Views on the 'End Conversion Therapy' petition

Overview

The Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee is inviting your views on a public petition, PE1817: End Conversion Therapy.

Background

The petition was lodged in August 2020. It calls on the Scottish Parliament "to urge the Scottish Government to ban the provision or promotion of LGBT+ conversion therapy in Scotland".

In the previous session of the Parliament (Session 5) the Public Petitions Committee received written evidence from:

• the Scottish Government
• jointly from Stonewall Scotland, Equality Network, Scottish Trans Alliance, and LGBT Youth Scotland

In its evidence, the Scottish Government noted that the UK Government published its LGBT Action Plan in 2018. which included a commitment to ban conversion therapy in the UK.

The UK Government announced measures would be brought forward to ban conversion therapy in the Queen's speech. This was followed by a commitment to launch a consultation and then introduce legislation banning conversion therapy in the UK.

After consideration, that committee referred the petition to the Session 5 Equalities and Human Rights Committee. That committee received further written evidence jointly from Stonewall Scotland, Equality Network, Scottish Trans Alliance and LGBT Youth Scotland.

The Equalities and Human Rights Committee agreed to keep the petition open and to refer to its successor committee for this parliamentary session.

What are the key questions?

The Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee welcomes your response to the following questions:

1. What are your views on the action called for in the petition?
    
2. What action would you like to see the Scottish Government take, within the powers available to it?
    
3. Do you have suggestions on how the Committee can take forward its consideration of the petition? For example:
   • who should it talk to?
   • who should it hear from?

It is not necessary to answer all questions.

How to submit your views

Please submit your views using the online submission form, linked to below.

We welcome written views in English, Gaelic, Scots or any other language. 

The call for views closes on 13 August 2021.

What happens next

The Committee has not published all responses received from individual people. 

The Parliament looks for material in submissions, to any inquiry, that might breach data protection legislation, could be defamatory, or refers to live court cases. 

In this case we have published 442 submissions. There are around 980 additional submissions which would need to be individually checked.  

Checking all individual responses would have involved disproportionate staff resources. This would have delayed the inquiry.

It is possible for additional submissions to be published. If your submission is not currently published, and you would like it to be please contact us. Please email your request to EHRCJ.committee@parliament.scot.

The names of people who have made submissions which have not been published is available below, or in this PDF file.