Y is X. That will never be acceptable, which is why I feel a responsibility to live up to that standard. I have made this point before, but conversion therapy bans are part of a slate of policies which, in my view, are intended to insinuate queer theory into every facet of our culture and to control and limit freedom of thought, freedom of speech and freedom of expression. The clearest example is that I am somehow not same-sex attracted but same-gender attracted, and that I should therefore accept trans-identifying females as an acceptable partner. Thankfully, that is never going to happen because my partner and I have been together for 30 years and there is no way that will change—I do not have the energy to think about it.

[Robin Millar (Aberconwy) (Con)]

I try to listen carefully to these debates, and each time I learn much that is new. The hon. Gentleman brings a perspective to this debate that is completely outside my own experience, for which I thank him. He makes an important point about inclusivity, and I want to understand the implications. Is he saying that this Bill is effectively promoting an exclusivity, and that it is not inclusive? By describing the slate of queer theory policy, is he saying that this Bill would be unintentionally harmful well beyond its actual scope?

[Neale Hanvey]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, and I will address some of those complex issues.

If we look at the Bill through a utilitarian lens, there is a desire to protect the few, which is a laudable and noble aim, but it would limit the freedoms of so many and would potentially inflict serious criminal harm upon them because of a lack of foresight of the consequences of some of the proposals.

As a counterpoint, and this speaks to events that have happened today, can Members imagine a circumstance in which it would be remotely acceptable for me to lecture my partner about how he should feel when somebody expresses a racist view towards him, how he should manage it and how he should respond to it? I would never presume to do that as that is absolutely not my place. By the same token, it is not anyone’s place to lecture women or LGB people, or force-team them with others and say, “You must campaign with them. You must accept their demands.” That is what queer theory is doing to our society

--- Later in debate ---

[Neale Hanvey]

Yes, that is an important point and refers back to the points made in the previous intervention. I have a very busy constituency office and I meet church leaders and different faith groups to talk about these issues. They are relieved that they have a Member of Parliament who is prepared to stand up on their behalf and ask the difficult questions. I have parents with children who are contemplating transition or who are desisting, so I deal with that.

I also have members of staff in the local health service who are finding themselves in a very difficult situation because queer theory has insinuated itself into the culture of all our institutions. The staff have no sense of privacy or dignity, and they are concerned about the privacy and dignity of their patients. That is why it is so important to name queer theory as the backdrop against which this legislation is being proposed, and my concern is that it would be the thin end of the wedge. The hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown said that the Bill would be reviewed in four years’ time. Yes, we can have amendments and new clauses added to the legislation, but that goes both ways. The next time it is reviewed, all caveats could be removed. The full-throated queer theory doctrine could be forced into every part of our society, which is a risk that I am not prepared to leave unchallenged.

As I said, the Bill leaves young people at the mercy of radicalised activists online, and such activity is to be tolerated. There is no amendment to the Online Safety Act 2023 to prevent access to people who encourage and entice young people to sign up to irreversible medical and surgical treatments from which they can never row back. When someone stops puberty, they cannot restart it—that is it—and all the important developmental changes that happen during puberty are gone. Transitioning is not just about affirmation; it involves coercion, persuasion and unrealistic enticements, which lead young people who are living through desperately difficult times to believe that there is a quick fix for their problem.

The ideology underpinning all this is the real threat, and makes this legislation much more illiberal and much more difficult for young gender non-conforming people than section 28 could ever have been. That is the effect of this legislation: it would block therapeutic support for gender non-conforming young people and channel them, through unquestioning affirmation, into a lifetime of medical treatment and surgical limbo. We know that gender non-conforming behaviour is being used as evidence of gender dysphoria by non-experts in the classroom and in other professions. A significant finding of the Cass review was about the culture that existed at the GIDS clinic, and I ask all Members to reflect on the words of the brave detransitioners who were discarded by the “be kind” brigade of radicalised activists when they decided to desist. Kiera said:

“I became attracted to girls, but I had never had a positive association with the term ‘lesbian’ or the idea that two girls could be in a relationship. I wondered if something was wrong with me. I was adamant that I needed to transition. It was the kind of brash assertion that’s typical of teenagers. After a series of superficial conversations with social workers, I was put on puberty blockers at age 16. A year later, I was receiving testosterone shots. When 20, I had a double mastectomy. As I matured, I recognised that gender dysphoria was a symptom of my overall misery, not its cause.”

