Scotland

The Scottish Government has announced that after several years of trying to legislate, it will now shelve its own controversial conversion therapy plans and hand the problem to Westminster.

In January 2024, the Scottish Government published an 86-page consultation paper outlining its extreme proposals for a law that could see Christians and parents face up to seven years in prison for failing to affirm LGBT ideology. The proposals were met with public outrage and days of hostile media coverage. Major newspapers ran banner frontpage headlines like: "Parents who refuse gender change face seven years in jail in Scotland." You can read The Christian Institute’s consultation response here.

It’s therefore perhaps not surprising that when the Scottish Programme for Government was published in September 2024, conversion therapy was absent from the list of Bills the Government pledged to introduce.

Instead, the Government says it will “work towards complementary approaches across the UK”, with the proviso that it will “prepare legislation for introduction to the Scottish Parliament should a UK-wide approach not be achievable”.

The Government admitted to LGBT group Out for Independence that the reason for the U-turn is to ensure they “don’t end up facing judicial review”. This comes just months after The Christian Institute's threat to bring a judicial review was widely reported in the Scottish press.