Debate contribution: Conversion Practices (Criminalisation) Bill: Second Stage
Debate contribution by Mr Gordon Lyons on .
- MLA
- Mr Gordon Lyons
- Party at the time
- Democratic Unionist Party
- Date
- 15 September 2026
- Type
- Debate contribution (made as a minister)
- Business
- Private Members' Business
- Heading
- Conversion Practices (Criminalisation) Bill: Second Stage
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5707437
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I appreciate the Member giving way. Why is it so difficult to bring this forward? I have engaged in good faith. I have had many meetings with officials on the issue, and I have engaged with people from the outside. This is such a difficult issue to put into legislation, because, once you get beyond all the clearly harmful practices, you quickly move into an arena where rights bang up against each other. Look across other parts of the UK: for six years, the Conservative Government tried to bring something through but could not; and, for years, the Scottish Government tried to bring something through but could not. Why? They could not do it because a Bill like this inevitably leads to a clash of rights. The Member has been so simplistic in her comments this evening. It is as if, "This is a good thing, and it has been brought forward by Eóin, so we should all support it and agree with its general principles". I say this to Kellie Armstrong: this is complex; this is about contrasting rights; this is about what a parent can say to their child. She listed a pile of questions that she gave to Eóin Tennyson on that, but she was not able to give the answers. She was not able to look into that and make a determination. The reason why this has not come forward is that it is so difficult to do. Experience elsewhere has shown that. If she thinks that doing it in the last six months of the mandate is the way to do it, she is living in cloud cuckoo land.
274 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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