Debate contribution: Conversion Practices (Criminalisation) Bill: Second Stage

Debate contribution by Miss Nuala McAllister on 15 September 2026.

MLA

Miss Nuala McAllister

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

15 September 2026

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Conversion Practices (Criminalisation) Bill: Second Stage

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5706884

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I support the legislation that Eóin introduced. I congratulate him on bringing forward such significant legislation, which, for once, will put Northern Ireland at the forefront of LGBT rights. We should be proud of that in the Assembly. Well, those of us who support the Bill should be. Such quack practices are the practising of archaic beliefs.

Those beliefs impose on LGBT people the idea that they are unnatural or in need of a cure, and they have been widespread for a long time. They perpetuate stigma and discrimination. Not only are they deeply offensive, but they are unscientific and objectively false. They might be archaic, but it is a mark of shame that they still exist and have not been banished to a bygone era.

We are calling for legislative action. I appreciate that some steps were taken in the past, but it is important that, where there has not been action, we now do it through this Member's Bill. Of course, it is right that we scrutinise everything that is in front of us, but if Members are truly against conversion practices and believe that such harm is wrong, they should allow the Bill to go forward to Committee Stage.

I will give way later but not at this time. I am open to taking interventions later, though not millions of them. Alliance believes in a progressive and shared society in which members of our community can be free to be themselves without that discrimination or harm. Eóin has introduced the Bill because that harm still happens today. The notion that the issue is about 10 or 15 people is simply untrue. That harm exists today. The LGBT community in Northern Ireland continues to experience harm through conversion therapy, harassment and marginalisation. It seemed for a while that things were starting to get better for the LGBT+ community. Same-sex marriage was legalised across the UK, in Ireland and further afield. Of course, it took longer for that to happen in Northern Ireland. The ban on gay and lesbian couples adopting was finally lifted in 2013, and the lifetime ban on gay men donating blood was also overturned. Society was slowly becoming a more welcoming and safer place for the LGBT community. That progress appears to have come at a cost, however, as it is beginning to be framed almost as a negative, as though improving the rights of some people somehow detracts from the rights of others. We are now living through an age of increased homophobia and transphobia. It is clear that the people who wish that that progress had never occurred in the first place now feel emboldened enough to stoke tensions and pit groups against each other. Make no mistake: what we have heard from many in the Chamber today is just another manifestation of that. Those growing tensions in our society are exactly why the Bill is needed. It is about closing gaps in existing legislation that allow those harmful practices to continue through talking therapies and coercive control. The Bill does that whilst protecting fundamental freedoms that are already enshrined in law, enabling the freedom to express, hold and preach one's faith by establishing clear legal thresholds based on other legislation that is already in force. Protection for the LGBT community does not in any way take away from religious freedoms, despite how some may want to frame it. The Bill ensures that an already marginalised community can be protected from the impact of those discredited practices, including anxiety, depression, social isolation, shame, self-harm and suicide. Conversion practices continue too regularly in Northern Ireland. Likewise, the LGBT community already experiences increased levels of mental ill health. According to a survey by LGBT+ youth charity Just Like Us in 2021, 82% of young LGBT people aged between 11 and 18 in Northern Ireland had experienced suicidal thoughts and feelings, compared with 23% of their non-LGBT+ counterparts. That was the highest rate of all the UK nations. Another report, in 2013, found that a quarter of LGBT people in Northern Ireland had attempted suicide at least once. Perpetuating the idea that members of the LGBT community have something wrong with them that must be fixed through a course of quack therapies and conversion practices most likely acts only to increase mental health issues in that community, and that cannot continue.

725 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 01:21 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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