The Conversion Practices Bill, the policing of conscience, and the danger to families, children and religious freedom
The Government proposes five-year prison sentences, preventive court orders and new institutional responsibilities under its Draft Conversion Practices Bill. At the Battle of Ideas, lawyers, clinicians and campaigners challenged its legal foundations, its effects upon vulnerable children and its potentially enormous consequences for an already overstretched family justice system. The controversy has acquired fresh significance following the disclosure of a Home Office counter-extremism report associating traditional Christian convictions with characteristics of extremism. Parliament is inviting evidence until 16 November. The questions raised deserve far more serious consideration than the assurances offered by ministers.
What is a parent supposed to do when a thirteen-year-old announces that she was born in the wrong body? Agree immediately? Arrange medical consultations? Inform the school? Or sit down with her daughter, listen to what she is saying, ask where these ideas have come from, and try to discover what is making her unhappy?
It is an ordinary question of parental responsibility, one which ought never to require the services of a solicitor. Adolescence is complicated enough without making every difficult conversation a potential matter for the police. Children misunderstand themselves, imitate their friends, absorb ideas from the internet, rebel against their parents and sometimes mistake intense but passing feelings for permanent truths. They need affection, patience, correction, reassurance and, occasionally, a firm refusal. None of this is remarkable. It is what raising children has always involved.
Yet the Government’s Draft Conversion Practices Bill would introduce a new legal framework in which the intentions behind conversations about sexuality and gender identity, the pressure exerted by adults and the distress experienced by those concerned could become matters for criminal investigation and preventive court intervention. Ministers insist that ordinary parenting, legitimate healthcare and religious expression will remain protected. The difficulty is that the proposed legislation leaves substantial uncertainty about where legitimate guidance ends and prohibited influence begins. The state is proposing to enlarge its authority over some of the most intimate relationships in society while asking those affected to trust assurances which the statute itself does not expressly guarantee.
Published on 25 June 2026, the Bill defines a conversion practice as conduct intended to cause someone to have, not to have, or to believe they have or do not have, a particular sexual orientation or transgender identity. The criminal offence requires abusive conduct causing serious physical or mental harm, or serious alarm or distress substantially affecting ordinary daily activities. Conviction on indictment could carry five years’ imprisonment. Alongside the offence, however, the Government proposes conversion practice protection orders, permitting restrictions or requirements intended to prevent serious harm before a criminal conviction has occurred. In determining whether conduct is abusive, courts would consider circumstances including controlling behaviour, economic pressure and psychological or emotional pressure.¹
These are not peripheral provisions. The words chosen by Parliament will determine how police officers, social workers, teachers, counsellors, charity trustees and religious ministers understand their responsibilities. A prohibition presented to the public as protection against cruelty reaches into territory where adults are expected to influence others responsibly. Parents must set boundaries. Teachers must correct errors. Clinicians must challenge assumptions. Priests must teach moral doctrine. The possibility that the state may subsequently characterise such influence as an abusive conversion practice is what makes the drafting so consequential.
At the Battle of Ideas festival in London, a panel chaired by Dr Jan Macvarish, director of national engagement at the Free Speech Union, subjected the proposal to sustained criticism. Helen Joyce, director of advocacy at Sex Matters, began with the question which ought to have been answered before a new criminal offence was devised: “What does it make criminal that isn’t already criminal? And should that be made criminal?” She reminded the audience that assaults, threats, sexual violence and numerous forms of coercion are already offences. If the Government believes important gaps remain concerning psychological or verbal abuse, it must identify precisely what conduct falls through the existing law and demonstrate why the proposed remedy is necessary.²
Joyce regarded the measure as “a grotesque and authoritarian state overreach including into family life”. The force of her argument lay in the practical circumstances to which the Bill might apply. Parents routinely exert emotional influence over their children. They may prevent contact with certain friends, restrict internet access, confiscate a telephone or refuse to finance something they consider harmful. Such decisions can be unreasonable; they can also be indispensable. A parent who discovers that a child has obtained hormones without appropriate medical supervision ought to intervene. Yet, Joyce asked, what happens if the child characterises that intervention as an attempt to prevent a change of gender identity?
