Revealed: How Labour conversion therapy ban could land company bosses in court
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Bosses have been warned they face the threat of prosecution under Labour's ban on conversion therapy – alongside parents.
Amid a growing row over the controversial new law that could see parents jailed for trying to dissuade their children from identifying as the opposite sex, campaigners say company directors are at risk too.
In a little-noticed aspect of the legislation – currently at the draft stage – firms and other organisations can be prosecuted over abusive attempts to change someone's sexuality or gender identity.
If a corporate body is found guilty, the Conversion Practices Bill states that company directors will be held personally liable too if they have failed to 'take all reasonable steps to prevent the commission of the offence'.
Critics of the law fear this will mean police being asked to investigate workplaces where an employee who identifies as the opposite sex says a colleague repeatedly called them by their former name or deliberately refused to use their preferred pronouns.
Lawyer Dennis Kavanagh, a director of the Gay Men's Network, said: 'This has serious implications for businesses.
Equalities Minister Bridget Phillipson confirmed colleagues calling a transgender employee by their former name would not qualify as 'abusive' under the draft bill, as come critics had claimed
'A standard workplace dispute over pronouns now has the potential to become a prosecution of the company itself for any policies or practices and where a jury was sure the company was guilty, the directors could then also be convicted for permitting this or failing to take all reasonable steps to prevent it.'
Helen Joyce, director of advocacy at women's rights charity Sex Matters, said: 'Every organisation in the country should be terrified of the Government's Draft Conversion Practices Bill.'
However the Government last night insisted misgendering would not constitute an abusive conversion practice.
A spokesman said: 'It's completely untrue that this Bill will burden businesses – unless your business is pushing abusive conversion practices, which we will outlaw.'
Equalities minister Bridget Phillipson also denied the law would criminalise parents if they tell their children they cannot change their sex.
Ms Phillipson told BBC 5Live: 'This is about forcing someone to change who they are and there is a very high legal threshold that's being set.
'It's about pressure to change, it is about it being abusive and it's also about the harm it causes.'
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