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 said yes to her daughter’s 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. She says that the second time, social workers came to the house, went through the fridge and drawers, and interviewed her other children, who were left scared. 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 usual day-to-day activities.

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 are not abuse. 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 Government’s explanatory notes say that economic pressure could include behaviour that ‘severely limits’ someone’s ability to use their own money, or ‘prevents them from accessing essential goods and services (like food or healthcare)’. Declining to buy one item on health grounds does neither.

When the mother refused to buy the binder, her daughter said she might kill herself. Above all, what decides whether that refusal could be an offence is the Bill’s abuse test. Whether conduct is abusive is a question of fact for the court, looking at all the circumstances.

A single refusal on health grounds is not abuse. Parents regularly say no to things their children want for health or safety reasons, and the law does not treat that as abuse. The factors the Bill lists are drawn from the wider criminal law on abuse, where they describe things like violence, threats, coercion, humiliation, or controlling someone’s money so tightly that they cannot get food or healthcare. A single act can sometimes be abusive, such as an exorcism or a threat of violence. But declining one purchase for a stated health reason, in a relationship where the mother was telling her daughter that she loved her and had said yes to her new pronouns, is nothing like that. Nor, on her account, was the refusal made with the intention the Bill requires – of causing her daughter not to have, or not to believe she has, a transgender identity. She says she refused on health grounds. And under the Bill, harm or distress only counts if it is caused by an abusive conversion practice. So a child’s distress at being told no, however real and however frightening for a parent, would not on its own turn that decision into a crime.

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

Her fear is not only of being convicted but of being reported. She says her daughter learned at school that her mother was committing hate crimes by not agreeing that she was a boy. That was not true under the law then, and it would not become true under the Bill. Anyone can make a report to the police, but an arrest needs reasonable grounds to suspect an offence, and this offence needs abuse.

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 a safe and loving home. Whether a family’s conduct amounts to abuse 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.’

Update, 7 November 2026: we have added more detail from the mother’s account and from the Government’s explanatory notes, and clarified Richy Thompson’s comment.