Britain publishes draft bill to criminalise conversion therapy abroad

Britain on Wednesday published a draft Conversion Practices Bill for England and Wales that would make abusive attempts to change a person’s sexual orientation or transgender identity a criminal offence, with penalties that could include an unlimited fine or up to five years in prison. The proposal also goes beyond a domestic ban by creating an offence for encouraging or assisting conversion practices outside England and Wales when the target is a UK national or resident, and by adding civil conversion practice protection orders to step in before harm escalates.

The government says the criminal threshold is conduct intended to change someone’s sexual orientation or transgender identity through abusive acts that seriously harm the victim. That line is meant to separate coercion from consent, and the bill includes an explicit exemption for legitimate healthcare and therapy so doctors, therapists and patients can still have open conversations about sexuality, identity and mental health. The hardest cases are likely to sit in the grey zone between support and pressure, where counselling, prayer or family intervention can become abusive without a clear public record of what was said behind closed doors.

Ministers have framed the draft as trans-inclusive and as a response to long-running concern about harmful practices that have been hard to pin down in criminal law. The civil protection orders borrow from tools already used in cases involving forced marriage and female genital mutilation, giving authorities another way to intervene pre-emptively rather than waiting for a full offence to be proved.

The bill follows years of political delay. The United Kingdom first committed to banning conversion practices in 2018, then renewed that pledge in 2021 and again in 2023. The government’s explanatory notes say the measure was part of Labour’s 2024 manifesto commitment and was reiterated in the King’s Speech 2026. A public consultation on banning conversion practices ran for 14 weeks from 29 October 2021 to 4 February 2022, with 21 closed-format and 13 open-format questions.

Stonewall says the issue reaches far beyond one setting: in the National LGBT Survey, 51% of people who reported conversion practices said it happened in a faith setting, 19% in healthcare or medical settings, 16% through a parent, guardian or family member, and 9% through someone in their community. Stonewall also says 28 countries already have some form of national ban.

The draft now moves to pre-legislative scrutiny before it is formally introduced to Parliament, where lawmakers are set to test whether the offences are narrow enough to protect free expression and legitimate care while still giving police and prosecutors a workable law.