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

Debate contribution by Mr Eóin Tennyson on 28 September 2026.

MLA: Mr Eóin Tennyson
Party at the time: Alliance Party
Date: 28 September 2026
Type: Debate contribution
Business: Private Members' Business
Heading: Conversion Practices (Criminalisation) Bill: Second Stage
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 5763035

Text

I thank Members for their contributions, most of which were thoughtful and constructive, although there were a couple of notable exceptions. All were certainly lively. I want to recognise that Paul Boggs made his maiden speech during the debate. After sitting through this for three or four days — I have lost track of where we are — I do not know whether to congratulate or commiserate with Paul Boggs on his co-option to the Assembly, but he certainly made a powerful contribution on the issue of conversion practices. Members have, predictably and rightly, approached the issue from very different perspectives. Whilst there have, inevitably, been differences of opinion on elements of the Bill, there has also been a fair degree of common ground and consensus. No Member openly defended coercion, abuse or practices that cause harm. As I said when I opened the debate, it is the basic principle that no one should face coercion or abuse simply because of who they are or who they love that goes to the heart of what the legislation seeks to achieve. I hope that that basic principle can provide a foundation on which we move forward together. Most of today's contributions did not centre on whether conversion practices are harmful — again, there were exceptions — but on how to legislate against them or, in some cases, whether legislation is necessary at all. This is Second Stage, and so the debate is focused on the principles of the Bill, and if the Bill is passed by Members, it is the beginning of a journey of scrutiny and amendment. A number of Members made that precise point, with the caveat that there were areas on which they wanted further clarity, assurance or amendment. I appreciate the Members who were constructive and nonetheless stated their intention to support the Bill at Second Stage. I hope that Members, whatever their views on the Bill, have been reassured that, as its sponsor, I want to be pragmatic, to work with parties across the House, to build as broad a consensus as possible and to deliver legislation that is balanced and protects people from harm. On the issues that were raised during the debate, and where they are sincere and reasonable, I am more than happy to engage with Members as we proceed. I sometimes wondered whether we were engaging in debate or doing our emails because we heard just about every email in the DUP's inbox from anybody who is gay or transgender.
It was certainly a delight to have those read into the record. A number of Members, including Phillip Brett, Diane Dodds, Pam Cameron and Jon Burrows, and, indeed, the Minister, pointed to existing criminal offences and suggested that the law, as it stands, is sufficient to deal with conversion therapy.
I have acknowledged throughout the debate that some forms of conversion practice, such as those involving physical violence, will fall within existing criminal offences. It is abundantly clear, however, that not all types of conversion practice are prosecutable under existing law. Examples include talking therapy or coercive and controlling behaviour where individuals are not personally connected. Those examples are no less serious and no less harmful, and legislation is therefore clearly needed to close those gaps and prevent the harm from persisting.
It has to be noted that similar arguments were also once deployed against domestic abuse legislation. Some argued that assault and harassment offences were already present in law, so there was no need for stand-alone legislation. That was wrong then, and it is wrong now. As Claire Sugden recognised, stand-alone legislation recognises the unique circumstances and nature of conversion practices and the unique harm that victims experience. It sends a signal to society and to victims that attempts to change or suppress a person's sexual orientation or gender identity are not acceptable.
