Live tracker: Draft Conversion Practices Bill (England and Wales)
This tracker follows the Draft Conversion Practices Bill through pre-legislative scrutiny. It brings together the official parliamentary record, the principal unresolved questions, Protect & Teach’s published work, and selected substantive stakeholder evidence.
Last updated: 1 October 2026
Live tracker: This page will be updated as the Joint Committee publishes evidence, holds meetings and hearings, reports to Parliament, and as the Government responds or brings forward further legislation.
Current status
The Government published the Draft Conversion Practices Bill on 25 June 2026 for England and Wales. A Joint Committee of MPs and members of the House of Lords was appointed on 18 September 2026 to conduct pre-legislative scrutiny and is required to report by 22 January 2027. Parliament now lists private Committee meetings for 12 October 2026 at 4:00pm and 15 October 2026 at 12:00pm. A public call for evidence, written-evidence deadline and programme of public oral-evidence hearings have not yet been published on the Committee’s webpage.
Government & Parliament
Official publications and parliamentary scrutiny milestones.
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Confirmed
Draft Bill published
The Government published the Draft Conversion Practices Bill on 25 June 2026. It applies to England and Wales and proposes three principal measures: a criminal offence relating to abusive conversion practices; an offence concerning encouraging or assisting such practices abroad; and Conversion Practice Protection Orders.
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Confirmed
Impact Assessment published
The draft final-stage Impact Assessment says costs and benefits remain provisional during pre-legislative scrutiny and may be revised before any final Bill is introduced. It also states that impacts on the wider justice system are being assessed with the Ministry of Justice for inclusion in future iterations.
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Confirmed
Equality Impact Assessment published
The Equality Impact Assessment describes important limitations in the evidence base, including limited representative UK data, methodological variation and limitations in drawing causal conclusions from the available literature.
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Confirmed
Explanatory Notes published
The Government’s Explanatory Notes explain the intended operation of the draft clauses but do not form part of the Bill and have not been endorsed by Parliament.
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Confirmed
Joint Committee appointed
A 12-member Joint Committee of six MPs and six members of the House of Lords was appointed on 18 September 2026 to scrutinise the draft Bill.
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Confirmed
Committee reporting deadline
The Joint Committee is required to report by 22 January 2027.
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Confirmed
First Committee meetings scheduled
Parliament currently lists private Joint Committee meetings for Monday 12 October 2026 at 4:00pm and Thursday 15 October 2026 at 12:00pm. Both are described as private meetings and their locations are currently listed as to be confirmed.
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Awaited
Public call for evidence and oral-evidence programme
Parliament has said that further details of the Committee’s work, including opportunities to contribute views, will be announced in due course. As at 1 October, a public call for evidence, written-evidence deadline and programme of public oral-evidence hearings have not been published on the Committee webpage.
Under scrutiny / unresolved
Questions likely to matter during pre-legislative scrutiny.
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Open question
What conduct fills the claimed legal gap?
What serious conduct targeted by the draft Bill is currently lawful, how often does it occur, and why are existing criminal, civil, safeguarding and professional mechanisms insufficient?
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Open question
How certain are the key definitions?
How will courts apply concepts such as “conversion practice”, “abusive” conduct, intention, serious harm, alarm or distress, and the boundaries between prohibited conduct and lawful conversation, advice, therapy, parenting or pastoral support?
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Open question
What does the prevalence evidence establish?
The Government acknowledges substantial limitations in the evidence base. Scrutiny will need to distinguish reported experiences from conduct satisfying every element of the proposed criminal offence.
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Open question
What evidence establishes causation?
The Government’s Equality Impact Assessment identifies limitations in establishing causal relationships from the available evidence. Parliament will need to consider what conclusions can safely be drawn from correlational, retrospective and self-reported evidence.
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Open question
Parents, therapists and safeguarding
How will the framework protect legitimate exploratory conversations, professional judgement and proportionate safeguarding while still identifying genuinely abusive conduct?
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Open question
Healthcare safeguard and professional standards
Conduct carried out in the course of providing healthcare is excluded from the definition of a conversion practice unless the provider acts in a way that falls far below the standards reasonably expected of a person in their position. Scrutiny will need to examine how sufficiently certain and predictable that threshold is in practice, including how relevant professional standards would be identified and applied.
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Open question
Chilling effects and access to therapy
Stakeholders including mental-health professionals interviewed by Sex Matters have raised concerns that fear of complaints, investigations or legal proceedings could affect willingness to work with gender-distressed or trans-identifying clients. Scrutiny will need to test whether such effects are likely, their possible scale, and whether the draft safeguards adequately address them.
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Open question
Children and family relationships
The draft offence does not contain a general exemption for parents or family members. Scrutiny will need to examine how the offence and protection-order regime would operate in ordinary family relationships, particularly where parents are making safeguarding, welfare or healthcare decisions concerning children.
