The UK's first transgender MP has said he is "bitterly disappointed" that plans to ban conversation therapy will exclude people who identify as a different gender to the one they were born into to. Jamie Wallis, Conservative MP for Bridgend, announced he was trans last week in a personal statement last week.
And the 37-year-old wrote on Twitter about his opposition to ministers’ plans to limit a ban on conversion therapy to gay people. He said it was “wrong to exclude protections for a whole group of people from a practice described as ‘abhorrent’”.
The backbencher argued that it would be a “broken promise” to allow conversion therapy to be banned, but for it not to apply to trans people. The outcome of a double U-turn by the Prime Minister last week, in which he appeared to flip-flop on whether to legislate against conversion therapy, has reportedly seen No 10 settle on outlawing “only gay conversion therapy, not trans”.
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In a series of tweets, Mr Wallis said: “I’m bitterly disappointed at the Government’s decision not to include gender identity in the ban on conversion therapy. Many have asked what my thoughts are. I’ve always believed that this debate attracts unnecessary hysteria and toxicity, and meaningful results can only come from meaningful debate.
"Understandably, concerns need to be looked at and debated, but it is wrong to exclude protections for a whole group of people from a practice described as ‘abhorrent’. I hope the announcement that a separate piece of work will now be done on this issue will be done at speed.
“If the CT (conversion therapy) ban passes through Parliament without any protections for the transgender community, it cannot be described as anything other than a broken promise.” The Government has said trans people should be “treated with the maximum possible generosity and respect” but that the “complexity of issues requires separate work to further consider transgender conversation therapy”.
When announcing the initial consultation into the conversion therapy ban, the UK Government declared: “The proposed protections are universal: an attempt to change a person from being attracted to the same-sex to being attracted to the opposite-sex, or from not being transgender to being transgender, will be treated in the same way as the reverse scenario. They therefore protect everyone.”
LGBT and religious leaders, including former archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams, have put pressure on Boris Johnson to include trans people in a ban on conversion therapy.
