Peers: ‘Westminster’s conversion practices Bill imperils the innocent’

Peers have warned that the Government’s plans to ban so-called conversion practices risk “criminalising people who have done nothing wrong”.

Published last week, the Conversion Practices Draft Bill for England and Wales covers “emotional pressure” that causes a person to believe they do or do not have a particular “sexual orientation” or “transgender identity”. Any person found guilty of an offence faces a fine, up to five years in prison, or both.

But the House of Lords emphasised that abuse is already illegal, and such wording could “trigger criminalising parents” who do not support their child’s gender-confusion.

‘Preposterous’

Baroness Fox of Buckley urged the Government to note that family lawyers have already raised concerns about the Bill’s “loose definition of ‘abusive’ and so on”.

For example, she said, “if you are a mum who says to a teenager who says that they are born in the wrong body, ‘No you’re not’, that is a challenge to their identity, and that could even trigger social services investigations.”

Baroness Cash agreed, adding: “That drafting and those terms would put in question a wife who asks her husband to stop wearing her clothes, or parents who tell their child that they will not fund puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones, or a school that insists on referring to all its pupils as girls and boys.”

She also criticised the “weak” evidence base for the proposals, with “preposterous” claims of tens of thousands of exorcisms, “flawed methodology”, and relying on a Galop report, which admitted that the cases they found were already aligned with existing offences.

Prayer

The Lord Bishop of Leicester highlighted the danger to church leaders, and the “lack of clarity on the difference between harmful conversion practices and perfectly acceptable practices of pastoral care and indeed prayer”.

“If this difference is not crystal-clear within the legislation, it will potentially have a very significant negative impact on what I believe is legitimate spiritual care offered by faith groups.”

In response to criticism, a Government spokesman claimed that “although abuse laws exist in other contexts such as domestic abuse and coercive behaviour, they just don’t always extend to conversion practices”.

Ordinary conversations

When the Government published the draft Bill, The Christian Institute’s Simon Calvert warned that it is “wide open to misuse”.

“After eight years and five Prime Ministers is this the best draft they can come up with? The Bill would see parents, professionals and pastors having to answer to the police for innocent conversations that LGBT activists claim are ‘abusive’.”

“The Government claims its Bill targets abuse, but it’s now clear that parents are going to find themselves having to answer to police officers and the courts for conversations with their children.”

He also warned that causing “serious alarm or distress” to a person which “has a substantial adverse effect on their usual day-to-day activities” is not a clear threshold.