The issue becomes more serious when preventive court orders are considered. Joyce asked whether a court might require a parent to use particular pronouns for a child or permit the wearing of a breast binder against parental judgement. “Could a court say that you have to call your 11-year-old non-binary daughter they them?” she demanded, before conceding that the precise extent of such powers remains uncertain. That uncertainty is the objection. A preventive order capable of imposing restrictions within a family should not leave parents dependent upon an eventual judicial interpretation of broad statutory language.¹
The Bill also provides for liability extending beyond the individual perpetrator. Clause 5 concerns offences committed by corporate and unincorporated bodies, including circumstances in which relevant officers authorise, participate in, permit or fail to take reasonable steps to prevent an offence. The implications for trustees, directors and the management of religious and charitable organisations are obvious. A charity already subject to equality, safeguarding and funding obligations would acquire another potential source of criminal liability involving the conduct of those acting within its organisation.
Joyce drew attention to the absence of a special requirement for the consent of the Attorney General or Director of Public Prosecutions before a private prosecution could be brought. She was concerned not merely about conviction, but about the damage which an accusation may inflict before guilt has been established. Recalling correspondence from people who had reconsidered their transgender identification after encountering public arguments about sex and gender, she asked whether those who had influenced them might be accused of conversion. She thought prosecution improbable in such circumstances, but the uncertainty itself troubled her. As she put it, “the process is the punishment”.
Anyone who has endured an unnecessary safeguarding investigation, professional disciplinary complaint or prolonged dispute with a public authority will understand what she meant. Reputation, employment, friendships and professional opportunities can be damaged long before an allegation reaches court. A person eventually cleared of wrongdoing may nevertheless discover that the experience has permanently altered relationships and circumstances. Such consequences matter particularly when the conduct being scrutinised belongs to family life, religious practice or legitimate professional judgement.
Former MP Neale Hanvey, who had opposed earlier conversion practices proposals in Parliament, identified another difficulty. Protected beliefs, he argued, are of limited practical use if their manifestation becomes hazardous. “It’s not that you are not allowed to hold that belief,” he explained. “It’s how you manifest it.” A teacher may believe that biological sex is immutable. A parent may reject the proposition that every assertion of gender identity must be affirmed. A priest may hold that the human person is created male or female and that human sexuality is governed by objective moral law. Such beliefs cannot be treated as merely decorative convictions, permitted privately but suspect whenever they influence conduct.
Hanvey accused the proposed legislation of attempting to insinuate “queer theory dogma into every corner of public life”. That was his description of its underlying ideological purpose, but it expressed a concern extending beyond the particular subject of conversion practices. If public institutions assume that affirmation of a claimed identity is the proper response and that alternative explanations constitute improper influence, freedom of belief may survive in theory while the freedom to act conscientiously is substantially weakened.
His warning should be understood against the experience of recent equality litigation. The courts have recognised that qualifying gender-critical convictions can receive protection as philosophical beliefs. Such protection does not make every manifestation lawful; no protected belief confers unlimited permission to mistreat others. It does, however, require public institutions to recognise that disagreement about sex and gender is not, in itself, misconduct. Hanvey feared that the proposed legislation would open another route through which precisely such disagreement might become the subject of official suspicion.
For children and adolescents, the danger is particularly acute. Lucy Beney, a qualified therapist and former school counsellor, described the process through which young people develop an understanding of themselves. Identity emerges through family relationships, education, personality, faith, social experience and the complicated business of growing up. Adolescents may be acutely uncomfortable with their bodies, uncertain about sexuality or distressed by expectations associated with being male or female. None of these experiences can responsibly be understood without exploring the wider circumstances.
Beney explained that her approach was to broaden the conversation rather than immediately accept a diagnostic or ideological explanation. “It’s not just about your gender or your sexuality,” she told the audience, because “human beings are very multifaceted creatures”. When a young person introduced himself through an elaborate collection of identities, she would ask about interests, friends and family. “Tell me about yourself,” she would say. It was an invitation to discuss the person behind the vocabulary.
She illustrated the point with a composite case study of a boy who described himself as gender-fluid, polyamorous and pansexual. Careful questioning revealed that his understanding of these terms bore little resemblance to the significance he had attached to them. He considered himself gender-fluid because he disliked football, polyamorous because he hoped to have more than one girlfriend before marriage, and pansexual because emotional attachment mattered more to him than physical appearance. His explanations reflected ordinary experiences interpreted through an elaborate conceptual framework encountered online.
In Beney’s account, the family responded by giving the boy time and perspective. His parents encouraged him to disengage from the online material which had intensified his anxieties, while his older brother was told to stop winding him up. The situation improved without requiring an elaborate programme of intervention. The boy needed patient adults willing to help him understand what he was experiencing. His difficulties were not resolved by pretending that every interpretation he offered must be correct.
