The Department of Health has now given answers to three written questions Diana Johnson has tabled about NHS involvement in gay conversion therapy. What follows are the government’s statements, and our interpretations of them after a lengthy private discussion. Please bear with us! Negotiate your way through the enigma of the Parliamentary Language, and you just might find their answers interesting.

First, some background. Diana asked these questions after an excellent Bradford-based group, Equity Partnership, contacted us. They told us of their success in securing a joint-statement against conversion therapy from all four of the NHS Trusts based in Bradford and Airedale in May last year. As far as we know, no other NHS Trusts have made statements against conversion, and no suggestions have been made that the new Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) coming in will be any less reticent over the issue of gay conversion in the NHS. In fact, the new structure of NHS Commissioning could make things much worse as far as conversion therapy goes. 

Considering, on top of this, the evidence from Patrick Strudwick in an undercover investigation in 2010 that conversion therapists were getting patients and funding from the NHS – with one accredited psychotherapist receiving most of her patients from GPs’ surgeries – we thus felt it appropriate ask the government about NHS involvement in gay conversion. Three separate questions were tabled, and Norman Lamb, responding for the Department for Health, has now answered them all. Here’s the first one [142315]:

Q: “To ask the Secretary of State for Health what steps his Department has taken to ensure that the NHS does not commission any services from groups who engage in or promote conversion therapy.

A: “The Department does not recommend the use of conversion therapy and it is not a National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence recommended treatment. It is for commissioners of NHS services to ensure that treatment and care, including therapy, is provided to every patient without any form of discrimination. Clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) will in future commission the majority of health care services. As public sector organisations, they will be subject to the specific duties of the public sector Equality Duty under the Equality Act 2010. Therefore CCGs must, in the exercise of their functions, have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and other conduct prohibited under the Act.”

Moving on, two later questions [142816 & 142817], answered today, ask the Secretary of State “if he will make it his policy to prohibit the commissioning of conversion therapy by (a) clinical commissioning groups, (b) GP commissioning and (c) the National Commissioning Board” and “what recent representations he has received on conversion therapy.” The answer to the last question was a rather blunt “we have had no other representations on this issue”, so no meat there. Answer three is exactly the same as answer one, except for a crucial additional sentence:

“I do not believe it would be appropriate to commission conversion therapy using public funds.“

In asking these questions, we were hoping that the Department of Health would be forced to encourage NHS groups and CCGs to go down the route of the Bradford and Airedale NHS Trusts. The highlighted passage above is, I think, a significant statement which might make headlines. But the general picture seems clear from the thrust of the government’s answers, and frankly we’re all disappointed by their stance here.

Lamb’s answer here seems to carry on in the same vein as their answers to a different set of PQs tabled by Diana Johnson in November 2012. Back then, he said the DoH did “not condone” conversion therapy, but they were completely unwilling to regulate the psychotherapy sector to stop gay conversion from happening. Now he “does not recommend” conversion, but he has not committed to anything to ensure that the NHS didn’t commission any services from groups engaging in the practice he ostensibly finds inappropriate.

Indeed, Danny Norton aptly pointed out in our private discussions: the issue isn’t just about discrimination and the Equalities Act 2010, which the Minister for Health is so willing to emphasise (twice!). One passage Danny wrote really gets to the heart of the matter:

… “we are not talking about any form of discrimination against gay people. We are trying to ensure that people who are having ‘orientation struggles’ get the help they need, and don’t resort to crackpot therapies that will only go on to make them hate themselves and make matters much, much worse.

“Surely, the state has a responsibility to ensure that only legitimate care is given to individuals who seek it, and that witchcraft and hollow miracles aren’t used? It seems that the government is totally clueless about this issue. I think they know it needs to be tackled, they just don’t know how to do it … It just gets swept under the carpet as a result.”

Really, I can only offer a less succinct re-wording of Danny’s excellent point. Nothing in the government’s answers talks about what a GP should do if a patient comes to their clinic uneasy about their sexuality. If someone did that, it might not be discrimination for a GP to forward the patient on to a conversion therapist, operating outside the NHS. But, when the evidence is clear that conversion doesn’t work and harms patients, we think it would still be immoral for any so-called “professional” to in any way encourage their patient towards the idea that their sexuality can, or should, be changed.

Nothing the government has said touches on this, even though there has been evidence that this kind of thing happens. It’s absolutely discraceful that no government has investigated Studwick’s allegations, which emerged back in February 2010.

We feel the government’s statements show just how important and relevant our anti-conversion campaign still is.