Telegraph wrong on parents and conversion therapy

A parent who told The Telegraph she would have been arrested under the Government’s proposed ban on conversion practices would not have committed any offence under it, Humanists UK has said.

In an anonymous account published today under the headline ‘Under new law, I’d have been arrested for protecting my daughter from trans propaganda’, a mother describes how she responded when her teenage daughter questioned her gender. But nothing she describes would meet the test in the draft Bill, which only covers conversion practices that are abusive and that cause serious harm. Humanists UK has said her story shows the Bill’s safeguards working, not a reason to drop it.

In her account, the mother says she told her daughter she loved her and agreed to use new pronouns. She refused to buy a breast binder on health grounds. She objected to two schools using a new name for her daughter without her consent, and to one school providing therapy. She later moved her daughter to a different school. She was referred to social services twice. Those referrals were made under existing child protection law, which already requires councils to look into suspected significant harm to a child. The draft Bill neither creates that duty nor lowers its threshold. She says that social services and police both concluded that hers was a normal family providing a safe and loving home.

What the draft Bill actually says

The draft Conversion Practices Bill, which the Government published in June, would create an offence of carrying out an abusive conversion practice in England and Wales. Three things would all have to be proven beyond reasonable doubt:

• that someone acted with the intention of changing a person’s sexual orientation or transgender identity, or what they believe about it;
• that what they did amounted to abuse; and
• that the abuse caused serious harm to the person’s physical or mental health, or serious alarm or distress that had a substantial adverse effect on their day-to-day life.

Whether conduct is abusive is a question of fact, judged on all the circumstances. The Bill asks courts to consider whether it involved sexual behaviour, violence or threats, control or coercion, or economic, psychological, or emotional pressure. Even where all three can be proven, prosecutors must still decide that a prosecution is in the public interest.

Refusing to buy something on health grounds, raising concerns with a school, and choosing a different school involve none of these. And the question the Bill asks – looking at all the circumstances, is this abuse? – is the same one that the mother says social services and police had already answered in her favour.

The article’s headline says she would have been arrested. The article itself says only that she could have been.

Why there is no exemption for parents

The draft Bill does not exempt parents. Humanists UK supports this, because some conversion practices are carried out within families. The Government’s 2018 National LGBT Survey, which received over 108,000 responses, found that 16% of those who had undergone conversion therapy said it had been carried out by parents, guardians, or other family members. An exemption for parents would leave those people without protection. The Bill protects ordinary parenting instead by setting a high threshold of abuse and serious harm.

Parliament’s Joint Committee on the Draft Conversion Practices Bill is taking written evidence until 16 November 2026. Humanists UK will be submitting written evidence to the Committee. Last week, the Committee heard from survivors who described how practices that left them suicidal would not clearly have been against the law.

Humanists UK Director of Human Rights and Advocacy Richy Thompson said:

‘Every parent of a teenager says no to things, and nothing in this Bill makes that a crime. To commit an offence, someone would have to subject a person to abuse, intended to change who they are, that causes them serious harm. By this mother’s own account, the professionals who looked at her family found nothing that met that test. That is exactly the judgement the Bill asks police and the courts to make.

‘Survivors of conversion practices have waited years for this protection. We urge the Joint Committee to look at what the Bill actually says, rather than what headlines claim it says, and to recommend that it becomes law without delay.’