Baroness Falkner and Akua Reindorf KC have delivered a severe legal assessment of the Government’s proposed Conversion Practices Bill, warning that its provisions could expose parents, clergy and professionals to criminal proceedings for conduct undertaken in good faith. Their report raises questions about the proper limits of safeguarding law, the responsibilities of the family and the freedom of citizens to exercise their conscience without first obtaining the state’s approval.
There is something distinctly unsatisfactory about a government assuring parents that their ordinary responsibilities will remain protected while declining to place an equally clear protection in the legislation it proposes. Ministers may intend to preserve parental authority, religious counsel and legitimate professional judgement. Those subject to the law, however, must govern themselves according to its provisions, and legislation carrying a possible five-year prison sentence deserves rather more certainty than the good intentions of those responsible for drafting it.
Baroness Kishwer Falkner, formerly chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and Akua Reindorf KC, a former commissioner and experienced discrimination lawyer, have now subjected the Government’s Draft Conversion Practices Bill to a detailed examination. Their report, Not What It Says on the Tin, published by Policy Exchange on 2 November, is unusually severe in its conclusions. They describe the proposals as “ideological, authoritarian, unworkable and wholly unsuitable for a democratic society”, arguing that the legislation threatens established rights concerning family life, religious freedom, expression and the administration of justice.¹
The authors’ previous offices do not make their conclusions authoritative, and neither is speaking on behalf of the Commission. Their arguments must stand or fall upon the legislative provisions they examine. That examination, however, identifies weaknesses which ministers cannot adequately answer by repeating their declared intention to protect vulnerable people. Among them are the absence of an express defence for reasonable parental conduct, the treatment of psychological and economic pressure, the definition of transgender identity, the possible liability of charitable organisations and the powers proposed for courts to impose restrictions before any criminal conviction.
The report appears during parliamentary scrutiny of legislation published on 25 June 2026. The Bill would create new criminal offences in England and Wales concerning abusive conduct intended to influence a person’s sexual orientation or transgender identity. It would also provide for conversion practice protection orders and offences involving the encouragement or assistance of certain abusive practices overseas. The principal offence would carry a maximum sentence of five years’ imprisonment following conviction on indictment. The Government maintains that existing criminal law does not adequately address some forms of serious psychological abuse and that its proposals preserve legitimate parenting, religious expression and healthcare.²
Nuntiatoria has examined these claims previously. In The State Has No Business Raising Your Child, published on 30 October, we considered the consequences for parental responsibility and freedom of conscience, including the experience of individuals who have faced institutional difficulties after defending traditional religious convictions. Our accompanying investigation, The Evidence Parliament Must Not Take on Trust, examined the research upon which ministers have relied, particularly the interpretation of case histories supplied by Galop and the uncertain statistical foundations of the Government’s estimates.³ The intervention by Falkner and Reindorf allows the next question to be addressed: precisely what powers would Parliament confer, and how confidently could their limits be understood?
The starting point requires little dispute. Violence, threats, unlawful confinement, sexual assault and degrading treatment are wrong, whatever motive their perpetrators profess. A religious explanation cannot justify cruelty, and a sincere conviction that another person should alter his conduct gives no one permission to employ coercive methods. Catholic teaching supplies no exemption from these principles. The dignity of the person remains, whatever his inclinations, beliefs or conduct, and those entrusted with pastoral responsibility are obliged to respect it.
Much of the behaviour historically associated with conversion therapy is already criminal. The Government nevertheless argues that gaps remain, especially where persistent psychological abuse or manipulation does not satisfy the elements of an established offence. There may be circumstances in which this is so. Parliament is entitled to examine them and, where a deficiency is demonstrated, to legislate accordingly. But it must identify the conduct requiring prohibition with sufficient precision to prevent the new offences from extending into areas of legitimate personal responsibility.
Clause 1 defines a conversion practice by reference to conduct intended to cause someone to have, cease to have, or believe that he has or does not have a particular sexual orientation or transgender identity. Whether that conduct constitutes abuse is to be determined from all the circumstances, including its nature and any violence, threats, coercion, economic pressure or psychological or emotional pressure involved. Clause 2 then requires serious physical or mental harm, or serious alarm or distress substantially affecting the person’s ordinary daily activities, before the principal criminal offence is established.⁴
These are substantial requirements. It would be inaccurate to suggest that every expression of disagreement could automatically result in conviction. The difficulty is that some of the forms of pressure identified in clause 1 may also arise within relationships where one person has a legitimate responsibility to guide or correct another. Their abusive character depends upon circumstances which may be disputed long after the event.
