Conversion therapy ban could jail parents for five years
Julia Hartley-Brewer said:
“parents, teachers, therapists, doctors could risk up to 5 years behind bars if they try to talk children out of irreversible trans treatments, including puberty blockers”
Five years in prison is a serious and concrete-sounding penalty, and the idea that an ordinary parent could be criminalised for a conversation with their child is genuinely alarming to most people. Framing it as a consequence of the draft bill gives it the weight of an official legal threat.
The draft bill is aimed at a specific and serious harm: practices designed to coerce or suppress a young person's identity against their will, the kind of thing that has left real people with lasting psychological damage. A parent asking questions, a therapist exploring a young person's feelings, a doctor discussing options and concerns, none of that is conversion therapy, and none of it is what the bill targets. The five-year maximum exists for the most coercive, abusive end of that spectrum, not for a conversation. What this framing actually does is frighten the adults around a trans young person into silence, and a young person whose parents are too scared to engage is a young person left entirely without support.
What I said at the time:
“Your language is so emotive though, isn't it? Actually, started by saying that the draft bill was about banning conversion therapy for gay children or transgender. And that is absolutely right because conversion therapy is a form of therapy which prefers the outcome for that gay child not to be gay or that transgender child not to be transgender, and that's not good therapy.”
Trans young people whose parents, having heard this framing, refuse to engage with any supportive care out of fear of prosecution, leaving them without any adult support.