Some Members suggested that the Bill had been developed on the back of one study: that is factually incorrect. In addition to the study of conversion practices that was referred to by a number of Members, including Deirdre Hargey, Nuala McAllister, Sian Mulholland and, I think, Gerry Carroll, the UK Government's LGBT survey suggested that Northern Ireland had the highest prevalence of conversion practice of any UK region. The UK Government also undertook an evidence assessment in 2021. That assessment identified 46 published studies on conversion practice conducted between 2000 and 2020 and included interviews with 30 survivors of conversion practice. That government review pointed to increasing quantitative evidence that conversion therapy is associated with poor mental health outcomes, including suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts. Let us put beyond doubt the fact that conversion practice is a problem in this society and is deeply harmful. On the basis of the evidence before us, we should all be able to agree on that. The issue of the equality impact assessment was laboured at length on the first day of the debate, and we have revisited it a number of times. Despite my clarification at the outset, there has been a level either of misunderstanding or of wilful misrepresentation among some Members. The misrepresentation was so great that the Equality Commission had to issue a press release during the debate to clarify its role. To be clear again, only public bodies are subject to the requirements and processes of section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998. It is therefore simply impossible for a private Member who introduces legislation to undertake a formal section 75 equality impact assessment, and that does not form part of the Members' Bill development process. Neither is it the role of the Equality Commission or the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission to conduct assessments on behalf of other bodies. They have no statutory remit to do so. That does not mean that equality and human rights considerations have not been carefully considered in the development of the Bill: they have. I engaged with both commissions during the development of the Bill. On 20 March 2025, the Equality Commission indicated to me that, on the basis of the information available to it at the time, it foresaw no breach in the Bill's compliance with article 2 of the Windsor framework. We have also been supported by the Members' Bill development team and the legal advice that was furnished to it. The Bill also underwent competence checks in respect of the European Convention on Human Rights before being introduced in the Assembly. It has to be said that, despite my earlier pleas, some Members wilfully sought to pick out individual requirements and clauses of the Bill out of context and without regard to the fact that the Bill is a package of requirements, all of which must be satisfied for an offence to be made out. It is therefore worth restating that, for a conversion practices offence to be made out, the individual in question would have to act with the intent of suppressing the gender identity or sexual orientation of the individual. They would have to engage in either a course of conversion therapy or a course of coercive behaviour. That would have to be directed towards an individual victim and be conducted in such a way as to cause actual harm to the individual. That high bar for prosecution is significantly higher than that for similar criminal offences, even before we get to the defence of reasonableness that is included as an additional safeguard. A number of Members, including, notably, Deborah Erskine at the beginning of the debate, focused on the potential chilling effect on ordinary parenting. When Members read the package of measures in the round, they will see that it is clear that an offence could not be made out in situations where the intent is clearly to protect the young person from harm. It is wrong to select single requirements of the Bill in isolation and consider them as though they produce results in isolation. Doing so creates the very chill factor that many Members warned about, professing their worry that the legislation would create that in the community. The fact that regulating or monitoring a person's day-to-day activities is listed as a potential form of coercive behaviour does not mean that every such behaviour would be criminalised. That is why we have based the legal concepts and definitions in the Bill on the Domestic Abuse and Civil Proceedings Act 2021. We have lifted definitions that apply between personally connected people; we have broadened the range of people to whom it can apply; but we are simultaneously narrowing the scope through the intent test in the legislation. As I said to Members during the debate, no one can point to an example of a parent of a 16-year-old child — this would fall under the auspices of the domestic abuse legislation — being criminalised for engaging in reasonable ordinary parental behaviour. No such examples exist because that definition has been applied in existing law in a way that is proportionate and reasonable. I stress again that, as a liberal, I believe passionately in freedom of and freedom from religion. However, freedom of religion ceases to be freedom at the point at which it is weaponised to deprive others of their individual rights and freedoms and to cause harm. The Bill targets only harmful conduct; not conversations and not the simple expression of views and beliefs. I have consistently emphasised that everyone has a right to express their beliefs, but no one has a right to doggedly impose those beliefs on others in a way that results in physical or psychological harm. Protection from harm is the most fundamental right enjoyed by any of us in this society. Some of the arguments deployed during the debate also ignore the fact that a plurality of opinion exists among people of faith on issues of sexuality and gender identity. Many people of strong faith are open, welcoming and inclusive of LGBT people, and an even greater number of people of faith, who perhaps disagree with my view on the issues, reject any attempt to harm or coerce anyone in our community on any grounds. I am incredibly grateful to those people of faith, including the 370 faith leaders from across the world who have openly supported a ban on conversion practice and recognised the impact that it has on the dignity of the victims who are subjected to it. I turn to the harm threshold, which has been raised by a number of Members. The assertion that the harm threshold is vague or dangerously low is misplaced and overlooks the important safeguards that accompany it. First, as I have said multiple times, the concept of "fear, alarm and distress" is not new in Northern Ireland law; it is an established legal standard that applies elsewhere and has been interpreted successfully by the courts over many years, including in the Domestic Abuse and Civil Proceedings Act, which defines psychological harm as including "fear, alarm or distress". The Protection from Stalking Act uses the similar concept of:
"fear, alarm or substantial distress".