Beney warned that an approach which discourages questioning can fix a child’s identity “at a point in time” when feelings, assumptions and personal understanding may still be developing. Children need adults who can listen without ridicule, but they also “need adults to say, ‘No, that isn’t true.’ Or, ‘No, that isn’t right.’” That capacity to challenge misconceptions is inseparable from education. No responsible teacher would consider it an act of kindness to leave a pupil believing something demonstrably false merely because correction might cause discomfort.
There is a further consideration. Young people who are same-sex attracted, gender non-conforming, autistic, anxious or socially isolated may encounter explanations of their distress which do not adequately reflect their circumstances. Some will need specialised clinical care. Others will benefit from patient exploration, reassurance and time. An approach which makes affirmation the safest professional response may discourage precisely the questioning needed to discover what is wrong.
The Cass Review should have settled the importance of such caution. Its examination of gender identity services for children identified serious weaknesses in the evidence underpinning some clinical practices and called for more comprehensive assessment of the young person’s psychological, developmental and social circumstances. The lesson was not that children experiencing distress should be dismissed, but that clinicians must be permitted to investigate their difficulties without assuming the answer in advance. A law which encourages defensive professional practice would be an unhappy accompaniment to that conclusion.³
Macvarish reported that counsellors known to the Free Speech Union had already begun declining cases involving children experiencing gender-related confusion because they feared vexatious complaints. The prospect of professionals avoiding these young people is disturbing. An experienced counsellor should not find it professionally safer to refuse assistance than to ask necessary questions. Beney expressed her own concern in unsparing terms, describing the situation as an abandonment of vulnerable children, including those who had experienced trauma, neurodevelopmental difficulties, loneliness or social isolation. Without adults prepared to examine their anxieties properly, she warned, “we are throwing them to the wolves”.
The implications extend beyond counselling. Schools increasingly encounter children whose assertions about identity are disputed by their parents, whose behaviour raises safeguarding concerns or whose anxieties may be associated with bullying, online communities or family difficulties. Teachers have duties to protect pupils, respect their dignity and communicate appropriately with parents. Introducing an additional legal framework around attempts to influence beliefs about identity makes the exercise of these duties more complicated. A policy which encourages staff to avoid difficult discussions through fear of complaints does not make children better protected.
Barrister Sarah Phillimore approached the problem from another direction: what happens when an allegation enters the family justice system? Her professional experience led her to fear consequences which legislators had scarcely examined. “You are pitting children against parents,” she told the audience, arguing that ordinary disputes over boundaries, medication and identity could become matters for safeguarding intervention. She compared the proposed legislation to pulling a rope attached to “a very angry and a very hungry tiger”: the family justice system, with all its statutory obligations, expense and procedural complexity.
Phillimore described a situation in which parents discover that their thirteen-year-old daughter has obtained testosterone without appropriate medical supervision. The parents intervene, believing that they are protecting her from harm. The daughter considers their intervention an attempt to stop her becoming a boy. A younger sibling also identifies as non-binary. If allegations concerning both children and both parents produce safeguarding investigations, the consequences may spread well beyond the original disagreement. Whether proceedings would ultimately be justified is a separate matter. The investigation itself may strain family relationships which were already fragile.
The financial evidence Phillimore introduced deserves particular attention. “Pounds and pence are not bigoted,” she observed. “They are realities.” In October, the Local Government Association reported that English councils spent £9.5 billion supporting looked-after children in 2025/26, compared with £6.6 billion in 2022/23. The increase, approximately £2.9 billion in three years, represents a rise of 29.1 per cent after adjustment for inflation. Councils exceeded their budgets for this provision by a cumulative £3.2 billion over the same period.⁴
These figures describe a system under severe pressure before any additional statutory responsibilities are introduced. Children’s services have experienced escalating placement costs, shortages of suitable accommodation and considerable difficulty finding families capable of meeting complex needs. The cost of caring for children who cannot safely remain with their parents is not simply a matter of the weekly allowance paid to foster carers. It involves assessments, specialist provision, social workers, commissioned services, legal obligations and, increasingly, expensive placements supplied by private providers.
Phillimore told the audience that around 16,000 public-law family cases commence annually. Official Ministry of Justice data records 16,350 new Children Act public-law cases in England and Wales during 2025. In the second quarter of 2026 alone, 4,281 new cases began, involving 7,453 individual children. The latest published figures show that care or supervision proceedings take an average of 37 weeks to conclude, despite the ordinary statutory expectation of 26 weeks. Only 36 per cent were completed within that period during April to June 2026.⁵
These proceedings are not minor administrative exercises. They involve applications concerning the welfare of children, often requiring legal representation, children’s guardians, social-work evidence and judicial decisions about parental responsibilities. Families can spend many months living with uncertainty concerning their future. Phillimore’s fear was that additional allegations generated by the proposed legislation might place further demands upon a system already struggling to deal promptly with existing cases.
