She also said she is "a proud feminist, and a proud trans ally, and I don't think that either of those things are contradictory"

The next Labour government will outlaw conversion therapy for trans people, Labour MP Angela Eagle has said. She made the comments at a fringe meeting at the TUC Congress chaired by Unison’s general secretary Christina McAnea.

Speaking about what the next labour government would deliver for trans rights, Eagle told the meeting, “we will ban conversion therapy, and we will not have consent loopholes in order to exclude trans people”. Earlier this year, the government announced that it would be introducing a ban on conversion therapy, but only for sexual orientation, not for gender identity too.

Conversion therapy refers to ‘treatments’ which aim to alter, or ‘cure’ a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. According to the LGBT charity Stonewall, one in twenty LGBT people have been pressured to access services to question or change their sexual orientation when accessing healthcare services. The UN Independent Expert on sexual orientation and gender identity, Victor Madrigal-Borloz, has said that conversion therapy may in some instances “amount to torture”.

Eagle’s statement that a Labour government would ban trans conversion therapy tallies with Keir Starmer’s previous comments on the issue. In April, he called for the government to ban conversion therapy “in all its forms”.

Eagle also told the fringe meeting – titled ‘Trade Unionists for Trans Rights’ – that she is “a proud feminist, and a proud trans ally, and I don’t think that either of those things are contradictory”, and warned that she saw “attacks on our trans siblings as a gateway to wider homophobia”. She also said the next Labour government would commit to introducing new anti-discrimination protections in the workplace.

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

Image credit: UK Parliament – Creative Commons

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