Conversion Practices (Criminalisation) Bill ( to be further debated on Monday 28) : What the House has not been told
What Members are asked to do
Vote against the general principles when the debate resumes on Monday 28 September. If the Bill is to proceed at all, require the sponsor first to identify one case in Northern Ireland that existing law could not reach, and to tell the House what “gender identity” in clause 6 covers. No such case appears in the memorandum, the study it relies on, or the Health Trusts’ records.
For the following reasons
1. The sponsor’s own memorandum concedes that some of this conduct is already a crime
The Explanatory and Financial Memorandum concedes that “some actions may already be captured by existing criminal offences, such as those involving physical assault or domestic abuse”. The only two options it considered were “Do Nothing” and legislate. It describes the new offence as “likely to be a low volume offence with a strong deterrent effect”, which describes a law that works by deterring conversations rather than by prosecuting crimes. The House has heard the sponsor say that it “will be a low-volume and high-threshold offence”. It has not heard that his memorandum concedes existing offences already reach some of this conduct, or that using them was never considered.
2. The evidence base is ten people, and its authors say so
The only Northern Ireland research the memorandum cites is “A Study of Conversion Practices in Northern Ireland” (2024). It rests on ten interviews. Participants were recruited through the four campaign groups that commissioned it, social media and the researchers’ own networks, and its authors state that a representative study “is not feasible” and that the findings “do not represent findings that can be generalised”.
The House heard who commissioned the study, and Members pointed out that it rests on ten people. It has not heard what the authors themselves say the study can bear. See https://www.rainbow-project.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Conversion-Practices-Research-Report.pdf.
Freedom of Information requests to the Health and Social Care Trusts, as reported by the Christian Institute, found fewer than five complaints, all to Belfast Trust, and the Trust “confirmed that no concerns were found relating to ‘clinical treatment and care’”. See https://www.christian.org.uk/news/ci-needless-ni-conversion-therapy-plans-endanger-ordinary-people-who-oppose-lgbt-ideology/
3. The official review of the State of Victoria’s (Australia) ban found no prosecutions at all
The sponsor, Eóin Tennyson MLA, told the House on 15 September that twenty-seven countries have bans “and the sky has not fallen in”. On 22 September he said that abroad “the incidence of such cases being prosecuted is very low”, and offered that as assurance. The Australian state of Victoria passed a criminal ban in 2021. Its Law Reform Commission, reviewing the ban, wrote this year: “To date, there have been no criminal prosecutions under the Act. Data from the Crime Statistics Agency indicates a small number of possible offences have been reported… The Commission is not aware of any prosecutions under any of those laws”, meaning the bans in the other Australian states and territories.
The absence of prosecutions is not reassurance. On the sponsor’s own account these laws have “acted as an effective deterrent”, which is how his memorandum expects this one to work.
4. Existing law already reaches the serious cases, and carries a heavier sentence
The sponsor told the Assembly that a counsellor or a member of a faith community “may not be prosecutable under existing law” because they are not “personally connected” to the person. That is true of the domestic abuse offence in the Domestic Abuse and Civil Proceedings Act (Northern Ireland) 2021. It is not true of the offences that reach the serious cases. Threatening or abusive behaviour under section 2 of the Protection from Stalking Act (Northern Ireland) 2022 needs only a single act, applies regardless of any relationship, and carries five years. See https://www.legislation.gov.uk/nia/2022/17/section/2 .
Where the harm is serious, the House of Lords settled in R v Ireland and R v Burstow in 1997 that a recognisable psychiatric illness counts as bodily harm, and as grievous bodily harm where it is serious, and that it can be inflicted over months without physical contact. See https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld199798/ldjudgmt/jd970724/irland01.htm
In Northern Ireland assault occasioning actual bodily harm and inflicting grievous bodily harm each carry seven years, under article 4 of the Criminal Justice (No. 2) (Northern Ireland) Order 2004 at https://www.legislation.gov.uk/nisi/2004/1991/article/4 This Bill carries two. The House heard the two years described as severe. It has not heard that the law it already has is tougher.
