Sunak faces Tory MPs rebellion over conversion therapy ban

Left and Right of party unite over fears that questioning a child’s gender decision could become a crime

A MAJORITY of Tory MPs have “serious worries” about the Government’s plan to ban transgender conversion therapy, a former minister has said.

Tim Loughton said that concerns about the ban were “not a Left or Rightwing thing”, with the whole Conservative parliamentary party united in feeling “cautious” about the move.

Last week, the Government revealed that as well as proceeding with a long promised ban on so-called conversion therapies, that try to change the sexuality of gay people, the ban would also apply to those seeking to stop people from changing their gender identity.

However, that has prompted fears that it could inadvertently criminalise parents, teachers and doctors who question whether children really want to change their gender.

Mr Loughton insisted that the Government was yet to engage with MPs to address their worries. “We haven’t been told anything,” he said.

The policy poses an unusual risk to the Government because MPs on the Right and Left have voiced concerns. Damian Green, chairman of the One Nation Group, warned that “dozens” of Tories could oppose the ban. On the party’s opposite wing, Craig Mackinlay said that MPs in “Right-of-centre groups” – such as Conservative Way Forward and the European Research Group – were sceptical. He said: “I can imagine the thread running through those groups would be one of concern: why are we doing this? I would probably be tempted to vote against this myself.”

Mr Loughton said that in the parliamentary party a “majority certainly have got some serious worries about this”.

“It is not a political divide, it’s people who have women’s rights at heart and people who have children’s welfare at heart,” he said. It was “too early to say” how many MPs might rebel, he added: “Because we don’t know… what the safeguards are going to be.”

Mr Loughton said that though Labour may lend Rishi Sunak enough votes to get a bill through the Commons, the Prime Minister still risked “upsetting quite a lot of colleagues” if he did not get the legislation right.

He added that MPs “agreed” people should be “protected” against “loonies who want you to die in the fires of hell because you don’t conform to their sexual conventions” but that “concerned parents and proper professional clinicians just doing their job should not be caught up in such a ban”.