TL;DR
- After eight years of promises, the government has published a draft Bill to ban conversion practices in England & Wales. It is trans-inclusive. It is not yet law — it’s in pre-legislative scrutiny.
- It does not criminalise conversion practices outright. It criminalises only abusive ones that cause serious harm — a deliberately high, three-part criminal threshold.
- Legitimate healthcare is extensively safeguarded: exploratory and affirming clinical care falls outside scope unless a clinician’s conduct “falls far below” the professional standards expected of them.
- The quietly powerful part is the new civil protection orders, designed to act before harm happens and to reach attempts to send someone abroad.
For eight years, an end to conversion practices has been promised, dropped, re-promised, and delayed across four prime ministers. Now there is finally a text to read. The draft Conversion Practices Bill applies to England and Wales, it is trans-inclusive, and — this matters — it is a draft, published for scrutiny before it ever reaches a vote. Having set out in the last piece what conversion practice actually is, here I read what the Bill proposes to do about it.
How the ban actually works
The single most important thing to understand is that this is not a ban on conversion practices as such. It does not criminalise conversion practices outright; it criminalises only those that are abusive and cause serious harm. A practice has to pass through three separate gates before it becomes a crime.
First, is it a conversion practice at all? The Bill defines that as conduct carried out with the intention of changing — or suppressing — someone’s sexual orientation or transgender identity, including causing them to believe that they do or do not have a given sexual orientation or identity. Second, is it “abusive”? That is a question of fact, and the Bill directs courts to consider factors including whether the conduct is sexual, violent or threatening, controlling or coercive, or applies economic, psychological or emotional pressure. Third, did it cause serious harm — either serious harm to the individual’s physical or mental health, or serious alarm or distress with a substantial adverse effect on their day-to-day activities?
Only conduct that clears all three gates is criminal. That is by design. The government has deliberately set the criminal threshold high, stating that the legislation is intended to protect ordinary belief, prayer, legitimate healthcare and open conversation.
What the Bill gets right
It is explicitly trans-inclusive. The protection covers gender identity, not just sexual orientation, and the definition expressly encompasses non-binary people. After the 2022 attempt to carve trans people out, that’s the headline win, and campaigners are right to mark it.
It also safeguards legitimate care. A clinician having an exploratory conversation, or providing affirming care, falls outside the definition entirely unless their conduct falls far below the standards reasonably expected of them — the Bill’s own wording, and a high bar. The Bill distinguishes exploratory, person-centred clinical practice from conduct carried out with a predetermined conversion objective, which answers the fear that doctors and counsellors would be second-guessing every conversation.
And it carries two tools the coverage has mostly skipped. The first is an extraterritorial offence: a UK person who encourages or assists an abusive conversion practice on a UK national or resident abroad commits a crime — aimed squarely at the practice of sending people overseas. The second is the quiet workhorse of the whole Bill: conversion practice protection orders. These are civil orders. They can be sought by the person at risk, by police, by a local authority, or by someone acting on their behalf; they can be granted urgently and without notice; they can cover conduct abroad; and breaching one is itself a crime. Crucially, they do not require the harm to have already happened — only that it is likely. For a young person facing family pressure or the threat of being taken abroad, that is the mechanism designed to act before harm is done, long before any prosecution could.
That is what the Bill does, and a fair amount of it is genuinely strong. But the same drafting that protects legitimate care also sets the criminal bar very high — and that height is where the real questions live. And, as with any draft bill, this text may change substantially during pre-legislative scrutiny before it is formally introduced to Parliament. In the next piece, I look at where the Bill goes quiet.
Sources
- Draft Conversion Practices Bill, GOV.UK, 25 June 2026 (Bill text).
- Draft Conversion Practices Bill: Explanatory Notes, GOV.UK, 25 June 2026.
- GOV.UK news release, “Government pushes forward with conversion practices ban to protect LGBT+ people from abuse,” 25 June 2026.
