Anyone who carries out conversion practices with the aim of changing someone's sexual orientation or transgender identity could face up to five years in prison under landmark plans published on Thursday.
The draft Conversion Practices Bill, laid before Parliament by the Cabinet Office, creates two new criminal offences: one for conducting abusive conversion practices that cause serious harm, alarm or distress, and another for encouraging or assisting such acts to take place outside England and Wales. Those found guilty could also face an unlimited fine.
“Draft bill to ban conversion practices published, with up to five years in jail for offenders.”
The government said the legislation was needed because existing domestic abuse and coercive control laws do not address “the unique nature of abusive conversion practices”. The bill sets the first legal definition of conversion practices as conduct which “aims to change someone’s sexual orientation or transgender identity through abusive acts that seriously harm the victim”.
Minister for Equalities Olivia Bailey said: “Conversion practices are driven by the false belief that being LGBT+ is shameful and can be forcibly changed. Legal loopholes have left LGBT+ people vulnerable to these harmful acts, which is why we must legislate.”
Proposals also include new civil powers known as Conversion Practice Protection Orders, which the government says will “pre-emptively protect those deemed to be at risk of abuse”.
The plans apply to England and Wales and come eight years after a ban was first promised in 2018, a pledge that led to protests after several U-turns.
How widespread conversion practices are remains unclear. In the government’s 2018 UK-wide LGBT Survey, about 5% of the 108,000 respondents said they had been offered some form of conversion therapy, while 2% said they had undergone it. However, the survey did not define what it meant by conversion therapy and did not ask when or where it happened.
Galop, an anti-LGBT abuse charity that has campaigned for a ban, released new figures on Thursday saying it identified more than 300 calls about conversion practices between 2022 and 2025. Researchers analysed a sample of 195 of those calls and found reported examples of physical and sexual violence, attempts at forced marriages, and people being forcibly taken abroad to undergo conversion practices. The majority of cases (132) were reported as ongoing or recent, and more than half (123) were reported as being initiated by family or community members.