A parent might refuse to finance treatment which he considers medically inadvisable. Another might persistently discourage a course of conduct believed to be contrary to a child’s welfare. Such decisions may provoke considerable distress, but distress alone is not proof of abuse. Nor is every exercise of economic influence an abusive one. Parents frequently make decisions which children cannot yet make independently, sometimes against strongly expressed wishes. They can exercise that authority badly, and the state has a proper responsibility to protect children where genuine abuse occurs. The existence of that responsibility does not make every contested parental decision a matter for criminal investigation.
Falkner and Reindorf identify a further omission in the principal offence. Clause 2 requires proof that an abusive conversion practice caused the specified harm or distress, but contains no express requirement that the accused intended those consequences or knew the conduct to be abusive. The intention specified in clause 1 concerns influencing another person’s sexual orientation or transgender identity, including beliefs about that identity. The authors describe the resulting offence as one of strict liability. That characterisation is debatable in the technical sense, since Parliament has prescribed an element of intention. Their substantive objection remains: a person acting without any desire to cause harm might nevertheless face prosecution if the remaining elements were established. For an offence carrying a possible five-year sentence, the distinction deserves close attention.
The report’s concern about parents is consequently more precise than some of the public controversy suggests. The authors do not claim that every disagreement about gender identity would become criminal. They argue that the legislation offers insufficient certainty to parents whose decisions might subsequently be characterised as psychological or economic pressure. An express statutory defence for reasonable parental conduct is absent. Whether such a defence should be introduced, and how it ought to be formulated, is a legitimate question for parliamentary scrutiny.
Rosie Duffield MP raised the matter directly in a written parliamentary question, asking whether a parent declining to support a child’s gender transition could fall within the proposed offence. On 29 October, Equalities Minister Simon Lightwood replied that the Bill would preserve parental choices and would not criminalise the mere expression of beliefs or explanatory conversations. Schools and safeguarding professionals, he added, would likewise remain free to express views within their responsibilities.⁵
That is the Government’s position, clearly stated. But if ordinary parental guidance is unquestionably protected, ministers should be willing to explain why the draft does not say so more explicitly. The distinction between a criminal prohibition and a ministerial reassurance is hardly obscure. Courts must apply the legislation Parliament enacts, while parents must make their decisions before discovering how disputed provisions may eventually be interpreted.
This is where the argument acquires particular significance for Catholics. The rights and duties of parents arise from the natural responsibilities of fatherhood and motherhood. They are recognised and regulated by civil law, but their moral foundation does not originate in an Act of Parliament. Pius XI’s Divini Illius Magistri explains the priority of the family in education while acknowledging the proper authority of both Church and state. The principle is neither an unlimited parental prerogative nor a claim that public authorities may never intervene. It requires intervention to be justified by the child’s genuine welfare and exercised with due respect for responsibilities which ordinarily belong to the family.⁶
The proposed legislation also makes the meaning of transgender identity legally consequential. Clause 1(8) provides a non-exhaustive description including individuals undergoing or proposing gender reassignment, those described as transsexual, and those identifying as neither male nor female, or not solely male or female. Falkner and Reindorf contend that this effectively introduces gender self-identification into criminal legislation without the direct parliamentary debate such a change would ordinarily require.
Their argument must be understood accurately. The Bill does not amend the Gender Recognition Act 2004 or establish a general right to access single-sex facilities according to self-declared identity. Nevertheless, criminal liability would partly depend upon a concept whose statutory boundaries are expressly left open. Following the Supreme Court’s judgment in For Women Scotland Ltd v Scottish Ministers in April 2025, which interpreted sex under the Equality Act 2010 by reference to biological sex while preserving protection against gender-reassignment discrimination, clarity about the relationship between these legal categories is especially important.⁷
The law can protect individuals against intimidation and abuse without requiring every citizen to subscribe to a particular understanding of sex or identity. The Government says its proposals do not impose such a requirement. Falkner and Reindorf fear that the prospect of allegations concerning psychological harm could nevertheless discourage disagreement, particularly in family relationships and professional settings. Their apprehension remains a prediction about the possible operation of the legislation. Parliament’s responsibility is to determine whether the proposed safeguards adequately address it.