Ritchie said:

“Homophobia was rife in the local culture, my family and school and it seemed to be the worst outcome ever to end up gay. My behaviours were policed by others for being too flamboyant or eccentric, and I struggled with fitting in with others. I latched onto the idea with an unfounded zeal, and not a single medical professional stopped me thereafter. I delayed my appointment for surgery for over two years, because I had doubts. But then they gave me an ultimatum and I knew that if was not going to go through with the surgery I would have lost my therapist. As soon as I was conscious, I knew I had made the biggest mistake of my life. My sex has been lobotomised.”

That is manifestly not informed consent. It is coercive and abusive, and it breaks all ethical principles of respect for personal autonomy. We need positive LGB and T messages, not false promises that personal struggles can be fixed by mutilating surgery and experimental drugs.

But it is not just lesbian and gay young people at risk. Sinead said:

“Transitioning evangelists on the forums tell young people like me that all will be well. After cutting my long hair short and wearing men’s clothes for a year, I was put on a 12-month waiting list for treatment at a gender clinic in Glasgow. I could not believe how easy it was. What I needed was counselling to uncover why I had come to loathe my body. Instead the professionals appeared to take what I said at face value. When I said I was in the wrong sex and wanted to be a man, they agreed and prescribed me with testosterone. No one ever told me the truth: ‘You’re not a man. It’s impossible to de-sex yourself.’”

The effects on those young people have been devastating, because they were denied the help they needed.

I pay tribute to Sex Matters and the team at LGB Alliance for their invaluable work standing up for the rights of young LGB people. I want to challenge a comment that was made earlier. Being lesbian, gay or bisexual is a sexuality. That is manifestly different from being transsexual. I am not indifferent; in fact, I feel passionate about trans people being looked after properly. But to say that, in order for my identity to matter, I have to be teamed with the trans community is completely unacceptable; it is homophobic. Those organisations that I mentioned have protected young people from a tsunami of lies. I cannot put into words how strongly I feel about this. I thank Keira Bell, Ritchie Herron, Sinead Watson and every other detrans person who has had the courage to stand up and speak out. I am absolutely humbled by the experience that they have gone through and their courage to put that into words. As Keira put it:

“it was the job of the professionals to consider all my co-morbidities, not just to affirm my naïve hope that everything could be solved with hormones and surgery.”

I acknowledge that this Bill seeks to provide access to therapy and, as we mentioned a moment ago, to address affirmation conversion practices. However, I ask the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown, where are the therapists? Where will they come from? Child and adolescent mental health services are already under enormous pressure. If through threat, fear or a chilling effect the trusted adults who can engage with gender-questioning young people or those who think they might be gay will be limited in who they can interface with, who will pick that up? Those young people will be left isolated, unable to speak to anyone about their sexuality. The chilling effect that this Bill risks is enormous. Where will the therapists come from?

The reality is that young people will be redirected to the quacks on social media. They will not be able to speak to a trusted adult. That risk has to be understood. The reality is that this Bill puts those it seeks to protect in harm’s way and restricts the support that they can draw on. This is the wrong legislation for young gay, lesbian and transgender people. It attempts to solve a problem that does not exist, and fosters a new, chilling homophobic culture—just like section 28.

I agree with the proposal from Sex Matters that any legislation should meet the following four policy aims: outlaw all medical or surgical treatment of minors to modify their sexual characteristics; outlaw medical surgical treatments performed on anyone who has not had the full implications of the treatment explained to them; make it a specific offence not to provide adequate information and ensure informed consent; and make it an offence to take a child abroad to get around the prohibition of modern conversion therapy. Sex Matters helpfully suggests that the legislation could use the model that was used for legislation on female genital mutilation and virginity testing.