Article 2 of the Protection from Harassment Order 1997 provides a reference to harassment that includes:
"alarming the person or causing the person distress."
Therefore, the idea that the concept of "fear, alarm and distress" is frivolous, new and untested simply does not stand up to scrutiny. Secondly, an offence would not be made out because someone experiences "fear, alarm and distress" in isolation or a person was in a state of distress when they approached the alleged perpetrator. Prosecutors must demonstrate that the therapy or the coercive course of conduct was carried out with intent and contributed to and resulted in harm. Thirdly, the fact that there is an actual harm requirement means that the threshold for prosecution for conversion practices would be higher, not lower, than for domestic abuse. In a domestic abuse scenario, the test is that a reasonable person would consider the behaviour likely to cause physical or psychological harm. For conversion practices, under this legislation, the prosecution would have to prove that that harm occurred beyond all reasonable doubt. Taken together, those safeguards ensure that the legislation captures only harmful conduct while avoiding the over-criminalisation of ordinary, good-faith interactions. Members have talked about a balance of rights: I accept that. Peter Martin, I believe, referenced the UK government legislation, which includes a different harm threshold. I have said to Members that I am happy, as we progress through Committee Stage and Consideration Stage, to look in detail at the harm threshold employed in that legislation and the definition set out. It was interesting that Members on the DUP Benches could not commit to supporting the UK legislation, despite pointing to that at times as a better way forward. A number of Members, including the Minister and Mr Gaston, pointed to the fact that consent is ruled out as a defence, saying that that would potentially prevent those struggling with their sexual orientation or gender identity from seeking pastoral support or criminalise those who are supporting them and acting in good faith. I say this to the Members who are concerned: we know that victims of conversion practice are often young; are often vulnerable and often struggling with internalised homophobia; and may consent because of power imbalances, external pressure, coercion in their family or cultural or religious context. That undermines the validity of any consent that is extracted from them, because informed consent is simply not possible in that context. Those participating are, by the very nature of the practices that we are talking about, misled into believing that that change is possible or that it is harmless and are not aware of the potential long-term risks and damage that can be caused. We do not offer a defence of consent when it comes to dealing with female genital mutilation or domestic abuse in recognition that those power imbalances can exist and inherent harm can be caused. The inclusion of a consent defence would simply allow perpetrators to claim that the victim agreed to be subjected to the abuse from which we are trying to protect them, even when that agreement is coerced or uninformed. That is not a position that we should entertain or accept. A number of Members focused on suppression being encouraged in the Bill. They referenced the idea that a parent advising a child to refrain from sexual activity or from viewing certain content on the internet might fall within that scope. However, I want to be clear that a parent encouraging a child to make responsible decisions about sexual activity is not attempting to change or suppress the sexual orientation or gender identity of that child. The motivation in those circumstances is clearly to protect the young person from harm. Likewise, a person who chooses to live in accordance with their Christian values is freely expressing their autonomy and freedom of religion. The concern addressed by the Bill is not voluntary abstinence, celibacy, ordinary prayer or religious observance but practices that exert pressure, coercion, manipulation or other forms of harm. There is a clear distinction between supporting people who freely choose to live by their own values and choices and subjecting them to practices designed to force them to suppress or eradicate their identity and a key aspect of that. The former, under the legislation, would remain lawful and protected, and the latter is what the legislation would rightly prohibit. Clause 7 is clear that expressing opinions or beliefs without an intent to direct someone towards a particular sexual orientation or gender identity is not a conversion practice. I will also deal again with the point that the Minister raised about congregations. I am confident, on the basis of the drafting process, that the Bill is intended to capture only those circumstances where there is a specific, identifiable victim; otherwise the intent test simply could not be made out.
I will briefly. I do not intend to take many interventions, though, because we have been at this for a long time.
