Transgender Conversion Therapy
Debate between Wera Hobhouse and Hywel Williams(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
At last the Government have proposed, and will bring forward, a conversion therapy Bill. I welcome that—it is progress. After all, I tabled a private Member’s Bill to ban conversion therapy in the last Parliament. However, the detail of the Government’s proposal is more than disappointing. The ban will protect people from therapies aimed at changing their sexual orientation, but therapies aimed at changing people’s gender identity will not be banned. If the Government recognise the harm that these cruel and medieval practices cause one group of people, why do they exclude the group that is the most harmed?
Trans people are twice as likely as the rest of the LGBT+ community to be subjected to conversion practices. A recent survey found that gender conversion practices, far from working, create lifelong, deeply traumatic consequences for survivors. Nearly half of respondents said that every aspect of their life, from their mental health to peer and family relationships, had considerably worsened. We all know that, all too often, the catastrophic mental ill health that is suffered leads to loss of life.
Gender conversion therapy is purposefully harmful and repressive. It targets already vulnerable people, and does so overwhelmingly at a very young age. Three quarters of those who have undergone conversion therapy were under the age of 24. Some began as early as the age of 12. These so-called therapies or practices include verbal abuse, isolation, physical abuse and, perhaps most disturbingly, “corrective” rape. For the exclusion of any doubt, we are not talking about professional medical treatment and therapy.
Hywel Williams
Does the hon. Lady agree with me that therapeutic and counselling interventions in these situations have to be non-directive, and that that per se excludes anything that has a predetermined purpose, as we are discussing?