Dear Thangam Debbonaire MP,

I am writing to ask for your support for a comprehensive ban on so-called ‘conversion therapy’ in England and Wales.

‘Conversion therapy’, or conversion practices, refers to practices that seek to change, “cure”, or suppress an individual’s sexual orientation and/or gender identity.

Conversion practices are abuse. They cause severe and long-lasting physical and psychological suffering, violate the human rights of LGBTQ+ people, and were found by the UN to ‘amount to torture’ in some cases. The UN Independent Expert report on conversion practices found that individuals subjected to this abuse experienced “significant loss of self-esteem, anxiety, depressive syndrome, social isolation, intimacy difficulty, self-hatred, shame and guilt, sexual dysfunction, suicidal ideation and suicide attempts and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as often significant physical pain and suffering.” 

The UK Government’s National LGBT Survey 2018 – the largest national survey of LGBT people ever conducted in the world, with over 108,000 respondents – found that 7 per cent of LGBT people have been offered or undergone conversion therapy, and that rises to 13 per cent of trans people.

The UK Government committed to banning conversion practices after the release of the National LGBT Survey, yet nearly four years have passed without a ban. This has left, and continues to leave, victims and potential victims of conversion practices at risk of abuse and lifelong harm.

The UK Government announced its intention to ban conversion practices in England and Wales in the Queen’s Speech May 2021, and released its proposals in October 2021. These proposals were open to consultation, which ended in February, and the Minister for Women and Equalities has committed to publishing draft legislation in the Spring.

The proposals include plans to introduce a new criminal offence for talking conversion therapy, as well as sentence uplifts for current offences that are found to have been used as a form of conversion therapy. There are also proposals to ban the advertising and promotion of conversion practices, to prevent young people being taken abroad for the purpose of conversion, and to engage statutory services in supporting victims and those at risk.

The Government will use the consultation responses to inform legislation for a ban, but there are concerning gaps in its proposals that must be dealt with for a legislative ban to be effective.

Please write to the Minister for Women and Equalities and call on her to ensure that any draft legislation to ban conversion practices:

• Protects all LGBTQ+ people. The definitions used by the UK Government of ‘same-sex to opposite-sex attraction’ and ‘transgender to not transgender’, or vice versa, do not include bi, asexual or non-binary people or other minority sexual orientations or diverse gender identities.
• Does not include a ‘consent loophole’. It is impossible to consent to abuse. Conversion practices are not a medical or therapeutic procedure, but the UK Government proposals suggest adults could provide ‘informed consent’. This is an incorrect application of the concept of ‘informed consent’ which could have significant legal implications for other forms of manipulative abuse such as domestic abuse.
• Bans all conversion practices in all settings. Whether in healthcare, therapeutic, religious or cultural settings, there should be no exemption for any form of conversion practices. While ensuring religious freedoms are maintained, there should be no exemption for faith-based conversion therapy which constitutes over half of the experiences of conversion practices in the UK.
• Provides support services for current and historical survivors of conversion practices.

Will you write to the Women and Equalities Minister to comprehensively ban conversion practices? Will you support legislation to ban conversion practices when it comes to the House? Will you support amendments to protect all LGBTQ+ people from this abuse, to remove the consent loophole, and to remove exemptions?

I welcome the opportunity to discuss this issue with you further and look forward to hearing from you soon. 

Yours sincerely,

Dear Thangam Debbonaire MP,

Please speak at the Westminster Hall Debate on the petition to Reform the Gender Recognition Act.As your constituent, I am asking you to speak up in favour of reforming the Gender Recognition Act 2004 at the upcoming Westminster Hall Debate on Monday 21 February at 4:30pm.

The Gender Recognition Act 2004 enables trans people to change their legal gender (from female to male, or male to female) by applying for a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC). GRCs are required for trans people to have their correct gender recorded on birth and death certificates, certain pension and insurance policies, and to protect their privacy and safety by not requiring their trans status be revealed in various situations such as applying for a job or university or college course.

As it stands, the Gender Recognition Act subjects trans people to a process which is needlessly lengthy, intrusive and stigmatising. For example, obtaining legal gender recognition requires that an individual be medically diagnosed with ‘gender dysphoria’.

