UK Politics
Up to £103m for Labour’s Trans Law — and Its £783m ‘Benefit’ Rests on a Stonewall Poll
Labour’s conversion practices law could cost up to £103m, and its £783m ‘benefit’ rests on a Stonewall survey and a 100% success assumption.
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News | By Matt, Editor
Up to £103 million. That is the top-end cost the government puts on Labour’s draft Conversion Practices Bill over ten years, and it still leaves out police time, court cases and prisons. Ministers say the law will pay society back £783 million. Dig into how they got there, and the case rests on a survey commissioned by Stonewall.
The figures are in the Cabinet Office’s own impact assessment for the Bill, which the Daily Mail picked up this week. They are worth reading slowly, because the bill lands on taxpayers, schools, private clinics and churches.
Key facts
- Best estimate of 10-year costs is £59.7m, with a range of £33.2m to £103.3m. Costs to the criminal justice system are not included and are “being assessed” with the Ministry of Justice.
- Public sector training (police, CPS, courts, NHS, schools, social workers, Border Force, Charity Commission) costs £45.8m in year one. The private sector pays £13.6m, which includes £0.7m for religious leaders.
- The claimed benefit is £783m (range £700m to £867m), from fewer people suffering depression, priced at £70,000 per healthy year of life.
- The estimate of 75,000 to 93,000 victims a year comes from an Opinium/Stonewall survey (2025).
- The model assumes the law prevents 100% of conversion practices in its target group.
Where the £783m comes from
The impact assessment, reference CO2036 and dated 18 June, does not hide its sources. To work out how many people suffer conversion practices each year in England and Wales, the Cabinet Office took two answers from the Opinium/Stonewall survey: people told to take “purifying” substances, and people given “pseudo-scientific counselling sessions”. It then applied those rates to the wider LGBT+ population. That gives between 4.2 and 5.2 per cent a year, or roughly 75,000 to 93,000 people.
Have your sayTap to commentFrom there it estimates that around 28,500 to 35,300 of them suffer depression as a result. It prices each healthy year of life at the Treasury’s standard £70,000. It then assumes the new criminal offences will stop every single case. Put all of that together and you get £783 million of “monetised benefit”.
The document itself admits the evidence base is “relatively limited” and “dominated by self-selecting surveys”. It says incidents are not captured in official statistics. It says its projections “should be treated as indicative rather than definitive”. It even works out that the Bill would break even if just 608 fewer people a year became depressed. That is a long way from 30,000.
“Pure fantasy”
Maya Forstater, chief executive of the charity Sex Matters, told the Mail: “The idea that the conversion practices bill could contribute nearly £800m to the economy is pure fantasy based on shaky evidence, while the cost of the bill has been grossly underestimated.” She said the biggest costs, including police and court time, social workers and children taken into care, “have not been counted”.
Shadow Equalities Minister Joy Morrissey said it would be wrong to load more than £100 million in extra costs on to businesses already being squeezed. Forstater has also pointed out on X that the government is tendering £180,000 over two years to run a conversion practices victim helpline. She says £471,232 has been spent on that helpline over five years, with no published data on how many calls it took.
Stonewall in the room
The survey is not Stonewall’s only part in this. The Telegraph reported on Thursday that Stephen Kiely, Stonewall’s head of policy and public affairs, attended a meeting in Downing Street in mid-October about the draft Bill. He also gave evidence to the joint committee of MPs and peers scrutinising it, where he urged changes to the draft, including dropping the requirement to prove abuse.
Gender-critical campaigners say that is the problem in a sentence. A lobby group that has spent years campaigning for this law supplied the numbers used to justify it, and then helped shape the wording too. Jayne Ozanne, who founded the Ban Conversion Therapy coalition, has gone further still. She told the committee the threshold was too high and that the current law does not cover “this most insidious form, which is prayer”.
The Church and the clinic
That is the line now worrying the Church of England. On Friday the Telegraph reported that Anglican leaders had warned the Bill risks criminalising prayer and ordinary pastoral care. That is a blow to ministers who had held up the Church’s support. The Church says any law must target coercion and abuse while leaving room for discussion, disagreement and non-coercive support.
Dr David Bell, the psychiatrist whose warnings helped expose the Tavistock gender clinic, told the Mail that a law like this could have been used to silence the whistleblowers. “It would have acted as serious threat to those who raised the alarm,” he said. He added that the Bill will make parents and professionals “fearful of criminal action if they do not affirm children and adolescents in their gender identity”.
We reported on Tuesday that a former head of the equalities watchdog warned parents could face jail for trying to talk a child out of transitioning. Reform UK, with Nigel Farage and Suella Braverman leading the attack, has branded it “tyrannical”.
What the government says
Bridget Phillipson, the Minister for Women and Equalities, insists the fears are overblown. “There is absolutely nothing within what we’re proposing that would stop parents having reasonable conversations with their children,” she told LBC. She said the draft is being scrutinised by MPs and peers “to allow people to flag areas they want further consideration”.
The Cabinet Office says the draft Bill targets abusive practices aimed at changing someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity. It says its measures must not hurt parents, religious leaders, teachers or anyone supporting a person exploring their identity, and that normal clinical care is out of scope. The impact assessment argues the overall effect on welfare is positive, and that the cost to businesses will be small next to the benefits.
Our view
If a Tory government priced a law on a poll from a lobby group it had invited into Number 10, Labour would never let it go. Assault is already a crime, and so is coercive control in families. What this Bill adds is a vague new offence, a training bill for police, teachers and vicars, and an unknown cost to the courts, all justified by survey answers and an assumption that it works perfectly. Phillipson says parents have nothing to fear. Then put it in black and white on the face of the Bill, publish the justice costs, and stop marking Stonewall’s homework with taxpayers’ money.
Should Labour scrap its conversion practices Bill? Vote in our poll below.
Sources
- Cabinet Office, Draft final stage impact assessment CO2036 (18 June 2026): costs £59.7m best / £33.2m to £103.3m, excluding justice system; £45.8m public sector; £13.6m private sector; £783m benefit; Opinium/Stonewall 2025 prevalence; 100% effectiveness assumption; 608 break-even; £70,000 QALY
- Daily Mail, 6 November 2026: “Anger over £100million cost of Labour’s gender Bill”; Forstater and Morrissey quotes
- The Telegraph, 5 November 2026: Stonewall’s Stephen Kiely at No 10 meeting and committee evidence
- The Telegraph, 6 November 2026: Church of England warning on prayer
- Daily Mail, 6 November 2026: Dr David Bell, Jayne Ozanne and Bridget Phillipson (LBC) quotes
- Maya Forstater on X, 5 November 2026: £180,000 victim support tender, £471,232 helpline spend
- Photo: Bridget Phillipson at Derby College, 12 August 2025. Lauren Hurley / No 10 Downing Street, Open Government Licence v3.0 (cropped)
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