Whistleblower warns that Labour's conversion therapy ban would have been used to suppress scandal at NHS gender clinic for children

Labour 's conversion therapy ban would have been used by activists to suppress the scandal at the NHS gender clinic for children, a whistleblower has warned. Dr David Bell said that if the new law had been in place previously, it could have been used to silence those who raised the alarm about the Tavistock centre – where children as young as ten were prescribed puberty blockers. He also said the controversial legislation will mean parents fear prosecution unless they 'affirm' children who say they want to identify as the opposite sex, rather than challenging them.

The comments by Dr Bell, a psychiatrist whose work was pivotal in exposing the rush to medicalise children treated by the Gender Identity Development Service, come after Britain's former equalities watchdog branded the draft Conversion Practices Bill 'ill-conceived and unworkable'. It has also emerged this week that company directors face the threat of prosecution as well as parents under the law, which aims to outlaw abusive attempts to change someone's sexuality or gender identity, while businesses and the public sector face a £100million bill to implement it.

In his first intervention in the growing row over the bill, Dr Bell said: 'It would have acted as serious threat to those who raised the alarm – it would have been another way, and possibly an effective way, of silencing them. 'This law is a way of making it appear as if the right attitude is to affirm children and that's the very thing that I, and many other people, said was damaging children and which was confirmed by the Cass review.'

The Tavistock centre, previously home to the NHS's controversial gender clinic for children He added: 'This bill – and this is part of its intent – will make parents and carers and health professionals fearful of criminal action if they do not affirm children and adolescents in their gender identity.' However, Equalities Minister Bridget Phillipson insisted in an interview with LBC: 'There is absolutely nothing within what we're proposing that would stop parents having reasonable conversations with their children.'

She added that the draft bill is currently being scrutinised by MPs and peers 'to allow people to flag areas they want further consideration'. Yet a leading campaigner for the ban has told the committee that the bill needs to go even further and ban 'insidious' prayer. Jayne Ozanne, who set up the Ban Conversion Therapy coalition, said the existing threshold is too high as it requires harmful abuse to have taken place. She told the committee: 'We do not have sufficient law in place at the moment to cover this most insidious form, which is prayer.'

She said one reason for the legislation was to 'send a very clear signal to society' including that 'praying for someone to change is wrong'. Asked if she would be happy to criminalise it 'even if it is in a family or with a single religious leader praying', she replied: 'I think we need to be clear about what is wrong and right. Stealing is stealing. Whether you steal a sweet or a car, it is still stealing.' A Government spokesman said: 'Our draft Bill would outlaw a specific form of abuse, setting high bars which protect freedom of expression, including for religious leaders, while ensuring no one is free to commit abuse. '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 clear that freedom of belief, whether faith-based or wider, will be respected by the ban, while our draft Bill has already been welcomed by religious groups.'