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 5706489
Read the official Assembly record
Text
That is a fair point, well made. One of the gravest dangers in the Bill is in regard to parenting and the hazards for parenting. Clause 5, "Coercive behaviour", refers to "regulating or monitoring" someone's "day-to-day activities", "restricting" their "freedom of action" or making them feel "punished". The "behaviour" must occur "on two or more occasions". We see the stark difference between legislation that is designed to deal with a domestic setting and domestic abuse and coercive control and legislation that affects how you deal with children. The very behaviours that the Bill describes as coercive behaviours are actually the bread and butter of parenting — regulating or monitoring someone's day-to-day activities. Not only can a parent do those things, but under children's legislation, a parent is under an absolute duty to regulate and monitor their children's day-to-day activity, because if they do not, they are liable to the offence of child abandonment, exposure to unnecessary danger and a range of other offences. The Bill seems to turn on its head the positive obligation that a parent has to monitor their child's everyday activity. Not enough parents monitoring the day-to-day activities of their children means we have a world where children are going into school years behind their milestones, their minds affected permanently by the impact of screens and increasingly using American language at the age of four or five such as "trunk" or "garbage" because they are listening to and watching so much online.
I will.
I make no apology for line-by-line, forensic, penetrating scrutiny of the Member's Bill, which could result in my constituents and the people of this country being prosecuted.
This Bill makes honest, honourable parenting hazardous; it is as simple as that. It leaves to the discretion of the police, the prosecutorial system and the courts whether the case should be brought to court. It is absolutely astonishing. It is also, I am afraid, a missed opportunity to deal with the real issues that the Bill sponsor could have dealt with. If a parent were to advise a gender-distressed child to wait, to think again, to not watch certain things online and to not keep certain company, would that parent now be liable, no matter the age of the child, to criminal investigation and prosecution merely on the basis that, in response to the advice, the child is distressed? Every day of term, there are children in schools who become dysregulated. I see them: when a teacher takes an iPad from them, they are distressed; that is not a crime. Ms Mulholland rolled her eyes when I said that good parenting or good teaching —
— I will in a second — sometimes leads to someone being distressed. She looked at me in horror. Children sometimes become distressed by legitimate interventions such as taking an iPad off them. That is why the test should be about abusiveness and serious harm, not just distress, which children grow up feeling. I will give way to the Member.
I have done that scrutiny. The loose language, the low thresholds and the absolute subjectivity of many of the definitions would create grave uncertainty and would leave people liable to criminal investigation. Criminal law should be precise and clear; the Bill is not. I make no apology for testing the criminal law. I will make this point: day in, day out, I speak to people in the Catholic/nationalist/republican community who say, "Who in that Chamber" — from the other side of the House — "is speaking for me about the real concerns with these issues?" It is almost as though nobody wants to represent them. I am happy to represent them, because, frankly, I do not care what their religion is. I am happy to stand for them today — those who, with the best of intentions, might want to give their children some upbringing without fearing a knock on the door.
Thank you for that. Clause 7 protects the expression of beliefs or opinions only when someone is not seeking to direct the other person towards a particular orientation or identity, yet guidance is precisely what parents, counsellors and religious leaders often provide. Guidance. The Bill has zero protections. Again, I wait for the Bill sponsor — I am always happy to be corrected when I am wrong — to point out to me the protections and exemptions for parents, for pastoral care or for any faith-based organisation. I invite the Member to intervene.
745 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Assessment
Awaiting analysis
This record has not been analysed yet. It is not counted in any total until it has been assessed.
Disagree with this assessment?
Classifications can be challenged. A person reviews every challenge, and any change is recorded publicly above with its reason.