The Conversion Practices Bill: what we are asking Parliament to change

CONVERSION PRACTICES BILL · WHAT WE ARE ASKING FOR

We support the draft Conversion Practices Bill, and we want a tightened version of it passed. This page sets out, in plain terms, the four principal changes we are asking Parliament to make, what each would do, and the limits we have built into each. The drafted amendments, with the evidence and our reasoning, will be in our written evidence to the Joint Committee.

Our position, in short

The Bill punishes the harm, once it can be proved. It does not prohibit the practice. As drafted, conduct is a crime only if it is abusive and has been proved to cause serious harm. A patient, careful person can pursue the same aim and stay under that 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 altogether if it happens in the course of any health care, regulated or not, unless it falls “far below” expected standards — a threshold the Government describes as equivalent to gross negligence.

Conversion practice should not be happening in clinical settings, and a clinic should not be the safest place to attempt it.

The four recommendations

1. An offence for children and adults who lack capacity — with a clear threshold

The gap. The Bill has no separate rule for children. A practice aimed at a child must be proved abusive and proved to have caused serious harm, like one aimed at an adult.

What we ask. An offence of carrying out a conversion practice on a child, or on an adult who lacks capacity, directed at them because of their orientation or identity, in a professional, paid or organised setting, where the conduct is part of a planned, organised or sustained course of conduct or is otherwise intrusive. That is the threshold the Netherlands has enacted. Abuse and harm would not need to be proved. Maximum two years; prosecutions only with the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Its limits. A single conversation is not caught unless it is intrusive in itself, and repetition alone is not enough. Teaching addressed to a group is not caught. Encouraging caution before a decision about transition that remains the young person’s own, and advice given to keep them safe, are not a conversion intention. A parent’s private conduct with their own child is outside this offence, and remains within the Bill’s existing offence only where it is abusive.

2. Health care — a defined safe harbour in place of a gross-negligence threshold

The gap. Clause 1(3) does not protect clinicians who explore a patient’s identity with an open mind — they were never within the definition. It protects someone who does intend to change who a person is, provided they do it in the course of health care, regulated or not, and not grossly badly.

What we ask. A safe harbour for registered or accredited practitioners, and those they supervise, carrying out assessment, exploration, information, treatment or a decision not to treat, which they consider clinically appropriate in their reasonable professional judgement and which is consistent with their register’s published standards. The harbour is withdrawn where the practitioner pursues changing or suppressing a person’s orientation or identity as an objective imposed on them. Once a defendant raises the harbour, the prosecution must disprove it.

Its limits. Care that supports a person’s own exploration and decisions — including a freely chosen transition or a decision to stop — keeps the protection. For everyone, not only clinicians, exploration, information and support for a person’s own decisions do not by themselves show a conversion intention.

3. Suppression — named and defined

The gap. Pressure to hide can be the means to changing someone, and then the Bill covers it. But where concealment is the only aim, the definition may not apply.

What we ask. Name suppression expressly: an intention to make a person conceal their orientation or identity, refrain from expressing it, refrain from relationships because of their orientation, or refrain from living socially as a trans person. The laws of the Netherlands, Germany, New Zealand and Victoria name suppression expressly; the laws of Malta and Canada reach it with the word “repress” (Canada’s in one direction only).

Its limits. Supporting a person in a choice of their own — whether to come out, whether to be in a relationship, whether and how to transition — is not suppression. Nor are rules of general application, or the general expression of belief.

4. Likely harm, alongside caused harm

The gap. The effects of sustained pressure can emerge slowly, alongside other causes, and are hard to prove to the criminal standard. Yet the Bill already treats the risk of serious harm as enough for a person who helps arrange the practice abroad, and for protection orders.

What we ask. An offence of abusive conduct that is likely to cause serious harm, which the person knew or ought to have known, alongside the Bill’s caused-harm offence, which keeps its requirement of proven harm and its five-year maximum.

Its limits. The abuse requirement stays. The new offence does not reach conduct a court does not find abusive.

Supporting changes

• Consent. Consent is no defence to the offences concerning children and adults lacking capacity; apparent consent does not of itself stop conduct being abusive; the person subjected to a practice can never be prosecuted for taking part in it.
• Offering and advertising. An offence of offering or advertising, in a professional, paid or organised setting, a practice that would meet the thresholds above — including programmes sold to parents for use on their children.
• Removal abroad. Arranging a person’s travel abroad for a practice is expressly assisting it.
• Guidance and commencement. Statutory guidance within twelve months, with the offences starting at least three months after it and no later than eighteen months after Royal Assent. Protection orders start after two months, as the Bill provides, with interim guidance first.
• Review. A baseline, and a report to Parliament within three years on how the Act is working, including any unintended effects on health care, education and freedom of belief.

What we are not asking for

We are not asking for every conversation about sexual orientation or gender identity to become a crime. Prayer, worship, teaching and the general expression of belief stay lawful. Clinicians practising to their standards, and supporting their patients’ own decisions, keep a statutory safe harbour. A parent’s private conduct is reached only where it is abusive. Adults with capacity remain protected by the abuse test. We are not asking for any change that would stop a person exploring their identity, or deciding for themselves what to do about it.

Where these come from

Each change answers a gap in the Bill’s own text, and draws where it can on laws elsewhere — the Netherlands, New Zealand, Germany, Victoria, Canada and Malta — while saying where we depart from them. Experience of those laws is still thin, which is one reason we ask for a statutory review. The argument in full is in our companion piece, Done carefully enough, it is not a crime. The drafted amendments, the evidence and our reasoning on proportionality will be in our written evidence to the Joint Committee, which we will publish here once the Committee has published it.

The Bill should prohibit the practice, not only punish the harm once it can be proved.

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. The author is a transgender woman and declares her interests in full on our declared interests page. Statutory text checked against the Draft Conversion Practices Bill (CP 1604, GOV.UK, page updated 1 September 2026) and its Explanatory Notes. Corrections and queries: [email protected].

Changes to this page. First published 10 October 2026 and withdrawn the same evening for revision after a further review. Republished 11 October 2026, rewritten around four principal recommendations: the child offence now has a systematic-or-intrusive threshold, and the health care proposal is now a defined safe harbour. Later on 11 October 2026 the list of laws naming suppression was extended to note that Malta and Canada use the word “repress”, so that it matches our companion piece, and “a patient, careful practitioner” became “a patient, careful person”, since the point is not about clinicians.