The not-for-profit organisation the Gay Men’s Network was established to tackle modern homophobia, and I engage with it regularly. It agrees that the Bill is the extant modern conversion therapy scandal affecting gender non-conforming young people and others struggling with normal yet distressing pubertal body dysmorphia. Furthermore, the Bill risks embedding in statute the lie that gender non-conforming behaviour is evidence that some of those young people were born in the wrong body; that the normal development of puberty, which can never be restarted or repaired, should be arrested with chemicals; and that trauma or emotional distress can be fixed with cross-sex hormones or affirming the person on to an accelerated and irreversible pathway, which amounts to a policy of transing away the gay. That is wrong, and that practice must be the urgent focus. The evidence is there; it is widespread. We know of the huge explosion of referrals into GIDS, which is closing, but the service does not provide any follow-up. For lack of a better phrase, how can it do that to someone? How can it give surgical treatment and fail to follow it up? I cannot imagine that happening in any other field of medicine. It is completely unacceptable.

The Gay Men’s Network is concerned that an affirmation-only approach could easily be inserted as an amendment or a new clause if the Bill goes to Committee. Going to Committee does not mean that the Bill will be repaired; it could get worse, and we must be mindful of that.

[Robin Millar]

It is very generous of the hon. Gentleman to give way a second time. I am again struck by his perspective on the process of conversion, and specifically on the length of time. He is describing a situation whereby people are on a journey, making decisions and wrestling with something existential—their identity—and I wonder whether the Bill adequately addresses that. It seems to me that it addresses a one-off moment—an incident or an action, reprehensible though it may be —but does not deal with a lifetime of wrestling with one’s sexuality or sex.

[Neale Hanvey]

I thank the hon. Member for that observation. The hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) said that a young person has to wait 10 years, for example, for gender reassignment surgery, but during that time they will start on puberty blockers and other such medicines, and possibly cross-sex hormones, and the damage is done. Whether they have surgery or not is pretty academic at that stage, because irreversible treatment will have been administered.

The other point I would make in response to the hon. Member for Aberconwy (Robin Millar) is that there was an option not to introduce this Bill and move the issue forward. The hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown could withdraw the Bill and we could establish a process of community engagement, through community assemblies, citizens’ assemblies or something of that nature. We could thereby have the debate we should have had five or six years ago, where everybody’s voice is valued, everybody gets to have a say, the Churches are involved right at the beginning and an accommodation is found that makes this kind of practice absolutely unacceptable—there is a clear output that this will never happen, but it does not have the strand of queer theory running all the way through it. That is the real problem.

Let me move on to the document on the Bill published recently by the Gay Men’s Network, because the hon. Gentleman addressed this in some detail and it is important to respond on some of the legal points. The GMN has among its number some legal experts, including a criminal barrister and an award-winning legal academic. It makes comments about the legislation under a few headings, the first of which is

“The wide net of criminal liability in the bill”.

The document states:

“The bill provides via clause 1, 4 and the Sentencing Act 2020 that:

a. a single act

b. the purpose and intent of which

c. is to change or suppress

d. sexual orientation or transgender identity

e. be a criminal offence if not excused by a defence in clause 1(2)

We draw attention to the terms ‘suppress’, ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘transgender identity’.

‘Suppress’ in comparative Scottish proposed legislation is defined widely, it includes, for example, a concerned parent forbidding an autistic daughter from wearing a breast binder because regulation of clothing is specifically cited as an act of suppression.

This bill proposes that the terms ‘Sexual Orientation’ and ‘transgender identity’ mean the same as in the Sentencing Act…this is problematic because that act defined neither term. It is important to note that the meaning of ‘sex’ (and therefore sexual orientation) is not settled in law and a Supreme Court Case on the subject is pending.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Robin Millar]

Specifically on the point about the way the debate has been conducted, and what I have valued in it, the Minister said that it has achieved in bringing to the surface the issues, complexities and concerns that are preventing—or at least delaying—the Government from introducing a Bill in this House.

[Miriam Cates]

I completely agree. Despite the wide range of views expressed in the debate, we still have not established what it is that is not yet illegal but should be made illegal. That is why I do not believe this Bill should progress through Parliament. In fact, I do not actually think we can legislate safely in this area at all.