It is fairly straightforward to be able to differentiate between where conversion therapy is taking place and where someone is, for example, reading scripture or delivering a sermon. Again, that is where it comes down to a fact-specific assessment. If someone intends to deliver a sermon, it will typically be open to a wide congregation. With conversion therapy, individuals receiving that therapy are typically gay. In the vast majority of cases, we are talking about people who are gay, lesbian or bisexual. The intent is therefore very clear. When it comes to the question of a specific individual, clause 1(1) is clear that there is an offence where
"the person provides or carries out conversion therapy in relation to another person ('the victim')" —
Or —
"the person has the intent of changing or suppressing the sexual orientation or gender identity of the victim".
There therefore has to be an identifiable victim in order for that offence to be progressed. The person accused of conversion practice also has to consider that the person with whom they are dealing could be gay or transgender. If it were a member of the congregation, the minister would not, in most cases, be aware of the sexual orientation of the individual with whom they are dealing. There are therefore a significant number of protections in the Bill. There is also the reasonableness defence. I will speak about that, given that it has been raised. The Minister and a number of other Members pointed out that the burden of proof would be on the defence. They ignored the fact, however, that both the police and the Public Prosecution Service would have to deem there to be a probability of prosecution, so reasonableness would be tested not just at the very end of the process, in the courts. If the PPS were to believe that the individual who was accused was likely to have a reasonableness defence, that would be explored earlier in the process. All the tests that I have set out would need to be met before the reasonableness test comes into play. In all the hypothetical scenarios that were raised — at points, we descended into reductio ad absurdum, given some of the quite bizarre and fringe examples that were raised — no one gave me an example that we would not want to be covered that would meet all the tests. The reasonableness defence is not in there as the first line of defence. Rather, it exists as the last line of defence if a scenario that the Assembly could not possibly have anticipated were to come up that either had an overriding motivation that we had not anticipated or involved the exercise of convention rights that would not otherwise have been protected. That is a safeguard. Members cannot argue simultaneously that the Bill is vague and poorly defined and that it captures too broad a range of behaviour. A reasonableness defence is a necessarily broad defence for that very reason. Furthermore, the reasonableness test is neither novel nor new. It is one of the most defined, well-used and established concepts in Northern Ireland law. The courts routinely apply reasonableness tests in a variety of criminal and civil contexts. The test appears in the Protection from Harassment (Northern Ireland) Order 1997, the Domestic Abuse and Civil Proceedings Act (Northern Ireland) 2021, the Protection from Stalking Act (Northern Ireland) 2022 and the Justice (Sexual Offences and Trafficking Victims) Act (Northern Ireland) 2022. If objections to the reasonableness test that were made during the debate were therefore applied consistently, that would call into question a whole host of criminal legislation that Members in the Chamber who made those protestations have voted for in previous mandates. The fact that legislation does not provide an exhaustive statutory list of every factor that a court may consider does not, in itself, make the legislation uncertain. As I have said, courts routinely assess reasonableness against the circumstances of an individual case. Indeed, that flexibility is legislation's strength, because, if a rigid statutory list were to be provided, there would always be the risk of something being left out that resulted in a loophole, over-criminalisation or unforeseen circumstances. In any event, as I have said, the defendant would have to have been proven to have met all the other tests in the legislation before the question of reasonableness would even arise. A number of Members talked about the definition of "coercive behaviour". I touched on that earlier in my remarks, so I will not labour the point now.
However, it is important to highlight the fact that, whilst questions have been raised about the definition of "coercive behaviour" in this context, Paul Givan, when he was Chair of the Justice Committee during the passage of the domestic abuse legislation, called a very close version of that definition of "coercive behaviour" the:
"new 'gold standard' for criminalising coercive control". — [Official Report (Hansard), Bound Volume 128, p17, col 2].
