Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman claimed she would be “criminalised” for telling her children her views on transgender people if a ban on conversion therapy was passed.
A bill on banning conversion therapy was stalled on Friday after a debate on it ran out of allotted time. The government last year announced its intention to ban “abhorrent” practices that try to change a person’s sexuality or gender identity.
During yesterday’s debate, Ms Braverman said: “If I were in the position of having a child presenting anxiety, my own child presenting questions like this, I would want to support them, I’d want them to be happy but I’d also want to direct them in the way I knew best, consistent with my parental authority, educating and teaching them about gender and sex.
“And in my view, in our household, in my family, we believe that a man cannot be a woman, a boy cannot be a girl and that is what I would be telling my children, with the best intentions and from a place of love.
“And if that were to criminalise me… that would be a crying shame and a total undermining of good parenting in this country.”
Ms Braverman is also calling for transitioning to be banned for anyone under 18.
The bill offers “clarifications” about actions that do not meet a criminal threshold. These include the actions of parents, health practitioners and those exercising freedom of religion and other beliefs.
But the bill continues to see pushback from several MPs, including Ms Braverman, who said there is “very little evidence” that the practice is a “current problem” in Britain.
She insisted the proposals would “capture so many types of behaviour where there is an innocent or well-intentioned objective”.
The BPS and other professional bodies, including NHS England and the Royal College of Psychiatrists, have said all types of conversion therapy are “unethical and potentially harmful”.
The practice can include talking therapies and prayer. More extreme forms can include exorcism, physical violence and food deprivation.
Equalities Minister Maria Caulfield said the Bill has a “lack of legislative clarity, which risks unintended consequences”.
Tory MP Peter Gibson challenged the minister on the slow progress of the Bill, saying: “We have had so many promises from the Government of bringing this legislation forward.
“It has appeared in two Queen’s Speeches. We were promised this legislation in January 2023.
The bill, tabled by Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle, would create new offences for a course of conduct whose “predetermined” purpose was to change a person’s sexual orientation, or to change a person to or from being transgender.
The bill was originally suggested in 2018.
In March 2022 then-PM Boris Johnson dropped plans for the legislation. He then later decided to go ahead but to exclude trans people from the ban. In January 2023 the government reversed this, saying they would ban conversion therapy for “everyone”.
In a UK-wide government survey of LGBT people in 2018, 5 percent of the 108,000 people who responded said they had been offered some form of conversion therapy, while 2 percent had undergone it.
It was more likely for religious people, with 10 percent of Christian respondents and 20 percent of Muslims saying they had undergone or been offered conversion therapy – compared to 6 percent of those with no religion.
