Looking back at 2023

It has been another busy year for The Christian Institute. Many people in positions of influence in our society, whether in government, education, medicine, or elsewhere, spend a great deal of time promoting ideas or pushing policies which run counter to Christian truth.

And so this year, as every year, we have sought to be a Christian influence in a secular world wherever we could – and to help you be one too.

We round-up of some of the issues which hit the headlines in 2023.

‘Conversion Therapy’

At the turn of the year, the Westminster Government announced proposals for a new law on conversion therapy in England and Wales. It said a draft Bill would be published in full later in the year. It did not give any details of what the new law would include, but amid pushes from activists to ensure any legislation banned prayer, preaching and pastoral conversations alongside actual abuse and coercion, Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch pledged to ensure it would not criminalise everyday religious practice.

In the summer, the Institute wrote to the Prime Minister urging the Government to avoid legislation that mirrors draconian rules in Victoria, Australia that UK activists hold up as their “gold-standard”.  New guidance there states that Christians can only pray in a way that affirms everyone is “perfect as they are”, and brands prayers speaking “about a person’s brokenness or need to repent” as ‘harmful’ and ‘likely to be illegal’.

The publication of a major poll commissioned by The Christian Institute followed just a few weeks later, revealing that banning conversion therapy was a priority for just 4 per cent of UK voters ahead of the anticipated 2024 general election.

Support for a ban was almost as low in the Republic of Ireland, with just 6 per cent regarding it as a priority. This is perhaps unsurprising, given that an official study published earlier in the year had revealed there is little or no evidence that conversion therapy is taking place in the Republic of Ireland. Despite this, Equalities and Integration Minister Roderic O’Gorman heralded the publication of the report as “an important step towards legislating for a ban on conversion practices”. A Bill is expected in January.

At the Labour Party Conference in October, Shadow Women and Equalities Secretary Anneliese Dodds announced the party was committed to imposing a comprehensive law on so-called ‘conversion therapy’. She said a Labour law would have ‘no loopholes’ and would be ‘trans-inclusive’. She announced the party would also look to amend the law to make it easier to change legal sex, if it won the next General Election.

And the year ended as it began, with Parliamentarians considering proposals for a new law on conversion therapy. Separate Private Members’ Bills were launched in both the House of Lords and the House of Commons. In response to the former, the CI commissioned a fresh legal opinion from top human rights lawyer Jason Coppel, who warned the wide-ranging Bill posed a threat to fundamental freedoms. 

In Holyrood, the Scottish Government announced a consultation on banning conversion therapy would be brought forward in January. The consultation has been informed by reports and recommendations made by the Scottish Parliament’s Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee and an ‘Expert Advisory Group on Ending Conversion Practices’ appointed by the Scottish Government.

Both groups called on the Government to model its legislation on the conversion therapy law currently in force in Victoria, Australia – a recommendation human rights expert Aidan O’Neill KC says “would have the undoubted effect of criminalising much mainstream pastoral work of churches”.

Legal and Education Casework

The Christian Institute helps hundreds of people every year, fighting cases of national importance for gospel freedom and defending Christians discriminated against because of their faith. But court cases are just the tip of the iceberg and we never publicise most of what we do.

In July, we reported that with our help a Christian parent governor was formally vindicated by the High Court after she had been axed for challenging an inappropriate sex ed policy at her kids’ primary school.

The Gateshead school for which she volunteered accused her of opposing the Governing Body’s collective decision to approve the trans-affirming policy and removed her. But the court reinstated her after the Governing Body and Local Authority both admitted her dismissal had been unlawful.

‘Susan’ (not her real name) was just one of the more than 200 Christian parents, teachers and school governors our Education Department helped with tailored, practical advice on dealing with issues including the Equality Act, sex education, Religious Education and LGBT ideology.

Relationships and Sex Education

March saw the Prime Minister commit to bringing forward a review of statutory guidance on Relationships and Sex Education. The pledge came after he was presented with a request signed by 50 MPs, and a 130-page report documenting “unsuitably sexually explicit” teaching resources.

In an interview with the Daily Mail two months later, Rishi Sunak reiterated the importance of ensuring children are only exposed to age-appropriate sex education content. He said: “I’m a parent, and I think most parents would care about that. They’d want to know what their kids were being taught, what materials they were being exposed to.”

Towards the end of the year, scores of Conservative MPs gave their support to a backbench Bill to ensure parents have a legal right to view sex education materials.

Miriam Cates’ Relationships and Sex Education (Transparency) Bill would require schools to share copies of text and images used in RSE lessons with parents and ban them from using unpublished third-party teaching resources.

While these positive moves took place in England, the Westminster Government announced in June that compulsory Relationships and Sexuality Education classes would be introduced in Northern Ireland, forcing schools to teach children about abortion. The Northern Ireland Office said the Regulations “will result in educating adolescents on issues such as … the legal right to an abortion in Northern Ireland, and how relevant services may be accessed”.

MPs voted overwhelmingly in favour by 373 to 28, but almost all the NI members opposed. The Northern Irish representatives complained the move trampled over the devolution settlement, and had also been rushed through without proper consultation.