I ask Members this: what has changed between then and now other than, as I said, the cohort of people whom we are talking about protecting? A number of legal criticisms were made in the debate, referencing opinion from people such as Aidan O'Neill KC and others. I believe that it was Deirdre Hargey who, during a previous day of the debate, highlighted the fact that Members need to be rounded in the organisations that they cite. Whilst there have been criticisms from the Christian Institute, the Gay Men's Network and the Women's Rights Network, a whole host of well-respected and established organisations based in Northern Ireland support the Bill and the need for the legislation. We have engaged, through consultation responses, with the British Medical Association. We have engaged, through meetings, with the General Medical Council. We have been speaking to the Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care. I have met faith organisations and groups, LGBT organisations, therapists and those who provide gender identity healthcare services. We have consulted widely. We have also looked at international best practice, including legislation in other countries. Many of the nightmare scenarios that have been raised in the House have never presented themselves in those jurisdictions. We have looked at the framework set out by the European Council, the expertise of the UN special rapporteur on sexual orientation and gender identity and many others. We should not be à la carte in the evidence that we reach for. We should also be open and transparent about the source of that evidence, because, whilst Aidan O'Neill KC is a legally qualified person, he was commissioned to act on behalf of the Christian Institute, which is an organisation that has been opposed to such legislation since its inception and that, in our first meeting, pointed me to bad headlines that were generated when the Scottish Government published their Bill. As I said earlier in the debate, I have no doubt that some of this is about orchestrating quite extreme headlines such as that parents would be banned from stopping their children engaging with Andrew Tate content online. We have established fairly clearly —
— that that is nonsense and bears no resemblance to reality. With respect, Diane, I will resist taking further interventions, because we have been at this for a very, very, very long time, and Members have had more than ample opportunity to make their points. Let us not present that as independent legal opinion when it was commissioned by an organisation that has a very clear and established view on these matters, and let us look widely at the evidence available to us. One of the claims made in that legal advice was that the Bill was beyond the legislative competence of the Assembly. The Bill has been through its legislative competence tests and has, nonetheless, been introduced, and I hope that Members take some comfort from that. We have talked at length about "gender identity", and Members have said that it is contested and cannot be treated in the same way as "sexual orientation" in the Bill. As I have already said, the question before us is not whether a term is contested or whether every phrase in the Bill is accompanied by a statutory definition. It is certainly not about the definitions of activists, and I want to underline that. It is about whether a court could understand and apply a concept and do so consistently, and no convincing case has been made during the debate that it could not. Legislatures routinely use concepts whose meaning is informed by ordinary language, and, as per the Oxford English Dictionary, the definition of "gender identity" is:
"an individual's personal sense of being or belonging to a particular gender".
However, to focus on gender identity alone entirely misses the point of the Bill and how it is structured, because it is a harm-based offence, not a belief-based offence. The test is not whether an individual holds or expresses an opinion about a particular gender identity. The question is whether they have subjected another individual to conduct amounting to conversion practice with intent in a way that causes harm to that individual. It is about protecting people from harm and coercion regardless of how they identify. However, I have acknowledged that the draft UK legislation published for England and Wales does include a statutory definition of "gender identity". If Members want that additional clarity and constraint in the Bill, I am very open to speaking to them about replicating that definition. I suspect, however, that Members who have raised that concern will not be satisfied by having a statutory definition because they do not want to protect transgender people in this debate at all. I also take Claire Sugden's point, which she made very eloquently, that there are provisions to limit the application of the definition of gender identity to the Bill if Members feel that that is necessary. It does not intersect with the Supreme Court judgement on sex; I have been very clear about that, and we have discussed that in the debate. Again, however, if it is about assurance and clarity, and if that is what Members want, I am very open to having those conversations. I turn to clause 9, "No right to claim trial by jury", and the suggestion that it is somehow an infringement of the rights of the accused. This is a consequential amendment that has followed engagement with, and recommendation from, the DOJ offences and penalties team, which has advised that the approach is consistent and the appropriate way forward. Indictable offences that are tried in the Crown Court will always undergo jury trial as normal practice. Article 29 already provides a range of exceptions whereby summary offences carry a maximum sentence exceeding six months, including stalking, threatening and abusive behaviour and domestic abuse — offences that are comparable to this one — and those exceptions exist in order to protect victims from further trauma and from prolonging a court case. That does not, in any way, undermine rights under the convention, because it already happens in courts for those existing offences. I welcome that the tone of the debate tonight has evolved somewhat from where it was the previous time that we gathered together. I have to say, however, that it is disappointing that the Ulster Unionist Party, in particular, seems to have regressed from its previous position. The Ulster Unionist Party was the first party in the Assembly to table a motion calling for a ban on conversion practices. That motion was inclusive of people who were lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. It is wholly regrettable and regressive that the Ulster Unionist Party, under its new leadership, has shied and withered away from that position.
I will.

4,639 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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