The cost of placements makes the problem still more serious. Phillimore quoted figures of approximately £38,000 annually for fostering and £58,000 for residential care. Subsequent independent research demonstrates that the disparity is much greater than those figures suggest. The Institute for Government reported in April that an average foster-care placement cost approximately £805 a week, or £42,000 annually, while an average children’s-home placement cost £7,800 a week, equivalent to approximately £404,000 annually, expressed in 2026/27 prices. Residential care costs almost ten times as much as fostering.⁶
The shortage of foster families is itself substantial. The Fostering Network estimates that the United Kingdom needs another 6,000 foster families, particularly to accommodate teenagers and sibling groups. Approximately 67,000 children live with more than 52,000 foster families across the country on a typical day, while around one in ten foster carers retires or resigns annually. When a suitable foster placement cannot be found, children may be accommodated far from home or placed in residential provision at extraordinary expense.⁷
The Local Government Association previously recorded 120 children’s placements costing £10,000 or more per week in 2018/19. By 2022/23, that number had increased to approximately 1,500. A placement costing £10,000 weekly represents expenditure of at least £520,000 in a year. Such figures demonstrate how rapidly costs can escalate when specialist provision is scarce.⁴
Phillimore asked what even a two per cent increase in the numbers entering care might mean for local authorities. She did not offer that figure as a forecast of what the Bill would cause. Her point was that comparatively small changes in demand can produce enormous financial consequences in a system where the most expensive placements cost hundreds of thousands of pounds annually. “Have you got a spare billion pounds to cover this for one calendar year?” she demanded. Parliament ought at least to know what additional safeguarding interventions might cost before introducing powers capable of generating them.
The Government’s own impact assessment makes the question unavoidable. Its preferred option carries estimated ten-year costs of approximately £59.7 million, excluding impacts upon the wider criminal justice system which officials are still assessing with the Ministry of Justice. Public-sector familiarisation alone is estimated at £45.8 million in the first year, with further costs falling upon private-sector organisations, including education, healthcare and religious bodies. The assessment acknowledges that the calculations remain provisional.⁸
There is something extraordinary about estimating the cost of familiarising religious leaders, teachers and other professionals with new duties while the wider costs of enforcing those duties have yet to be established. Police investigations, prosecutions, court hearings, legal representation and possible interactions with family proceedings are not negligible administrative details. They are among the consequences which ought to be understood before Parliament creates new offences.
The projected economic benefits deserve equally close examination. The Government estimates benefits of approximately £783 million over ten years, producing a projected net present social value of around £724 million. These figures are not anticipated savings in NHS expenditure. They are monetised estimates of improvements in mental health, principally calculated through anticipated reductions in depression and the associated value of quality-adjusted life years.⁸
The calculation begins with an estimate that between 75,000 and 93,000 people annually experience conversion practices in England and Wales. That estimate is extrapolated from survey evidence and assumptions concerning the proportion of the LGBT population exposed to selected practices. The impact assessment itself acknowledges that the figure may include conduct which would not satisfy the proposed criminal offence and that there is no representative direct measure of conversion practices as defined by the legislation. The Government nevertheless uses this estimated prevalence as a central input into its economic modelling.
The difficulty is apparent. The Government is proposing criminal legislation justified partly through calculations derived from uncertain prevalence estimates, while the potential consequences for public authorities remain incompletely costed. A projected benefit expressed in hundreds of millions of pounds may look impressive in a ministerial briefing. Its evidential strength depends upon the reliability of each assumption behind it. The existence of a sophisticated calculation cannot compensate for an uncertain starting point.
Phillimore’s financial argument was therefore more than an appeal to taxpayers’ instincts. It concerned safeguarding capacity. Every unnecessary investigation consumes professional time. Every prolonged proceeding occupies court resources. Every inappropriate intervention places additional strain upon services responsible for children facing genuine danger. The consequences of error are not borne by an abstract administrative system but by families whose relationships may already be under extraordinary pressure.
Her final warning was directed at the human consequences which economic assessments cannot adequately measure. Care proceedings can last months, even when they conclude without orders permanently separating parents and children. The damage to trust may begin long before judgment. “The damage is done from the very first moment,” Phillimore argued, describing the experience of a child whose parent has become the subject of an official allegation. The claim deserves attention because family relationships cannot always be restored by the eventual conclusion of legal proceedings.