The healthcare exemption deserves similar scrutiny. Clause 1(3) excludes conduct undertaken in providing healthcare services unless the practitioner falls far below the standards reasonably expected of someone in that position. This is a significant protection, deliberately intended to preserve legitimate medical treatment and exploration. Yet the authors question how it would operate where professional standards are contested, particularly in the treatment of children presenting with gender-related distress.
The Cass Review of April 2024 identified serious limitations in the evidence supporting aspects of paediatric gender medicine and recommended more careful, individualised assessment. The Government’s healthcare provision must therefore permit clinicians to investigate the circumstances of a patient’s distress, consider alternative explanations and advise against medical intervention where clinically appropriate. The report does not establish that the Bill would prohibit such practice. It raises the question of whether practitioners will possess sufficient confidence in the legal protection afforded to independent clinical judgement.⁸
The practical consequences for religious ministers deserve at least equal attention. A Catholic priest giving spiritual direction is expected to communicate the moral teaching of the Church. That teaching concerns human conduct, repentance, the obligations of conscience and the amendment of life. The priest who explains that particular conduct is sinful may be seeking to influence the future behaviour of someone who has voluntarily requested his counsel. That is part of his pastoral office.
Such counsel must respect the person’s dignity and freedom. Threats, humiliation and manipulation have no legitimate place in it. The Catholic understanding of conversion itself presupposes the free cooperation of the will with grace. Religious assent cannot be manufactured by force. Yet moral instruction may involve correction, and spiritual direction would become a curiously pointless exercise if the priest were expected to refrain from advising any alteration of conduct which the Church regards as contrary to divine law.
Nuntiatoria has addressed this difficulty in earlier reporting concerning objections raised by Archbishop Jerome Lloyd to previous conversion-therapy proposals. His public statements in 2023 distinguished coercive practices from voluntary prayer, religious instruction and pastoral counselling. His subsequent account describes the consequences of that controversy within Brighton’s civic and voluntary-sector institutions. The circumstances preceded the present Bill, but they demonstrate why the legal definition of abuse matters beyond the eventual prospect of prosecution. Allegations concerning religious belief can have substantial consequences for participation in public life even where no criminal wrongdoing has been established.⁹
Religious organisations also face questions under clause 5. Where an organisation commits an offence under the proposed legislation, relevant officers may themselves become liable if they authorised, permitted or participated in it, or failed to take all reasonable steps to prevent its commission. Such provisions serve an intelligible purpose. A charity or religious institution must not provide administrative shelter for abusive conduct. Nevertheless, the more uncertain the underlying offence, the harder it may become for trustees to determine what precautions they are legally required to take.
Falkner and Reindorf additionally draw attention to private prosecutions. The Bill contains no special requirement for the consent of the Attorney General or Director of Public Prosecutions before proceedings are instituted. Private prosecution is an established feature of English law, and the Crown Prosecution Service retains powers to intervene where appropriate. The authors themselves acknowledge that litigation concerning sex and gender has arisen from differing positions within the controversy. Their concern is that potentially uncertain offences, combined with institutional liability and the ordinary availability of private proceedings, could expose organisations to costly disputes even where convictions would ultimately be unlikely.¹
For a small charitable association, the prospect is not negligible. Trustees frequently serve voluntarily and lack the resources to defend prolonged litigation. A charity must maintain effective safeguarding procedures, but it should also be able to determine what the law actually requires without suppressing legitimate activities simply because somebody may complain about them. The consequences of uncertainty can therefore extend beyond the courtroom.
Of particular importance are the proposed conversion practice protection orders. These would permit courts to impose restrictions or requirements intended to protect individuals from abusive practices likely to cause serious harm or disruption. A prior criminal conviction would not always be necessary. Applications could be made by the person seeking protection, the police or a local authority, while other applicants could seek the court’s permission. The provisions also permit orders without advance notice in specified circumstances, subject to a subsequent opportunity for the respondent to make representations.¹⁰
Preventive orders are familiar to British law, especially where vulnerable individuals face foreseeable harm. The difficulty here concerns their relationship to the definition of the conduct they are intended to prevent. A person might become subject to restrictions before any underlying criminal offence had been proved, while breach of those restrictions without reasonable excuse could itself lead to prosecution. The authors question whether the procedural safeguards and statutory criteria provide sufficient protection where family relationships and religious activities may be affected.
