Debate contribution: Conversion Practices (Criminalisation) Bill: Second Stage
Debate contribution by Ms Sinéad McLaughlin on .
- MLA
- Ms Sinéad McLaughlin
- Party at the time
- Social Democratic and Labour Party
- Date
- 15 September 2026
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Private Members' Business
- Heading
- Conversion Practices (Criminalisation) Bill: Second Stage
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5707176
Read the official Assembly record
Text
Does the Member not agree that Second Stage is about discussing the principles of a Bill? Everything that we have heard from nearly every Member on his side of the House has gone into the minutiae of the Bill. It is for the Committee to do that, if those Members could release the Bill and let it go to Committee. The Bill sponsor has indicated that there may be things that can be improved and terms that could be defined further. Things that you are not happy about could be discussed in detail. Nothing can happen, however, unless the Bill goes to the Committee and we afford it its due duty to scrutinise the Bill, make it more robust and maybe address some of the definitions and problems that have been raised on the Member's side of the House. As it stands, those Members are absolutely filibustering.
You are. Everybody on that side of the House is. You are getting into the Bill as if you were on the scrutiny Committee. If you were not happy with the range of evidence that was taken during the consultation, that was the time to widen it out according to the way in which you perceive that the Bill should have been written and the definitions arrived at. It is just minutiae after minutiae. Let the Bill go to the Committee for scrutiny and due diligence, and I am sure that all of your team will be all over the submission of amendments for Consideration Stage. Let the Bill go and get the work done.
262 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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