I do not want to rehash other hon. Members’ comments, but I have two particular concerns about the Bill and its drafting. First, we have already referred to the fact that a DPP would have to give permission for a prosecution to be brought. On the face of it, that sounds like a sensible safeguard, and certainly it is a good thing that private prosecutions cannot be brought, but from looking on the CPS website, it is clear that the permission of the DPP just means the permission of any Crown prosecutor, and all it would take is for one Crown prosecutor who particularly wants to secure a conviction on these terms to bring that case. Case law would then be made, and then the chilling effect that so many Members have referred to would indeed be achieved for parents, teachers and therapists.

The other safeguard that is very much lacking in the Bill as drafted concerns the ability for a Secretary of State to amend the Bill through a statutory instrument—in other words, a Henry VIII power. A number of Members who have spoken today in support of the Bill support it only because of the particular exemptions for therapists, parents and religious leaders, and those exemptions could be stripped out by a Secretary of State through statutory instrument. That ability to amend the Bill in future beyond all recognition and all agreement of the House in itself makes the Bill unsafe.

My particular concerns are for parents who sadly absolutely could be criminalised under this Bill. I agree that the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown has tried hard to create these carve-outs for parents, but if a parent in exercising their parental responsibility is found by a court to have committed an action that counts as conversion therapy, how would that court then find that that parent has been acting in the best interests of the welfare of the child? That seems highly unlikely to me and very likely to lead to parents being prosecuted, or at least to feeling that they cannot speak freely to their children, as they would wish to keep them safe and prevent them from making irreversible decisions.

I am also concerned about therapists. Again, I can see that the hon. Member has made significant attempts to create a carve-out for therapists delivering exploratory therapy and talking therapies, but unfortunately the carve-out includes that a therapist must be acting within the regulations of whichever body they are affiliated to. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these regulatory bodies, including the NHS, have signed up to a memorandum of understanding that essentially means that anything else but affirming a person’s gender identity is against those regulations. Again, this exemption, though well meant, unfortunately does not count for anything.

An example of a problem that could be caused came from a lesbian lady I met last year. She told me that she had experienced gender dysphoria since her teenage years. She had sought out a private therapist to help her to come to terms with her own female body and to live happily and successfully as a lesbian woman with a partner. She chose that therapist because they had a predetermined purpose of helping her not to move to a transgender identity. Unfortunately, that therapist, who I think many of us would agree should absolutely be allowed to practise on those terms, would be criminalised under this legislation because of their predetermined purpose to suppress a transgender identity. If such a purpose were made illegal, the lady I spoke to would no longer have access to that kind of therapy. Nobody in this place could really argue that that therapy is harmful. It is fully consensual, and we should not be criminalising those conversations.

[Robin Millar]

My hon. Friend is being generous, and I commend her on the points she is making, because these are legitimate questions we ask of the Bill. Perhaps she can answer this. It seems to me that in clause 1(1), in the absence of specificity about behaviours and in the reliance on the interpretation in clause 4 of those words “purpose and intent”, in effect we have legislation that is creating a form of thought crime.

[Miriam Cates]

I absolutely agree. Although Members have spoken about abuse and persistent patterns of behaviour—all of which are certainly serious—the reality is that in the drafting of the Bill, a single act could be brought as a criminal offence. There are not sufficient safeguards in the Bill to prevent that from happening.

For example, let us say that I was a primary school teacher and a girl came to me and said that she felt she was actually a boy and that she had been born in the wrong body. If I said to her on one occasion, “No, actually you are a girl. It is great being a girl”—perhaps she is gender non-conforming in some way, and she thinks that means she is not really female—I probably would not be caught by this Bill. But if I said that to her repeatedly—in other words, if I told her the truth and guided her, as adults should guide children—I very much would be caught by this Bill, especially if I were a gender-critical feminist who had put things on social media that prove that I did not believe in gender identity ideology, for example. Those are exactly the kinds of behaviours that we absolutely cannot criminalise in a democratic and free society.

Parents and children are my principal concern here. In the past two years, my inbox has been full of tragic stories of children, often girls, often same-sex attracted, often autistic, who have been groomed online and often by activist groups, sometimes in schools, into believing that they are actually boys. Sadly, some of these children have gone on to be prescribed puberty blockers, and cross-sex hormones. Some are actively pursuing radical surgery that will leave them infertile, unable to breastfeed, and with medical problems for the rest of their life. It is already difficult enough for parents, teachers and employees to speak out against this ideology. The hon. Member for somewhere in Scotland—