But while the Government promised reform and held a public consultation in 2018 that found clear majorities in favour of significant reform, there was no response until September 2020 to the consultation’s clear findings. And when the Government did respond, it only announced it would reduce the fee and digitise the process – welcome first steps, but nowhere near the reform that is crucially needed.

The Women and Equalities Select Committee held an inquiry into the Reform of the Gender Recognition throughout 2021. The Inquiry Report, published on 21 December 2021, concluded there had been “a lack of any real change to the gender recognition process”. The report made a number of key recommendations:

• Immediately remove from the gender recognition process the requirement to live in the ‘acquired gender’ for a set period of time.
• Remove the diagnosis of ‘gender dysphoria’ from the Gender Recognition Act by 2023.  
• Remove the spousal consent provision in favour of a new approach where a full GRC can be issued at the same time as an annulment.

The Women and Equalities Select Committee recommended that the Government should bring back an action plan for reform within 12 weeks of publication of the report.

A straightforward system of legal gender recognition based on the principle of self-determination is already in operation in the Republic of Ireland by virtue of the Gender Recognition Act 2015. And in Scotland, following two public consultations that found similar majorities in favour of reform, the Scottish Government will be introducing a Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill in Spring 2022.

I am asking you to attend the Westminster Hall Debate on ‘Reform the Gender Recognition Act’ on Monday 21 February at 4:30pm, to speak up for trans communities and enable a fairer, shorter and non-stigmatising process of legal gender recognition.

Stonewall have produced a briefing in preparation for the debate, which you can find here. If you would like to contact them directly, you can email the Head of Policy at kieran.aldred@stonewall.org.uk.

If you cannot attend the debate, would you please write a supportive tweet on the day of the debate showing your support. You could write: “I support the findings of the @CommonsWomEqu report into legal gender recognition. The Government should reform the GRA and make the process less stigmatising, intrusive and medicalised for trans people. #ComeOutforTransEquality”

Yours sincerely,

Dear Thangam

I am writing to you as a concerned constituent on behalf of frontline health workers.

The COVID-19 crisis is escalating and we need to urgently protect those who are working on the frontline, and their patients.

It was a relief to see the Government expand its priority vaccination roll out to include healthcare staff. But an EveryDoctor survey on 3rd January found that 39% of our 1318 doctor respondents had yet to receive their first dose.

Frontline healthcare workers are continually exposed to COVID-19 in their workplaces. If they are left unprotected, they are at risk themselves from this potentially fatal illness, and they may also pass coronavirus on to vulnerable patients.

The Government announced yesterday that the sky-rocketing rise in cases has the capacity to overwhelm the NHS in the coming weeks.

With the recent approval of the Oxford vaccine, as a country we are now aiming to vaccinate 2 million people per week. This huge effort will require additional support; it is a huge undertaking. 

The Government must alleviate the pressure on NHS staff in delivering these vaccines by drafting in support from others in administering vaccines; perhaps by utilising the army. 

Frontline healthcare workers must be our immediate priority for vaccines. We are calling for all frontline NHS staff in the UK to receive at least a first dose vaccine within the next 14 days. 

This will protect staff, it will preserve healthcare resources (by reducing staff sickness), and crucially this course of action will protect the vulnerable patients who are in our care.

As my parliamentary representative, will you support EveryDoctor’s campaign to #ProtectNHSworkers in the following two ways?

1. Pledge to do everything in your power to advocate for all frontline health workers in the UK to be immunised against Covid-19 within 14 days.

2. Attend an emergency briefing from EveryDoctor on the need for immediate vaccinations for frontline staff on Thursday, 7 January at 2pm. MPs can register in advance for the online Zoom meeting at this link: http://bit.ly/january7briefing

Please let me know if you would like to take this pledge and attend this important briefing.

I look forward to hearing from you and would appreciate you copying in campaigns@everydoctor.org.uk in your reply to this email. 