Their report accordingly raises objections under the European Convention on Human Rights, including the right to a fair trial, the principle of legal certainty, respect for private and family life, religious freedom and freedom of expression. These rights are not absolute in every aspect. The Convention permits proportionate restrictions upon the manifestation of religion and expression where necessary for legitimate purposes, including the protection of others. The legal issue is whether the powers proposed are sufficiently clear and proportionate. No court has yet determined their compatibility, and the authors’ arguments must be assessed as such.
There is, however, another difficulty which deserves attention before Parliament embarks upon the creation of new offences. The Government must establish that the conduct requiring prohibition is not already adequately addressed by existing law.
Our investigation of Galop’s evidence identified substantial limitations in the material used to describe contemporary conversion practices, including uncertainty about the classification of religious activities and inconsistencies in the presentation of case data. The Government’s impact assessment estimates that approximately 75,000 to 93,000 people annually experience conversion practices in England and Wales. The figure derives from an extrapolation of survey responses concerning two reported activities, rather than a count of independently verified incidents.¹¹
More strikingly, the impact assessment acknowledges that official administrative statistics do not comprehensively record conversion practices, that the available studies employ differing definitions, and that the relationship between the experiences reported and the offences proposed is uncertain. It also recognises the limitations of evidence concerning causation and the health benefits which might follow from legislation. These admissions are important because the Government has presented an ambitious programme of criminalisation whose likely operation remains difficult to quantify.
The existence of uncertainty does not establish that abuse is rare or that existing law is wholly adequate. Harmful conduct may escape official recording, and victims may encounter serious difficulties in obtaining assistance. Yet the absence of reliable figures also means that legislators should be cautious about treating prevalence estimates as established measurements of criminal behaviour. Parliament needs to know which abusive acts currently escape prosecution, why they do so and how the new offence would remedy the deficiency.
That is a more exacting inquiry than demonstrating that some people have experienced frightening or degrading treatment. Where allegations concern assault, threats, forced marriage, coercive control or unlawful confinement, the first question is whether an existing offence applies and whether the authorities have responded adequately. In other circumstances a genuine legislative gap may emerge. The evidence should establish the distinction.
Supporters of the Bill, including Galop and Stonewall, maintain that psychological abuse may occur in relationships of dependency or unequal influence and that existing safeguards do not always provide an effective remedy. Their concerns deserve examination. The Joint Committee has heard from representatives of both organisations, alongside those of Sex Matters, the LGB Alliance and the Gay Men’s Network, whose evidence disputes aspects of the Government’s approach.¹² The proceedings illustrate why Parliament must resist the temptation to treat the controversy as a simple division between those who favour protecting vulnerable people and those who oppose such protection.
In Catholic social teaching, the responsibilities of public authority are directed towards the common good. Pius XI’s treatment of subsidiarity in Quadragesimo Anno recognises that higher authorities must respect the proper functions of families and other associations, intervening where necessary without unnecessarily assuming responsibilities which those bodies can legitimately discharge. The principle does not inhibit the punishment of cruelty or the protection of vulnerable children. It does require public intervention to be proportionate to an identified need.¹³
The same principle applies to religious communities. The state may investigate and prosecute wrongdoing committed within them. It cannot reasonably proceed upon the assumption that the ordinary communication of religious convictions is suspect because those convictions differ from contemporary public policy. The Church, meanwhile, must ensure that those exercising pastoral authority do so responsibly, respecting both the moral law and the liberty of those entrusted to their care.
These distinctions have been established over centuries of legal and theological argument. Parliament should hardly find itself unable to distinguish between a priest explaining Catholic doctrine to someone seeking instruction and an individual subjecting another to coercive or degrading treatment. If the proposed wording leaves the boundary uncertain, that is a reason to examine the wording carefully before proceeding.
