'We need to be more careful' when it comes to transgender conversion therapy, says health secretary
admitted on Monday it meant the conference due to be held in June and July was now in doubt.Now Sky News understands that the event is set to be cancelled.The conference would have coincided with the 50th anniversary of the capital's first official Pride marches.It was billed as the UK's first ever global LGBT conference when it was launched by senior ministers Liz Truss and Dominic Raab last year.Reacting to the event's cancellation, Conservative MP Dehenna Davison tweeted: "We had such a huge opportunity to prove the UK (and the Conservative Party) is a defender of freedom."As a Conservative member of the LGBT+ community, it is so wrong it has come to this."The decision to not ban transgender conversion therapy prompted the UK's LBGT+ business champion Iain Anderson to resign, saying it was "profoundly shocking".A government spokesperson repeated the position from Monday that it was "considering how to proceed" over the conference.Earlier this week, A Tory MP announced he is trans in a highly personal Twitter post.Jamie Wallis, MP for Bridgend, said he had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, adding: "I've felt this way since I was a very young child."Mr Wallis also rallied against ministers' plans to limit a ban on conversion therapy for gay people.Posting on Twitter, he said it was "wrong to exclude protections for a whole group of people from a practice described as 'abhorrent'".A national LGBT survey done by the government in 2017 suggested that 5% of LGBT people have been offered conversion, and 2% have undergone the therapy.These figures were higher among trans people, with 8% saying they had been offered the therapy, and 4% reporting having undergone it..