Sincerely, 

Dear Thangam Debbonaire,

I am writing about the reports in today’s newspaper that suggest that Boris Johnson’s government is preparing to scrap a review of the Gender Recognition Act; a review which was commissioned by Theresa May because the current system for trans people is costly, lengthy, humiliating and unnecessary. The newspaper report suggests that the government is preparing to set out new ‘safeguards’ to protect female-only spaces including refuges and public lavatories.

I am writing for your action on three main points regarding this:

Firstly, the newspaper article suggests that 70% of respondents to the government’s consultation support improving the lives of trans people, despite a drive from anti-trans lobbyists to skew the consultation. I am therefore concerned about the government’s choice to ignore this overwhelming mandate for change and that it is instead siding with a relatively small but vocal group of activists and their followers, who appear determined to tell trans and cisgender women who they are and what they think. They seek to characterise transgender women as a sexual threat and cast transgender men as duped victims of a patriarchal conspiracy. This represents the government not acting in good faith with regard to this consultation, a point I feel that they should be challenged on, regardless of the subject at hand.

Secondly, the GRA review was intended to look only at the current process for trans individuals to change their birth certificate. A process that requires them to pay £140, gain accreditation from two separate medical experts, provide proof of living in their true gender for a solid two years and offer ultimate judgement of their identity to a panel they never personally meet. The government appears to be extending their remit and instead are suggesting revoking protections granted by the Equality Act 2010 to allow access to gendered spaces with reference to an individual’s gender rather than their sex. This roll-back of rights has the potential to cause harm to cisgender women, transgender women, transgender men and non-binary individuals. In North Carolina in 2016 a gender-policing law regarding access to public bathrooms was enacted that led to a rise in transphobia, as well as opening up the possibility of increased harassment of women in public restrooms who weren’t transgender but who didn’t dress or present in a ‘feminine’ way. It also meant that transgender men were being forced to use women’s toilets. This poses a far greater risk to spaces intended to be safe for those who identify as female (either permanently or on that day) as requiring transgender men to use such spaces makes it much easier for cisgender men to claim to be transgender and access them.

Thirdly, the government appears to once again be ignoring the evidence of experts in not allowing self-identification for the purposes of changing a birth certificate. Iceland, Portugal, Malta, Norway, Denmark or Belgium have all empowered trans individuals to self-ID. None of these countries have reported a rise in attacks on women in single-sex spaces.

In summary, trans people and all women are already self-identifying in single-sex spaces. There is no known evidence that male abusers are using this freedom to attack women. Self-ID in a number of countries has not affected women’s safety and has improved the lives of trans people. Policing gender in toilets and changing rooms has a negative impact on the freedoms of all women. Instead it appears that the ‘concern’ being expressed by lobbyists, without basis or evidence, is nothing more than anti-trans bigotry dressed in outdated quasi-feminist clothing. Nobody who believes in equality would seek to enforce the segregation of trans people and the introduction of further obstacles to all women.

I therefore ask you to support the LGBTQIA+ community, particularly during pride month, and hold the government to account for ignoring the response to their consultation; to require them to act on the recommendations laid out by experts regarding allowing self-ID; and to vote against the rolling back of existing rights granted to allow people to use gendered spaces based on their gender, providing safer spaces for all cisgender women, transgender men, transgender women and non-binary individuals who have been using toilets, trying on clothes in changing rooms, accessing domestic violence facilities, and generally getting on with their lives for as long as single-sex spaces have existed.

Yours sincerely,

Dear Thangam Debbonaire,

I am writing to appeal that the export of tear gas, rubber bullets, riot shields and other equipment related to the militarisation of the police is suspended, specifically to the US at this time in relation to its use in excessive force against protestors of the death of George Floyd. Ideally I would appeal that the export of such items is permanently disallowed.

Yours sincerely,

Dear Thangam Debbonaire,

I am writing to you to express my disbelief regarding the comments made by Ministers today regarding the trips taken by special advisor Dominic Cummings in contravention of the official advice during April 2020. Their words and his actions have seriously jeopardised the health of this nation and the ability to control the spread of covid-19 and I would like to see parliament returned before recess to discuss this as an urgent matter.

Yours sincerely,