Faika El-Nagashi, director of the Athena Forum and a former Austrian parliamentarian, supplied the international context. She argued that the concept of conversion therapy has progressively expanded beyond the abusive attempts to alter sexual orientation which originally dominated public discussion. “The meaning of conversion therapy has changed,” she explained, both in its subject matter and in the definition of conversion itself. The scope of legislation has increasingly encompassed gender identity and, in some jurisdictions, gender expression.
El-Nagashi traced that development through international advocacy, the Yogyakarta Principles and legislation enacted across Europe. Malta introduced a prohibition in 2016, followed by Germany in 2020 and other states in subsequent years. The laws differ in scope, exemptions and penalties. In Spain, she noted, applicable provisions can impose administrative penalties reaching €150,000. She also referred to proposals for additional criminal sanctions and to international initiatives promoting wider adoption of conversion practices legislation.
Her principal concern was that a prohibition upon coercive attempts to change identity might develop into an institutional requirement for an “affirmation only or forced affirmation model”. If a parent, therapist or teacher is expected to affirm a particular conclusion about identity while questioning that conclusion becomes professionally suspect, the original distinction between coercion and support is fundamentally altered.
El-Nagashi drew attention to the consequences beyond criminal conviction. She argued that different jurisdictions had adopted different methods of enforcement, and that the absence of large numbers of prosecutions did not necessarily demonstrate an absence of restrictions. Employers, regulators and public institutions may alter their policies in response to legislation, affecting professional conduct without ever requiring a successful criminal case. Her concern was the “extreme chilling effect” which can arise when people are unable to determine what conduct will subsequently be characterised as prohibited.
This concern is particularly relevant because the British Government expressly anticipates institutional consequences. Its impact assessment predicts a “cascading effect across multiple agencies and professions”, identifying police, local authorities, teachers and social workers. It also envisages engagement with regulatory arrangements governing charitable status and advertising. The law is intended to influence institutions well beyond the criminal courts.⁸
The latest disclosures concerning the Home Office’s approach to religious extremism give these questions an additional significance. On 22 October, journalist Steven Edginton published extracts from an internal report prepared by the Home Office’s Research, Information and Communications Unit, examining what officials termed “Christian Extremism”. The document was intended to inform counter-extremism understanding and the Prevent programme. It associated the ideological category under examination with traditionalism, opposition to liberal social changes and fears concerning immigration and multiculturalism.⁹
The leaked material reportedly states that “Traditionalism is highly valued within ChE [Christian Extremist] ideology” and identifies objections to changing attitudes towards sexuality and gender roles among characteristics associated with the phenomenon being examined. Officials also proposed partnerships with religious institutions intended to promote “theological resilience” against extremist interpretations of Christianity.
The report addresses genuinely dangerous movements involving racism, antisemitism and the possible justification of violence. Those matters belong properly within the consideration of counter-extremism authorities. The difficulty lies in the proximity of these concerns to characteristics which are also found among entirely peaceful and orthodox religious believers. Attachment to Christian tradition, disagreement with liberal sexual morality and concern about cultural change are not themselves evidence of terrorism or unlawful extremism.
Indeed, the document acknowledges that the assessed threat of violence from the ideological category it examines is low and that no terrorist attack in Britain had been assessed as primarily motivated by Christian extremism. It also recognises that Christian nationalism is not intrinsically extremist. These acknowledgements sharpen the question of why such a broad ideological profile was considered necessary and how officials are expected to distinguish orthodox religious beliefs from genuinely dangerous political movements.
Jeremiah Igunnubole, a former senior Crown prosecutor and legal counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, challenged the report’s implications. Preserving Britain’s Christian inheritance, he argued, is not an extremist objective. He suggested that the material indicated institutional hostility towards traditional Christianity and called for the Home Secretary to explain why the Home Office had commissioned or circulated such an assessment.
An internal analytical report does not itself establish an official Government designation of orthodox Christianity as extremist. Its significance is that officials engaged in counter-extremism work were considering traditional religious and cultural convictions within the framework of an ideological threat assessment. Those assumptions can matter when translated into institutional training, guidance or administrative decisions.