5. The Cass Review warned about legislation like this, and the House was not told
The Cass Review has been cited repeatedly on puberty blockers. Nobody has cited paragraph 17.22 of its final report, where Dr Hilary Cass warned that “strong safeguards must be built into any potential legislation on conversion practices”, having recorded at paragraph 17.20 that clinicians already feared “accusations of conversion practice when following an approach that would be considered normal clinical practice”. Cass recommended “standard evidence based psychological and psychopharmacological treatment approaches” for children in gender distress, and the NHS now says that for those aged 17 or under “treatment will usually include talking therapy and counselling”. This Bill’s only safeguard of the kind Cass asked for is clause 4(3), which protects those registered with the General Medical Council, the Health and Care Professions Council, the General Pharmaceutical Council or the Pharmaceutical Society of Northern Ireland, when working to their regulator’s code, and nobody else – parents, youth workers and pastors are unprotected.
and https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/gender-dysphoria-and-incongruence/
6. The Bill protects help in one direction and criminalises it in the other, and Northern Ireland’s own equality law protects both
Clause 7(1)(c) provides that there is no intent to change or suppress where “the intent is to affirm a sexual orientation or gender identity” which the victim considers is, or may be, theirs. Help towards an orientation is protected. Help away from it can be the offence wherever it causes distress, which clause 8 counts as harm. Northern Ireland’s own law does not draw that line. The Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2006 forbid treating a person less favourably “on grounds of sexual orientation”, and in Lee v Ashers Baking Company Ltd the Supreme Court held that the protection “is not limited to less favourable treatment on the grounds of the sexual orientation of that person”, because “there is no ‘his or her’ in the definition”.
See https://www.legislation.gov.uk/nisr/2006/439/regulation/3
and https://supremecourt.uk/uploads/uksc_2017_0020_judgment_ff95b65913.pdf
On the equivalent provision in the Equality Act 2010, the Court of Appeal said in Core Issues Trust v Transport for London that “discrimination against a person because of his or her past actual or perceived sexual orientation, or because his or her sexual orientation has changed, is discrimination ‘because of…..sexual orientation’”. That was said in passing in an English court, so in Northern Ireland it persuades rather than binds, and it should be put no higher. See
Under section 6(2)(c) of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 a provision that is incompatible with any of the rights in the European Convention on Human Rights is outside the Assembly’s competence, and the European Court of Human Rights held in Salgueiro da Silva Mouta v Portugal that sexual orientation is “undoubtedly covered by Article 14”, which forbids discrimination in the enjoyment of the rights to private life, conscience and expression. See https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/47/section/6
and https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-58404.
The House heard that the Bill’s competence is in doubt, from counsel’s opinion for the Christian Institute, and the sponsor’s answer was that compliance with section 6 “has been tested through the Assembly’s Legal Services”. The memorandum’s entire reasoning on the Convention is that the sponsor is satisfied its provisions engage those rights but “do not do so in an unjustifiable manner”.
On 22 September Paul Givan pressed the sponsor on clause 7, and the sponsor answered that the Bill’s “universal definitions” protect people “in either direction”. Nobody has yet put to the House that a law protecting one direction of help and criminalising the other is, on Northern Ireland’s own definition, treatment on grounds of sexual orientation.
7. The House has not been told what “gender identity” covers
Clause 6 provides that a victim’s gender identity includes “what the victim considers it to be”. Asked how many gender identities the Bill covers, the sponsor answered that “the question is whether the courts will be capable of applying that concept”, and the Chair said on 15 September that “It is not for the Bill sponsor to outline how many gender identities there are.” The Speaker told the House on 21 September that “Discussion of gender identity is therefore permissible in the context of the Bill”, but on 22 September the Chair ruled the same question, put to another Member, “a wider debate on gender identity”. The Christian Institute, Genspect and the Free Speech Union have asked the Speaker for guidance “confirming that Members may probe both the meaning and the scope of ‘gender identity’ as used in the Bill”. See https://www.christian.org.uk/news/ni-assembly-urged-to-clarify-rules-after-mlas-blocked-from-probing-gender-identity/.
Members are being asked to create an offence whose reach will be settled by the courts after the vote.
Every claim above is sourced. Each point adds something the House has not been told in two days of Second Stage debate, checked against the full Official Reports for 15 September 2026 at https://aims.niassembly.gov.uk/officialreport/report.aspx?&eveDate=2026/09/15&docID=497468
and 22 September 2026 at https://aims.niassembly.gov.uk/officialreport/report.aspx?&eveDate=2026/09/22&docID=498922
The Bill as introduced, cited below by clause, is at https://www.niassembly.gov.uk/globalassets/documents/legislation/bills/non-executive-bills/mandate-2022-2027/conversion-practices-criminalisation-bill/conversion-practices-criminalisation-bill—as-introduced—fpv.pdf
What Members are asked to do
Vote against the general principles when the debate resumes on Monday 28 September. If the Bill is to proceed at all, require the sponsor first to identify one case in Northern Ireland that existing law could not reach, and to tell the House what “gender identity” in clause 6 covers. No such case appears in the memorandum, the study it relies on, or the Health Trusts’ records.
25 September 2026
Dr Lisa Nolland, CEO, Marriage, Sex and Culture Group, London. msc.support
Canon Dr Chris Sugden, Chairman, Anglican Mainstream. https://anglicanmainstream.org/