‘No evidence of conversion practices’, health professionals tell Committee

Yesterday, the Joint Committee scrutinising the draft Conversion Practices Bill heard evidence from health professionals.

First to appear before the Committee were non-binary researcher Dr Igi Moon, who chairs the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Conversion Therapy, and Dr Alison Berner, President of the British Association of Gender Identity Specialists. Dr Berner began by informing the Committee that her pronouns are she/her. The second panel featured clinical psychologist Dr Anna Hutchinson and Dr Lisa Morrison from the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.

Here are some of the noteworthy moments:

1. Labour MP Naz Shah pointed out that the draft Bill makes no distinction whatsoever between children and adults. Nor does the MoU. Dr Igi Moon defended this approach by saying: “the purpose of the MoU was to really say that no identity – sexual orientation or gender identity – is preferable than any other at any stage of development”. But children are not adults. The idea that children must be treated as such under this Bill is a threat to health child development. 

2. Dr Igi Moon characterised concerns about the chilling effect the draft Bill could have on therapists as “noise”. Yet clinicians are already working in a hostile environment, fearful of being reported to their regulator if they do not affirm a person’s ‘gender identity’. If a ban is introduced, many have said they’d have to withdraw from offering therapy to this patient population.

3. Conservative Peer Baroness Browning said she was aware of psychologists and therapists who’d left their professional bodies because of the requirement to ‘affirm’. Dr Igi Moon responded by claiming that affirmation is simply ‘exploration’ by another name. Yet the draft Bill has no difficulty distinguishing: it protects an affirmative approach, while creating uncertainty over whether clinicians can question, challenge and explore a client’s feelings about their identity.

4. Dr Anna Hutchinson, who has over a decade’s experience working with gender-distressed young people, including at the Tavistock, told the Committee: “I’ve worked with hundreds to thousands of young people and many colleagues who have worked with young people exploring their gender and who identify as trans, and I have to be honest, I have never heard of any experience of abusive conversion practices as described by this Bill.”

5. Dr Lisa Morrison similarly said she was unaware of any complaints of conversion practices. If conversion practices are happening on the scale the Government claims, surely the BACP – a major professional body for counsellors and psychotherapists – would have received reports.

6. Olivia Bailey MP, who drafted the Bill while Minister for Equalities, seemed not to understand that the process is the punishment. As Dr Anna Hutchinson pointed out, even if a clinician is ultimately acquitted, they should not have to face being hauled through the courts and having their lives upended because the definition of ‘abuse’ in the draft Bill is so nebulous that it could ensnare ordinary clinical practice.

7. Dr Hutchinson warned that clinicians who dare to question a gender-affirming approach are already being branded ‘conversion therapists’ – and this is before any ban has even been introduced. Even politicians are not immune: former Health Secretary Wes Streeting and Baroness Cass have both been labelled as such. With the draft Bill threatening up to five years in prison for failing to affirm someone’s LGBTQ+ identity, vexatious accusations will become an even more powerful tool of intimidation.

8. Dr Hutchinson explained that more and more young people are coming forward with deep regret about undergoing medical treatment to change their ‘gender’. Many say they wish clinicians had challenged their distress rather than affirmed their belief that they were born in the wrong body. Yet the draft Bill will entrench an affirmative approach in law. Even a detransitioner discouraging others from following the same path could be criminalised.

9. The draft Bill excludes healthcare from its scope unless it “falls far below the standards reasonably expected”. But, as Dr Anna Hutchinson pointed out, who gets to decide those standards when clinicians themselves cannot agree on how best to respond to a gender-questioning young person.