The Conversion Practices Bill — our coverage
- Overview — where things stand, and where to start (you are here)
- The Threshold — conversion practices and the draft Bill, explained, in four parts
- Done carefully enough, it is not a crime — the argument in full
- What we are asking Parliament to change — four recommendations, and the limits that come with them
- At the Joint Committee — our written evidence to Parliament
CONVERSION PRACTICES BILL
The government’s draft Conversion Practices Bill would, for the first time, make conversion practices a crime in England and Wales. It is now being scrutinised by a Joint Committee of both Houses before it is formally introduced. We support it, and we want a tightened version passed. This page collects what we have published and filed on it.
Start here: what conversion practices are, and what the Bill does
If you are new to this, start with The Threshold, our four-part series: what conversion practice actually is, what the draft Bill proposes, where it goes quiet, and a personal reflection on what a high legal threshold can miss.
Our position, in short
The Bill is right to exist, and much of it is strong. It is trans-inclusive, it reaches practices arranged abroad, and its civil protection orders can act before any harm is done.
But it punishes the harm rather than prohibiting the practice. Conduct is a crime only if it is abusive and has been proved to cause serious harm. Conversion practice is a violation of the person whether it is done roughly or carefully — and done carefully, it can sit under the Bill’s threshold. Conduct intended only to make someone hide who they are may not be covered at all. And conduct intended to change a person’s orientation or identity is excluded from the definition if it happens in the course of health care, unless it falls “far below” professional standards.
Conversion practice should not be happening in clinical settings, and a clinic should not be the safest place to attempt it.
Our coverage
Done carefully enough, it is not a crime — the argument in full: why someone acting carefully can stay under the threshold, why hiding may not be covered, and why a clinic should not be the safest place to try.
What we are asking Parliament to change — our four principal recommendations, what each would do, and the limits built into each.
At the Joint Committee — our written evidence to the Joint Committee, and what happens to it. The Committee is due to report by 22 January 2027.
Why we are involved, and how
Eden Openly publishes evidence reviews and appraisals in trans healthcare and dermatology. This Bill sits directly across that subject: it decides what may lawfully be done to people, including in clinics, in an attempt to change who they are. We are a party to this, not a neutral observer; the author is a transgender woman, and the Bill bears on her directly. Everything we file rests on the Bill’s own text, the Government’s published documents and laws already in force elsewhere. Our full position on funding and interests is set out in our statement of independence and on our declared interests page.
A violation done carefully is still a violation.
Eden Openly is an independent clinical health-education publication. It receives no funding from, and has no commercial relationship with, any provider of gender-related healthcare or any pharmaceutical company. Statutory text checked against the Draft Conversion Practices Bill (CP 1604, GOV.UK, page updated 1 September 2026). Corrections and queries: [email protected].
Changes to this page. 10 October 2026 — first published. Later the same evening, after a further review: “hiding is not covered at all” became “may not be covered”, because pressure to hide can fall within the Bill where it is the means to changing someone; and our summary of the changes we are asking for was withdrawn for revision. 11 October 2026 — that summary, What we are asking Parliament to change, was republished, rewritten around four principal recommendations, and the list above now describes it that way. “Done carefully, it sits under the Bill’s threshold” became “can sit under”: whether careful conduct is caught depends on whether abuse and serious harm can be proved, not on care alone. The description of our companion piece, which said a careful practitioner “stays under” the threshold, now says “can stay under” it, for the same reason. 12 October 2026 — that description now says “someone acting carefully” rather than “a careful practitioner”, since the example in the piece is a paid coach, not a clinician.