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

Debate contribution by Mrs Deborah Erskine on 15 September 2026.

MLA: Mrs Deborah Erskine
Party at the time: Democratic 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 5706911

Text

I thank the Member for giving way. The Member is allowing her prejudice to cloud her judgement here. Set aside your prejudice against the DUP and what you think. Think about the people and about the unintended consequences that the legislation will have outside these doors. That is what scrutiny is about, and that is what the Members on these Benches are trying to do. We are trying to scrutinise the Bill so that it is appropriate. We do not think that it is appropriate, because we have not been able to get the proper definitions from the questions that we have asked.

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

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers met the documented threshold for “not flagged”.

Overall probability that the activity is being used to promote, exploit or escalate an identity-based controversy: 0.47 (flagging needs at least 0.70; at or below 0.30 is not flagged).
None of the five culture-war criteria was met (each was below 0.60).
No identity-based framing was identified (0.59).
The overall probability was moderate at most and none of the culture-war criteria was close to being met.

This is an AI-generated assessment of the text, made against published criteria. It is not a finding of fact about the MLA or their intentions. The Assembly record itself is the fact.

Jev’s structured answers

Probability that each statement is true of this text (0 = no, 1 = yes). A criterion counts as met at 0.60 or above.
Question	Probability	Met?
Identity framing	0.19	No
Sectarian or communal antagonism	0.11	No
Cultural grievance politics	0.04	No
Dog-whistle messaging	0.33	No
Controversy escalation	0.29	No
Legitimate policy scrutiny	0.44	No
Overall judgement	0.47	Between thresholds

Context and attribution (stance)
Option	Probability
No identity-based framing (chosen)	0.59
Reports or questions it	0.01
Criticises or condemns it	0.04
Adopts it	0.36

Subject area (top five)
Subject	Probability
No identity-related subject	0.33
Gender, sexuality, abortion and related social issues	0.31
Sectarianism, hate crime and community relations	0.30
Another identity-related subject	0.03
Religion and belief (including people of no religion), churches, faith communities and religious prejudice (including antisemitism and anti-Muslim prejudice)	0.01

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 16:22 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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