Campaigners have warned that company directors and those in charge of organisations could face jail if their employees address colleagues using the wrong gender pronouns under a draft new law. The Draft Conversion Practices Bill would make it a criminal offence to suppress or alter someone's sexual orientation or gender identity, potentially placing employers in legal jeopardy over workplace interactions.
Critics urge overhaul of proposed law
Helen Joyce, director of the gender-critical human rights body Sex Matters, told The Telegraph that every organisation in Britain "should be terrified" of the legislation. She said: "Given the insistence of the trans lobby that having to use the correct toilets for their sex is a serious infringement of trans people's human rights, employers will be between a rock and a hard place. Let trans-identifying men use female facilities at work and you're breaching workplace regulations; tell them to stay out and you face criminal charges if they complain."
Joyce added: "It's hard to imagine more incompetent legislative drafting – or a more draconian and harmful law."
Government defends bill's purpose
A Government spokesman told the newspaper: "It's completely untrue that this bill will burden businesses, unless your business is pushing abusive conversion practices, which we will outlaw." They added: "It is standard practice for new criminal legislation to result in minor costs related to updated guidance or training for safeguarding professionals, such as social workers or teachers, to be equipped to spot abuse and support victims."
The Government says the Bill would "create new offences in relation to the carrying out of abusive conversion practices on individuals; to make provision for conversion practice protection orders: and for connected purposes".
Human rights concerns raised
The proposed law has also been branded "ideological, authoritarian, unworkable and wholly unsuitable", with campaigners calling it "a threat to the liberties of the majority of citizens, as well as to their fundamental human rights".
Baroness Kishwer Falkner, former chairwoman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and co-author of a Policy Exchange think tank report, said: "This draft Bill appears oblivious to human rights law in Britain. In current form it breaches numerous rights including the right to a fair trial, the right to a family life, the freedom to hold religious or other beliefs, while curtailing freedom of expression. The impact of its measures on parental rights and duties and children's safeguarding is unforeseen."
She concluded: "It has been ill-conceived and will be unworkable unless it is considerably revised and then subjected to a full public consultation."