Nuntiatoria has examined comparable difficulties before. In When the Law Is Quietly Rewritten, published in May, we reported upon the University of Sussex’s amendment of an over-expansive description of its Prevent duty following concerns raised by the Committee for Academic Freedom. The episode illustrated how institutional guidance can enlarge the apparent scope of statutory responsibilities beyond what Parliament enacted. Our earlier editorial, When Bishops Call the State, examined the dangers of invoking counter-extremism mechanisms in disputes concerning lawful Christian witness and religious disagreement.¹⁰
The leaked Home Office material makes those concerns particularly pertinent to the Conversion Practices Bill. Ministers are asking religious communities to trust that legitimate pastoral activity will not be prohibited. At the same time, internal Government analysis has associated aspects of traditional Christian thought with an extremism profile, while the proposed legislation would extend new responsibilities across safeguarding authorities, schools, regulators and charities.
The danger is cumulative. A broad criminal definition does not operate independently of the assumptions held by those applying it. A school, charity, local authority or public-sector official may interpret a pastoral conversation differently according to whether orthodox religious teaching is regarded as a legitimate expression of conscience or as evidence of an ideological problem.
This is not wholly theoretical. HE ✠Jerome Lloyd, Titular Archbishop of Selsey, described his exclusion from civic responsibilities in Brighton and Hove after signing the ministers’ response to the Government’s earlier conversion therapy proposals. His Excellency ✠Jerome had chaired Brighton and Hove Faith Council and Brighton and Hove Faith in Action, and had been elected to represent faith communities within Community Works. He signed the consultation response in his capacity as a Catholic bishop, objecting to the possibility that voluntary prayer, spiritual direction and ordinary Christian teaching might be caught by insufficiently precise legislation.¹¹
According to his published account, objections to his views were subsequently raised within Brighton’s civic networks. Council officials questioned his continued leadership of Brighton and Hove Faith in Action, citing equality responsibilities and concerns about the organisation’s public funding. He stepped down from the chairmanship rather than allow the controversy to damage the charity. Following his re-election to a representative role at Community Works, he states that the organisation failed to ratify his appointment and excluded him from its activities without a formal opportunity to answer the objections. Reflecting upon the experience in 2025, he described his treatment as “silent and total—an erasure”.¹¹
These events preceded the present Bill and are recorded in the Archbishop’s published testimony rather than in a judicial determination of liability against the organisations concerned. Their relevance lies in the practical consequences of institutional attitudes towards lawful religious convictions. The legislation to which he had objected was not enacted, yet expressing concern about it was followed, on his account, by the loss of established civic responsibilities.
An institution cannot credibly claim to represent religious diversity while making continued participation conditional upon the abandonment of traditional religious beliefs. Catholic, Muslim and Jewish representatives will inevitably disagree with contemporary secular assumptions about sexuality and moral conduct. The purpose of genuine civic pluralism is to permit cooperation despite such disagreements, not to eliminate them through administrative pressure.
The implications for pastoral ministry are especially serious. Catholic spiritual direction is not a secular counselling service required to affirm every possible moral conclusion. A priest has an obligation to explain the Church’s doctrines concerning human nature, chastity, marriage, conscience and the duties of Christian life. A Catholic who seeks his advice concerning sexuality or identity is entitled to receive guidance consistent with those doctrines.
Someone experiencing same-sex attraction may wish to live chastely according to Catholic teaching. A person reconsidering an adopted transgender identity may seek spiritual counsel. An adolescent troubled by questions of sexuality may wish to discuss them with a priest whose understanding of human nature differs from that prevailing in contemporary gender ideology. Such conversations cannot meaningfully occur if the clergyman is afraid that explaining Catholic doctrine may subsequently be characterised as an abusive attempt to influence identity.
The liberty at stake belongs principally to the person seeking counsel. Religious freedom includes the right to seek moral and spiritual advice voluntarily, to receive instruction in one’s faith and to order one’s life according to conscience. The state should not presume that adults are incapable of choosing religious guidance merely because the conclusions may contradict prevailing social assumptions.
The Government has repeatedly promised that ordinary pastoral and parental conversations will remain protected. Yet the draft legislation provides no express protection for voluntary, non-medical spiritual direction comparable to the exclusion written for healthcare services. It relies instead upon the combination of its criminal thresholds, judicial interpretation and existing rights protections. The question is why Parliament should enact a law which leaves such elementary freedoms dependent upon uncertain future interpretation.
There is also a theological principle which Catholics cannot surrender. Moral instruction is not rendered illegitimate because it seeks to persuade. The Church exists to proclaim the truth entrusted to her, to form consciences and to call men to conversion of life. Conversion in this spiritual sense is integral to Christianity. It must not be confused with coercive practices which degrade or abuse another person. The distinction between freely accepted moral counsel and coercion is intelligible, longstanding and entirely capable of expression in law.
