Debate contribution: Conversion Practices (Criminalisation) Bill: Second Stage
Debate contribution by Miss Deirdre Hargey on .
- MLA
- Miss Deirdre Hargey
- Party at the time
- Sinn Féin
- Date
- 15 September 2026
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Private Members' Business
- Heading
- Conversion Practices (Criminalisation) Bill: Second Stage
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5706624
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I have let you in twice, to be fair, and I know that you will come back anyway when you summarise. It is important that the Bill move to Committee Stage, that we allow the proper scrutiny to ensure that it is robust and fit for purpose and where time is given to understand the complexities of the issue, as the Bill's sponsor outlined. He has also said that he would be happy to look at different abbreviations or changes, but the answer that I hear from the Benches on that side of the House is no. You just want to kill the Bill at this point. I imagine that there will be the numbers to vote the Bill through next week, but, if there is going to be a petition of concern, at least have the guts, if you are going to kill it at some point, to come out and say that, rather than spending hours pretending that you will really engage in the issues. If you were serious about it, you would allow it to go to Committee Stage so that the issues could be debated genuinely. We will also be firm. We cannot allow religious sessions or pseudo-consensual frameworks to be used as shields for abuse. Safeguarding against abuse and coercive control — we are talking about coercive control and the impact that that has — must be paramount, be that in legislation or across our society and our communities.
We in the Assembly have the chance to deliver a ban that protects people from harmful coercive practices and behaviours, which have been rightly condemned and highlighted by the Human Rights Commission, Amnesty International, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and, importantly, the victims themselves. Listening to the victims of those practices is key. It is not just those organisations and people; medical professionals, the World Psychiatric Association and the British Psychological Society all point to conversion therapy as fundamentally ineffective, highly dangerous and entirely unscientific. I say this to the survivors who carry lifelong trauma from those practices and to the activists who have fought for years to see this day: we see you, we hear you, and we stand with you. Let us vote for the Bill to progress to Committee Stage and work to achieve legislation that ends that cruelty and helps to build a society that is rooted in safety, equality and, importantly, respect for everyone.
406 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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