The report by Falkner and Reindorf has brought these questions into sharper focus. Its authors employ severe language, and some of their predictions about the consequences of the Bill remain speculative. Nevertheless, their most substantial criticisms concern identifiable features of the proposed legislation: the mental element of the principal offence, the absence of an express reasonable-conduct defence, the treatment of psychological pressure, the scope of institutional responsibility and the availability of preventive court orders. The Government must now explain whether these provisions adequately confine criminal liability to the serious abuse ministers say they intend to prohibit.
The Joint Committee, chaired by Alex Barros-Curtis MP, is accepting written evidence until 5 pm on Monday 16 November 2026. It is expected to report by 22 January 2027. Parliament therefore has an opportunity to examine the legal objections alongside the experience of victims, the evidence of clinicians, and the practical responsibilities of families and religious communities.¹⁴
Catholic institutions have particular reason to contribute evidence concerning pastoral counselling, religious education and the ordinary exercise of parental responsibility. Such evidence should describe actual practices and the safeguards already governing them. General assurances that religious liberty must be respected will accomplish little if legislators do not understand what spiritual direction entails, how voluntary moral counsel operates, or why parents sometimes have a duty to resist decisions which their children strongly desire to make.
The Government has stated that ordinary parenting and the legitimate expression of religious belief will remain protected. The difficulty is that those assurances must ultimately be reconciled with the language of a statute which citizens will be required to obey and courts empowered to enforce. The report’s objections may be answered through clarification, amendment or a more persuasive explanation of the existing safeguards. They cannot be answered merely by repeating the purpose for which the legislation was introduced.
There is a considerable difference between a parent exercising authority badly and a parent acting abusively; between religious counsel which challenges someone’s conduct and pressure which unlawfully compels him; between clinical caution and the deliberate infliction of harm. These are distinctions upon which family life, professional responsibility and the administration of justice regularly depend.
Parliament has been presented with a detailed warning that the proposed legislation may fail to preserve them adequately. Ministers now have the opportunity to demonstrate otherwise, preferably in the Bill itself. Those expected to live under the resulting law should not have to discover its boundaries through criminal proceedings.
¹ Akua Reindorf KC and Baroness Kishwer Falkner, Not What It Says on the Tin: Report on the Draft Conversion Practices Bill 2026, Policy Exchange, 2 November 2026.
² Office for Equality and Opportunity, Conversion Practices Draft Bill, CP 1604, 25 June 2026, updated 1 September 2026.
³ Nuntiatoria, “The State Has No Business Raising Your Child”, 30 October 2026; “The Evidence Parliament Must Not Take on Trust”, 30 October 2026.
⁴ Office for Equality and Opportunity, Conversion Practices Draft Bill, clauses 1–2.
⁵ UK Parliament, “Conversion Practices: Written Question 37254”, Rosie Duffield MP, answered by Simon Lightwood MP, 29 October 2026.
⁶ Pius XI, Divini Illius Magistri, 31 December 1929; Second Vatican Council, Gravissimum Educationis, 28 October 1965, no. 3.
⁷ UK Supreme Court, For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers, [2025] UKSC 16, 16 April 2025; Reindorf and Falkner, Not What It Says on the Tin.
⁸ Hilary Cass, Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People: Final Report, April 2024; Office for Equality and Opportunity, Conversion Practices Draft Bill, clause 1(3).
⁹ ✠Jerome Lloyd, “Concerning the ‘Ministers’ Consultation Response’”, Selsey.org, 16 September 2023; Nuntiatoria, “The State Has No Business Raising Your Child”, 30 October 2026.
¹⁰ Office for Equality and Opportunity, Conversion Practices Draft Bill, clause 5 and Schedule; Reindorf and Falkner, Not What It Says on the Tin.
¹¹ Office for Equality and Opportunity, Draft Final Stage Impact Assessment, 18 June 2026, updated 1 September 2026, evidence base and Annexes A and C; Nuntiatoria, “The Evidence Parliament Must Not Take on Trust”, 30 October 2026.
¹² UK Parliament, Draft Conversion Practices Bill: Oral Evidence Transcripts, hearings of 29 October and 2 November 2026.
¹³ Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, 15 May 1931, nos. 79–80.
¹⁴ UK Parliament, Joint Committee on the Draft Conversion Practices Bill: Call for Evidence, 26 October 2026; “Draft Conversion Practices Bill: Written Question 31475”, answered 22 October 2026.
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