Gender Ideology

In early January, the Westminster Government also moved to block Holyrood’s gender self-ID Bill. Scotland Secretary Alister Jack exercised his powers under the Scotland Act to veto the Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which would have allowed 16-year-olds to change their legal sex by self-declaration in just six months and without a medical diagnosis.

Nicola Sturgeon stepped down as First Minister in February – a move that many linked to the fierce public opposition to the Bill – and was replaced by Humza Yousaf. In one of his first actions as leader, he announced his intention to push through the blocked ‘sex-swap’ legislation.

But his attempt proved unsuccessful, as in December the Outer House of Scotland’s Court of Session ruled against it. Judge Lady Haldane decided that Alister Jack ‘reasonably and lawfully’ blocked the Bill in order to protect the integrity of UK-wide equalities legislation.

NHS England announced in June its intention to end the routine prescription of puberty blocking drugs for gender-confused children. New guidance said clinical policies “should be mindful” that confusion about gender “may be a transient phase” and that interventions should be primarily “psychological” support.

In the autumn, the Prime Minister emphasised that the reality of biological sex should be upheld in all areas of public life, as he declared “a man is a man and a woman is a woman”. He told the Conservative Party Conference: “Patients should know when hospitals are talking about men or women”.

And following years of delay, in December the Department for Education finally released its draft guidance for schools on how to navigate transgender issues. For years we have been briefing MPs, officials and other campaigners using evidence from our education case work, so we welcomed how the draft guidance clarifies that schools are not required to allow children to socially transition, improves child safeguarding, involves parents and offers protections against compelled speech for pupils and teachers alike.

Online Safety Act

The Online Safety Bill became law in October. It requires social media and pornography websites to implement age verification that is “highly effective at correctly determining whether or not a particular user is a child”. Similar checks were approved under the Digital Economy Act 2017, but plans to implement them were abandoned in 2019.

Although Ofcom will gradually implement the Online Safety Act’s measures, it immediately began work on tackling illegal content, and launched a consultation process on 9 November 2023.

Prior to amendments, the Bill included controversial wording relating to the restriction of ‘legal but harmful’ content for adults. This led to fears that social media companies – which have a track record of restricting Christian and socially conservative content – would inevitably go far beyond what the law sets out and censor traditional views on marriage, sexuality and gender.

But following a campaign by The Christian Institute and others, the Government dropped the clause last year.

Euthanasia

At the end of October, politicians on the Isle of Man backed plans to allow doctors to prescribe or administer lethal drugs at the request of patients. Members of Tynwald’s lower branch – the House of Keys – passed MHK Alex Allinson’s Assisted Dying Bill at second reading by 17 votes to seven.

The Bill would enable residents over the age of 18 who have mental capacity and are not expected to live beyond six months to “be lawfully provided with assistance to end their life”.

Extremism

In November, The Christian Institute warned that proposed changes to legislation on terrorism and extremism could threaten religious freedom.

The Department for Communities was said to be working on a new definition of the term extremism, which could encompass groups whose behaviour helps “create a climate conducive to terrorism, hate crime and other violence”. 

Abortion

27 April marked 55 years since the Abortion Act came into effect in Great Britain. In that time, over ten million abortions have been carried out, and currently around one in five pregnancies ends in abortion in the UK. Sadly, further attempts to make it easier to get an abortion took place this year.

In February, pro-life campaigners arrested for silently praying near an abortion centre in Birmingham were vindicated. A judge dismissed cases against Isabel Vaughan-Spruce and Roman Catholic priest Sean Gough, after the Crown Prosecution Service failed to provide any evidence and dropped the charges. Vaughan-Spruce was arrested again shortly after, but in September the investigation by West Midlands Police was dropped.

Cases such as these are likely to become more common, as in March MPs voted to roll out abortion censorship zones across England and Wales. Zones banning peaceful protest and prayer near abortion clinics are already in place in Northern Ireland, and are also being considered by Holyrood and in Ireland.

At the end of November, pro-abortion MPs made an attempt to hijack the Government’s Criminal Justice Bill to decriminalise abortion in England and Wales. Although Labour MPs Dame Diana Johnson and Stella Creasy claim their amendments would not allow abortion up to birth, it would mean that no woman could be prosecuted for taking pills to abort her baby at home, even after the current ten-week limit. 

Hate Crime

In May, members of the Irish Parliament debated the Government’s proposed hate crime Bill. Paul Murphy TD warned that people are at risk of arrest for supposedly ‘hateful thoughts’ under the legislation and said it was in danger of criminalising someone in possession of material deemed ‘hateful’. Amendments he proposed to defend the right to freedom of expression were voted down.

Late on in the year, an appeal court in Finland dismissed all charges of alleged “hate speech” against Christian MP Dr Päivi Räsänen, after she shared the Bible’s teaching on homosexuality in 2019. In a unanimous decision, judges in Helsinki found “no reason” to overturn an earlier ruling which had upheld the Christian’s right to free speech.