A Government which cannot adequately distinguish those activities should not be entrusted with creating new offences affecting them.
The Battle of Ideas discussion demonstrated the breadth of the objections. Joyce concentrated upon the rights of parents and the uncertainty of the criminal provisions. Beney explained why children need adults capable of questioning assumptions and exploring distress. Hanvey warned about restrictions upon the manifestation of protected beliefs. El-Nagashi described the expansion of conversion practices legislation into broader institutional frameworks. Phillimore exposed the potential consequences for family justice and public expenditure.
The panel’s arguments also challenged the tendency to treat the legislation as a narrow matter affecting only those involved in disputes over gender identity. Employers, trustees, youth workers, teachers, clergy, counsellors, parents and grandparents may all find themselves responsible for decisions or conversations which someone else considers relevant to the proposed prohibitions. The breadth of the statutory definition makes the issue one of general civic importance.
The Government’s own documents reveal the scale of the proposed change. A criminal offence supported by protection orders, professional familiarisation, safeguarding intervention and potential consequences for charitable governance is not a minor adjustment to existing law. It is a framework intended to influence conduct across society. That influence will depend heavily upon how institutions interpret concepts which remain open to dispute.
The case against the Bill does not require anyone to deny that cruelty and coercion occur. It requires Parliament to establish that the conduct requiring a new offence has been properly identified, that existing laws are inadequate, that the proposed powers are proportionate and that their wider consequences have been honestly assessed. None of these requirements is unreasonable. They are the ordinary demands of sound criminal legislation.
The Joint Committee appointed to scrutinise the Bill has now opened its call for written evidence. On 26 October, its chairman, Alex Barros-Curtis MP, invited submissions concerning the scope, definitions and proposed safeguards. The Committee must report by 22 January 2027, but written evidence must be received by 5 pm on Monday 16 November 2026.¹²
Helen Joyce’s advice to those considering a submission was practical. She encouraged people to identify the particular issue which concerned them and explain its consequences from their own experience. “Pick the thing that you think is terrible about the bill,” she told the audience, and “explain one story”. A parent, teacher, counsellor, charity trustee or minister of religion need not produce an elaborate legal treatise. A clear account of how a particular provision could affect an actual responsibility or recognisable situation may be more valuable than pages of general argument.
Joyce also encouraged people to explain the perspective from which they were writing. A parent might describe the difficulty of protecting a child from unregulated medication. A counsellor could explain why exploratory questions are necessary in assessing distress. A teacher might describe the conflict between safeguarding obligations and the expectation of affirmation. A priest could explain what takes place in voluntary pastoral counselling. Evidence should be authentic, accurate and sufficiently specific to assist the Committee in understanding the practical effects of the proposed legislation.
The Battle of Ideas panel and audience provided several sources of assistance. Sex Matters has published guidance for submitting evidence, together with a briefing describing 21 illustrative situations in which its authors believe people could face investigation, prosecution or protection orders under the Bill. These include parents refusing particular pronouns, teachers applying rules concerning single-sex facilities, clinicians recording biological sex and family members questioning the medicalisation of children. The examples are intended to help contributors identify the practical questions raised by the legislation.¹³
Macvarish reported that the Free Speech Union was developing an online tool to assist submissions. The audience was also directed towards the Christian Institute, Christian Concern and the Christian Legal Centre for material addressing religious liberty, pastoral counselling and legal safeguards. LGB Alliance and the Gay Men’s Network were identified as additional sources of commentary and evidence concerning sexuality, gender identity and the potential consequences for same-sex-attracted young people. The Bin the Bill campaign was mentioned for its leaflets, postcards and public-awareness materials.¹⁴
These resources can help readers understand the provisions, but the parliamentary submission itself should express the contributor’s own experience and judgement. The Committee’s guidance generally recommends concise original evidence, ordinarily no more than 3,000 words, submitted as an editable document. Contributors should identify the relevant questions or provisions, avoid unnecessary disclosure of private information and understand that accepted evidence may be published. Requests for confidentiality or anonymity may be made where appropriate. Those using generative AI substantially in preparing evidence should disclose that use.¹²
A petition, campaign postcard or letter to an MP is not the same as a formal submission to the Joint Committee. The parliamentary evidence portal is the means by which written testimony enters the Committee’s scrutiny process. Readers who wish to contribute should consult the official questions and send their evidence before the deadline.
