The UK Government has published a draft Conversion Practices Bill that would criminalise “emotional pressure” aimed at changing a person’s sexual orientation or ‘transgender identity’. A breach would carry an unlimited fine, up to five years in prison, or both.

The Bill arrives as ministers prepare to restart a paused puberty blocker trial involving children as young as 11 – a policy sequence that leaves parents facing expanded legal exposure for questioning transition at precisely the moment the state resumes clinical experimentation on children.

The Bill closely resembles Victoria’s conversion therapy law, praised by UK LGBT advocacy group Stonewall as “best practice”. 

That precedent should give British lawmakers pause. Victoria’s own guidance stated that a parent refusing consent to puberty blockers could constitute conversion practice, before public criticism forced an amendment. 

Religious leaders across the Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh and Hindu communities have since told the Victorian Government that the law has produced a chilling effect on pastoral care, with clergy reporting they feel unable to provide guidance to those who seek it.

Simon Calvert of the Christian Institute has said the UK Bill is “wide open to misuse”. His objection turns on the statute’s language: the offence rests on “psychological or emotional pressure,” a standard broad enough to capture a mother’s refusal to fund a mastectomy or a pastor’s answer to a question about scripture.

The Evangelical Alliance’s UK director, Peter Lynas, has said the Bill’s definition of abusive practices is “entirely subjective” and could leave people exposed to prosecution years after the event in question. 

The Free Speech Union has raised similar concerns about unintended consequences for family life, and family law barrister Dennis Kavanagh has warned that local authorities could be required to intervene – and in some cases remove children from their homes – on the basis of an accusation alone.

The pattern is not confined to Britain. Spain’s Congress of Deputies has passed an amendment that would classify support for those who wish to live chastely in accordance with their faith as a criminal offence under provisions dealing with torture. 

Bishop José Ignacio Munilla has called the measure what it is: “So-called conversion therapy doesn’t exist,” he has said, describing the law as targeting the pastoral accompaniment his diocese provides to those who ask for it.

A parent’s refusal to fund an irreversible medical intervention is not coercion.

 In Australia, NSW and the ACT have “conversion therapy” laws in place, with the Tasmanian Greens proposing to introduce a similar bill this year. But by far the most dangerous law is that in Victoria, where no exemption exists for discussions between parents and children, or for religious teaching, preaching, or prayer.

It is this Victorian model that the UK is now holding up as “best practice”. Laws that criminalise ordinary conversations between parents, children, clergy and congregants have no place in a free society.