Gay Conversion Therapies
Debate between Wes Streeting and Mike Freer(9 years ago)
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Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for securing the debate and for all the work he does to champion LGBT equality. I am sure that many of us received the Core Issues Trust’s interesting briefing, which suggested a link between homosexuality and same-sex attraction and mental ill health and other forms of physical illness. Has it not got that the wrong way around? It is discrimination and the suggestion that there could be a gay cure that makes all LGBT people, and young people in particular, feel that they are different and somehow alien. That is what causes them mental ill health, not their homosexuality.
Mike Freer
The hon. Gentleman has a track record in this area even though he is new to the House and I am sure that he will be extremely vocal on these issues. He is absolutely right. It is the suggestion that homosexuality is a disease or illness that can be cured that drives mental health problems, not the other way around. Frankly, I wasted no time on reading the Core Issues briefing.
I will finish with a couple of comments from esteemed colleagues. On 29 April, in an interview with Pink News, the Prime Minister said, on banning such therapies,
“if we need to go further…we will.”
As far as I am concerned, we do need to go further. The Secretary of State for Education and Minister for Women and Equalities said a couple of weeks ago to Pink News:
“Let me be clear: gay cure therapies have no place in our countries and we must stamp them out.”
I ask my very good friend the Minister if she will agree to explore how stipulated aversion therapies can be banned and whether the voluntary memorandum of understanding should and can be reviewed to put it on a statutory footing.