Conversion Practices: Closer to a Ban, Still Far From Protection

Conversion Practices: Closer to a Ban, Still Far From Protection | by Heather Paterson | Jun, 2026 | Medium

Today the Government published its long-awaited Draft Conversion Practices Bill. For many people, that sentence alone is enough to stir up complicated feelings. Relief, because conversion practices are abusive, harmful and should never have remained legal for this long. Anger, because LGBTQIA+ people have been promised this protection again and again. Caution, because a draft bill is not legislation. And fear, because the version now on the table contains a loophole so significant that it risks leaving some of the people most vulnerable to conversion practices without meaningful protection.

Conversion practices are not therapy. They are practices carried out with a predetermined favoured outcome of changing, suppressing or denying someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity. The idea behind them is that LGBTQIA+ people are broken, mistaken, sinful, ill or in need of fixing. We are not. There is a scientific consensus that conversion practices do not work and risk causing mental health harms. Internationally, the UK is not leading here. ILGA World’s 2026 data records 17 UN member states with nationwide bans on conversion practices.

So yes, the publication of a draft bill matters. After years of campaigning by survivors, LGBTQIA+ organisations, clinicians, faith leaders, parliamentarians and community activists, there is finally a text to scrutinise. The Ban Conversion Practices Coalition has rightly described this as a significant and long overdue step, while also making clear that this is the beginning of a process, not the end of one. Amnesty has similarly welcomed the fact that there is finally a draft bill, while saying it will scrutinise every word to ensure the legislation is human-rights compliant, fully trans inclusive and effective for victims and survivors.

There are things in the draft that are welcome. It is trans inclusive on its face. It refers to sexual orientation and transgender identity. It includes non-binary people within the definition of transgender identity. It creates offences relating to abusive conversion practices, encouraging or assisting abusive conversion practices, and introduces Conversion Practice Protection Orders. The Government says someone found guilty could face an unlimited fine, a custodial sentence of up to five years, or both.

It is also important to say what is not there. There is not, from my reading, the kind of broad religious exemption that many of us feared. There is not an explicit parental exemption that would allow family abuse to be neatly excused as “concern”. That matters. We know conversion practices happen in homes, faith settings, communities and institutions. A ban riddled with those exemptions would never have been a real ban.

But the central problem is a very big one. Clause 1 says conduct intended to cause someone to have or not have, or to believe they have or do not have, a sexual orientation or transgender identity is a conversion practice. Then subsection 3 says that where this happens in the course of providing health care services, it is not a conversion practice unless the person acts “in a way that falls far below the standards reasonably expected of a person in their position”. The draft then defines health care services broadly, including all forms of physical or mental health care and procedures similar to medical or surgical care.

That is why so many people, particularly trans people, are not celebrating today. They are reading the bill and asking: what happens when conversion practices are dressed up as healthcare? What happens when the “standard reasonably expected” is itself shaped by policies, guidance and institutional cultures that already treat trans people with suspicion? What happens when the abuse is polite, professionalised and wrapped in the language of safeguarding?

This is not an abstract concern. The Government’s own National LGBT Survey found that healthcare providers or medical professionals had conducted conversion practices for 19% of respondents overall. Among trans respondents who had undergone conversion practices, the figure was 29%, compared with 15% of cisgender respondents. That means a healthcare exemption is not a technical detail. It goes directly to one of the places where conversion practices have already been reported, and where trans people are disproportionately affected.

There is another concern too. The offence in the draft is not simply “carrying out a conversion practice”. It is carrying out an “abusive conversion practice” which causes serious harm to physical or mental health, or serious alarm or distress with a substantial adverse effect on usual day-to-day activities. Of course criminal law needs thresholds. Of course legislation has to be workable. But we also need to be honest about what this means for survivors. It risks creating a situation where the state acknowledges conversion practices are harmful, but only acts once a person can prove a high level of harm after the fact.

That is why today’s responses are so mixed. Some people are relieved because, after eight years of promises, there is finally movement. Some are cautiously hopeful because this draft is trans inclusive and avoids some of the worst exemptions campaigners feared. Others are devastated because they see a bill that may ban the most obvious forms of conversion abuse while leaving a route open for conversion practices in health settings. And some opponents of LGBTQIA+ equality are angry for entirely different reasons, because they do not want a ban at all.

My own response sits somewhere between relief and alarm. I cautiously welcome the fact that we are one step closer to a ban. I welcome the fact that the Government has not abandoned trans people from the face of the bill. I welcome the fact that this is now moving into pre-legislative scrutiny, with the Government’s own explanatory notes saying it expects scrutiny by a joint committee of both Houses and will consider that committee’s recommendations.

But I cannot celebrate this draft as though the job is done. It is not done. A draft bill is not legislation. It has not passed through Parliament. It has not survived committee stages. It has not been amended. It has not received Royal Assent. We have been here before. Since 2018, successive governments have committed to banning conversion therapy or conversion practices. Previous bills in 2017–19, 2021–22 and 2023–24 were introduced but did not make it through the parliamentary process.

Delay has consequences. Every year without a ban is another year in which LGBTQIA+ people can be coerced, shamed, manipulated and harmed because someone else believes their identity is wrong. But bad legislation has consequences too. A ban that leaves major loopholes can create false reassurance. It can allow politicians to say “we have dealt with this” while survivors remain unprotected. It can make future reform harder because the box has been ticked.

So today is not a moment for uncritical celebration. It is a moment for careful scrutiny, for survivor-led campaigning, for legal expertise, for trans-inclusive advocacy and for pressure on Parliament to get this right.

A meaningful ban must protect all LGBTQIA+ people. It must not allow conversion practices to continue simply because they happen behind a consulting-room door. It must distinguish genuine exploratory, person-centred support from practices that seek to push someone towards a predetermined outcome. It must protect conversations, yes, but not protect coercion. It must protect healthcare, yes, but not protect abuse carried out in the name of healthcare.

We are closer than we were yesterday. That matters. But we are not there yet. The test is not whether the Government can publish a draft bill. The test is whether Parliament can deliver a robust, effective and fully inclusive law that ends conversion practices in reality, not just in a press release.