The Government has been forced to cancel a landmark international LGBT+ conference after it was revealed transgender people will be excluded from a conversion therapy ban, it is understood.
The ‘Safe To Be Me: Global Equality Conference’ promised to bring together policymakers, activists and experts to ‘protect and promote the rights of LGBT people around the world’.
But ministers were left humiliated when more than 100 charities pulled out in response to changes to a promised ban on all conversion therapy.
An outlaw on the so-called ‘treatments’ was promised four years ago – but news leaked last week that a U-turn had secretly been made.
Following widespread outrage, the government vowed once again to ban the practice hours later – but transgender people will not be included.
In a statement on Twitter yesterday, Stonewall bosses said they would only participate if the prime minister reverts to his original plan.
It is ‘apparent trans people have once again been sacrificed for political gain’, they said.
‘This is a decision we take with a heavy heart,’ a statement read. ‘As the UK’s first global LGBT+ conference, Safe To Be Me should be a moment for redoubling efforts globally to improve LGBTQ+ people’s rights and experiences.
‘This is why we have worked hard with government and civil society organisations over the last few months to try to make the conference work.’
Conservative MP Dehenna Davison has expressed dismay at the decision tonight.
‘We had such a huge opportunity to prove the UK (and the Conservative Party) is a defender of freedom’, she posted on Twitter.
‘As a Conservative member of the LGBT+ community, it is so wrong it has come to this.’
The UK’s first openly trans MP said on Monday it is ‘wrong to exclude protections for a whole group of people’ from an ‘abhorrent’ practice.
Jamie Wallis, Conservative MP for Bridgend, revealed he had been left ‘bitterly disappointed’ by his own party.
Meanwhile, Iain Anderson, the UK’s LGBT+ business champion, resigned earlier on Tuesday over the Government’s ‘profoundly shocking’ position.
Metro has contacted Downing Street for comment.
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