Labour’s Conversion Practices Draft Bill risks becoming the most anti-gay piece of legislation since the 1885 Labouchere Amendment, according to critics. Published this week as one of Keir Starmer’s parting shots, the bill ostensibly outlaws attempts to force someone to change their sexual orientation or gender identity. But opponents argue that by conflating two entirely antagonistic concepts, it amounts to state-sanctioned gay conversion therapy.
“Gender identity ideology posits that biological sex is irrelevant to sexual orientation, and that a sexed essence — or ‘soul’, as gender activist Helen Webberley puts it — should be the determining factor,” the bill’s critics note. “There is no evidence for this pseudoscientific belief.” Under the new law, anyone who does not automatically affirm someone’s belief that they are “born in the wrong body” could be accused of “conversion practice” and face up to five years in jail.
“Labour's Conversion Practices Draft Bill conflates sexual orientation and gender identity, risking state-sanctioned gay conversion therapy.”
The risk to gay people is underscored by data from the Tavistock’s Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), the NHS paediatric clinic shut down in March 2024 after the Cass Review found its treatment unsafe and unevidenced. In 2012, around 90% of female and more than 80% of male adolescent patients were gay or bisexual. By 2015, the proportions had declined but remained a majority: 70% of females and 60% of males.
Critics warn that the bill goes further than even the Conservatives’ infamous Section 28 of 1988, which prohibited “promoting homosexuality” in schools. “The trouble with this framing is that it conflates two entirely antagonistic concepts,” they argue, noting that “gender-affirming care is often a fig leaf for an attempt to ‘fix’ gay and bisexual people who fail to align with heterosexual frameworks.”
Under the guise of progressive language, the bill could criminalise those who question transgender identity, effectively mandating affirmation of a belief for which no evidence exists — and reviving the very conversion therapy it claims to ban.