Telling someone who identifies as a cat that they are human could become a criminal offence under an “unworkable” Labour law, according to a new report.
The report argues that the proposed legislation banning conversion practices involving transgender and gay people is written so broadly that it could extend protection to people who describe themselves as “catgender”.
The critical assessment of Labour’s Conversion Practices Bill, co-written by Britain’s former equality watchdog, also warns that primary school children could face prosecution over comments about classmates who want to change sex. It further claims parents could receive prison sentences of up to five years if they refuse to fund gender surgery for their children.
According to the report, the draft law could breach the right to a fair trial by introducing the disputed concept of “gender identity” into legislation indirectly. It also warns that campaigners could bring private prosecutions against people who oppose their views.
Baroness Falkner, a former chairwoman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), said: “This draft bill appears oblivious to human rights law in Britain. In current form it breaches numerous rights including the right to a fair trial, the right to a family life, the freedom to hold religious or other beliefs, while curtailing freedom of expression.
“The impact of its measures on parental rights and duties and children’s safeguarding is unforeseen. It has been ill-conceived and will be unworkable unless it is considerably revised and then subjected to a full public consultation.”
The Policy Exchange think tank, which published the report, described the proposed legislation as “ideological, authoritarian, unworkable and wholly unsuitable for a democratic and pluralistic society”.
The study draws attention to the bill’s definition of “transgender identity”, which includes people who “identify as neither male nor female or as not solely male or female”.
Furries—people who dress up as animals—at an annual meeting in London in 2022
The report says that wording could cover hundreds of alternative gender identity labels, including “catgender”. An online dictionary describes the term as referring to someone with “a very strong connection to cats or other felines” or someone who experiences “delusions of being a cat”.
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“It is not an overstatement to say that, under the draft Bill, a person may face imprisonment for trying to persuade another that they are not, in fact, a cat,” the report states.
The assessment also notes that practices historically used to try to change gay people’s sexual orientation, including electric shock therapy and “corrective rape”, are already illegal.
It challenges some of the evidence used to demonstrate the prevalence of conversion practices, describing claims such as a survey suggesting that up to 30 per cent of transgender people have experienced exorcism as “wildly improbable”.
The Government says the bill is intended to “fill gaps in the criminal law”. However, the Policy Exchange report claims it could instead criminalise parents who try to discourage their children from transitioning.
“On the face of it, the draft Bill makes provision for parents to be jailed for up to five years for refusing to allow their child to dictate what language may be used to refer to them, for refusing to finance a child’s gender reassignment or for trying in good faith and with love and care—and without any malice or bad intention—to prevent their child from pursuing a course of action which is demonstrably likely to cause grave damage to their health.
“It places parents at the mercy of usually troubled and distressed but passionate children and adolescents who are convinced that they are being prevented from acquiring the answer to all their problems.”
The report further warns that, because the bill sets no minimum age for prosecution, “even children who are still at primary school may be liable to criminal prosecution for abusive conversion practices against their schoolmates where they have made comments or asked questions without malice or harmful intent”.
A Government spokesman rejected the findings, saying: “This report is misleading and based on a number of inaccurate claims. This draft Bill targets a specific form of abuse, it does not touch regular parenting.
“LGBT+ people should never, without exception, have to suffer coercion or abuse in an effort to change who they are. Successive governments have agreed for almost a decade that Conversion Practices have no place in modern Britain—this government is finally delivering on this promise.”
Government sources also dismissed the claims involving cat identities as “nonsense”, insisting that the bill does not create or define any new genders in law.