Joyce closed the discussion by drawing attention to parents who felt unable to become publicly involved because they were struggling to preserve relationships with their children. Some had already experienced estrangement. Others feared that speaking openly would make matters worse. They were, she explained, “trying desperately to keep the door open” so that a child who had left might return. Their silence should not be mistaken for indifference or agreement.
There is a responsibility here for those able to speak publicly without exposing vulnerable relatives or patients. Lawyers, clergy, professional bodies, charities and individual citizens can examine the legislation, provide informed testimony and insist that Parliament confront its practical consequences. The opportunity remains open, but it will not remain open indefinitely.
The wider question concerns the relationship between the individual, the family and the state. Parents do not raise children as agents of government. Teachers are not employed merely to endorse whatever pupils believe. Clinicians must be permitted to follow evidence rather than ideology. Religious communities derive their doctrines from their faith, not from the prevailing preferences of public authorities. Each carries responsibilities which can be neglected or abused, but the existence of those risks does not confer upon the state an unlimited authority to determine the content of every conversation.
The Government proposes a law whose terms reach into those relationships, whose operation would engage professional and safeguarding institutions, and whose full public costs have not yet been calculated. It arrives at a time when children’s services are under severe financial strain and when leaked Home Office material has exposed troubling questions about the treatment of traditional Christian convictions within counter-extremism analysis.
These are substantial objections to the proposed legislation, not minor matters capable of being settled by ministerial reassurance. The Bill should not proceed in its present form. The case made at the Battle of Ideas, supported by the Government’s own impact assessment and the experiences of those who have encountered institutional pressure, deserves careful examination by Parliament.
The deadline for written evidence is 16 November 2026.
There is a final question worth putting to those responsible for the legislation. What sort of society results when parents become fearful of correcting their children, counsellors hesitate to question assumptions, teachers retreat from difficult conversations and priests wonder whether explaining the moral teaching of their Church might expose them to investigation?
It would not be a society in which vulnerable people were necessarily better protected. It might simply be one in which those best placed to help them had learned that silence was safer than responsibility.
Children deserve better than that. So does the country.
¹ Office for Equality and Opportunity, Conversion Practices Draft Bill, clauses 1–5 and Schedule, 25 June 2026, updated 1 September 2026.
² Academy of Ideas, “Conversion Practices Bill: Criminalising Parents, Teachers and Priests?”, Battle of Ideas Festival, Church House, London, October 2026; direct quotations checked against the supplied transcript.
³ Dr Hilary Cass, Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People: Final Report, April 2024.
⁴ Local Government Association, “Costs of Supporting Children in Care Rise by £1 Billion a Year”, 8 October 2026.
⁵ Ministry of Justice, Family Court Statistics Quarterly: April to June 2026, 24 September 2026; Justice Data: Family Courts, annual public-law case figures.
⁶ Institute for Government, “Fixing the Children’s Social Care Market: The Consequences of a Broken Care Market”, April 2026.
⁷ The Fostering Network, Recruitment Targets for 2026.
⁸ Office for Equality and Opportunity, Draft Final Stage Impact Assessment: Bill to Ban Conversion Practice 2026, 18 June 2026, updated 1 September 2026.
⁹ Steven Edginton, “Leaked Counter-Terror Report Links ‘Christian Extremism’ to Traditionalism and Fears over Immigration”, 22 October 2026.
¹⁰ Nuntiatoria, “When the Law Is Quietly Rewritten: Sussex, Prevent, and the Expanding Reach of Institutional Power”, 29 May 2026; “When Bishops Call the State: The Preventisation of Ecclesiastical Dissent and the Crisis of Christian Witness in Britain”, 25 May 2026.
¹¹ ✠Jerome Lloyd, “Concerning the ‘Ministers’ Consultation Response’”, Selsey.org, 16 September 2023; “Erased for Believing: What the Smith Judgment Means for Me”, 18 July 2025.
¹² Joint Committee on the Draft Conversion Practices Bill, “Joint Committee Publishes Call for Evidence”, 26 October 2026; Official Evidence Submission Portal; UK Parliament, Guidance on Giving Written Evidence to Select Committees.
¹³ Sex Matters, “Submit Evidence to the Conversion Practices Bill Committee”, October 2026; “Conversion Practices Bill: Who Is at Risk of Criminalisation?”, 26 October 2026.
¹⁴ The Christian Institute, Broad Conversion Therapy Ban: Campaign and Legal Resources; LGB Alliance; Free Speech Union; Christian Concern; Gay Men’s Network; Bin the Bill: Campaign Resources.
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