Debate contribution: Conversion Practices (Criminalisation) Bill: Second Stage
Debate contribution by Mr Jon Burrows on .
- MLA
- Mr Jon Burrows
- Party at the time
- Ulster Unionist Party
- Date
- 15 September 2026
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Private Members' Business
- Heading
- Conversion Practices (Criminalisation) Bill: Second Stage
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5706455
Read the official Assembly record
Text
That again speaks of a conflation that we have here. There is an important distinction, against which the Member protested earlier in the debate, between domestic violence and abuse and what is proposed in the Bill. It is never OK to put your partner in fear, alarm or distress. In the case of two adults in a relationship, that is abuse, with a perpetrator, whereas a parent may very often put their child in fear. The child may be distressed by a genuine intervention by the parent, such as, "You are not to do that again. That is wrong". The child may end up being distressed because the parent has had to take them to the dentist or because the parent had a difficult conversation with them. The role of a parent in bringing up a child involves thousands of interactions in which the parent may be acting in the best interests of the child but the child still feels, in their childhood, fearful. Those are the realities of bringing up a child. Parents have to say, "That can't be done. The reason that you cannot do that, son, is x,y or z. There are risks to what you are doing there". That is entirely different from a similar conversation that one has with a partner, which would be coercive control. The two should not be conflated. There are differences between interactions with your children and interactions with a partner, and the law has to reflect that. The Bill does not.
I will.
253 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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