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Open question
Sexual orientation and transgender identity
The draft Bill applies its conversion-practice framework to both sexual orientation and transgender identity. Scrutiny will need to examine whether the evidence base, concepts, potential harms and appropriate safeguards are sufficiently comparable to justify their treatment within the same legislative framework.
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Open question
Conversion Practice Protection Orders
What evidential threshold, procedural safeguards and limits will apply to civil protection orders, particularly where allegations concern intention, identity, psychological effects, private conversations or family relationships?
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Open question
Human-rights and proportionality questions
How will the final scheme address legal certainty, freedom of expression, freedom of thought, conscience and religion, private and family life, and proportionality?
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Open question
Monitoring effectiveness
What outcomes will demonstrate that legislation reduced serious harm rather than merely increasing reports, referrals, investigations, guidance or training activity? What baseline will be used and how will unintended consequences be identified?
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Awaited
Joint Committee evidence
A public call for written evidence, submission deadline, witness programme, oral-evidence transcripts and any specialist-adviser material are awaited. Protect & Teach will update this tracker as Parliament publishes substantive material.
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Awaited
Committee report and Government response
The Joint Committee must report by 22 January 2027. The Government will then decide how to respond and whether to introduce legislation in revised form.
Protect & Teach work
Protect & Teach publications, submissions and parliamentary-facing material.
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P&T published
Policy Analysis Paper No. 1
Draft Conversion Practices Bill (England and Wales): An Evidence Review and Policy Analysis — a 769-page review of the evidence base, legal framework, safeguarding implications, Government assessments and international comparisons.
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P&T published
8-page Policy Evidence Briefing
A shorter briefing for parliamentarians, professionals, journalists and the public, distilling the principal findings and nine questions for scrutiny.
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P&T published
Template letter for MPs
An editable public template enabling constituents to ask MPs to examine the evidential basis for the draft Bill and select specific scrutiny questions.
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P&T position
Protect & Teach conclusion
Protect & Teach’s published analysis concludes that the evidential case for this particular criminal and preventive regime has not been established and that the draft Bill should not proceed.
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P&T action
Support for open letter
Protect & Teach supported an open letter coordinated by LGB Alliance opposing the draft Bill and raising concerns about parents, children and professionals.
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Awaited
Joint Committee submission / evidence
Protect & Teach intends to review any call for evidence and will record here any submission, published evidence or parliamentary engagement as the Joint Committee’s scrutiny develops.
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Awaited
Response to Committee report
Protect & Teach will review the Joint Committee’s conclusions and any subsequent Government response against the evidence and issues identified in Policy Analysis Paper No. 1.
Selected stakeholder evidence and analysis
This section records substantive material relevant to scrutiny. Inclusion does not mean Protect & Teach endorses every argument, factual assertion or conclusion. Stakeholder claims are identified as such. Formal parliamentary evidence will be prioritised once published.
Gay Men’s Network
Gay Men’s Network has published a full legal response to the UK Government’s Draft Conversion Practices Bill 2026. Its website describes the response as addressing criminal-law, human-rights and family-law implications.
Sex Matters — Criminalising conversations
Sex Matters has published Criminalising conversations, a report by social-science researcher Matilda Gosling based on in-depth interviews with 30 mental-health professionals, many with experience of working with gender-distressed or trans-identifying clients. The report focuses principally on the transgender-identity provisions of the draft Bill.
Interviewees raise concerns about the Bill’s definitions, the healthcare safeguard, exploratory therapy, complaints and chilling effects, safeguarding, parents and family relationships, detransitioners, and possible effects on lesbian and gay people.
The report states that almost half of its UK interviewees said they would stop, or consider stopping, work in this area if the Bill were enacted. This is a finding from the report’s interview sample and should not be read as an estimate of the proportion of UK mental-health professionals generally who would do so.
The report adds qualitative evidence directly relevant to several issues identified independently in Protect & Teach’s Policy Analysis Paper No. 1, particularly legal certainty, therapeutic exploration, safeguarding, parental conversations and possible chilling effects.
Transgender Trend
Transgender Trend published analysis on 7 July 2026 focusing on the research and evidence cited in support of the draft Bill, with particular emphasis on parents and gender-distressed children.
LGB Alliance
LGB Alliance has published policy material opposing conversion-practices legislation that combines sexual-orientation and gender-identity provisions. Protect & Teach also supported an LGB Alliance-coordinated open letter in August 2026.
Core sources
- Office for Equality and Opportunity, Draft Conversion Practices Bill , published 25 June 2026, updated 1 September 2026.
- Office for Equality and Opportunity, Draft final stage Impact Assessment .
- Office for Equality and Opportunity, Draft Equality Impact Assessment .
- Office for Equality and Opportunity, Explanatory Notes .
- UK Parliament, Draft Conversion Practices Bill Joint Committee .
- UK Parliament, Joint Committee on draft Conversion Practices Bill appointed , 18 September 2026.
- Protect & Teach CIC, Why the Evidence Does Not Support the Draft Conversion Practices Bill , September 2026.
- Matilda Gosling for Sex Matters, Criminalising conversations , 1 October 2026.