Telling someone who identifies as a cat that they are human will be illegal under an 'unworkable' Labour law, a new report warns.
The wording of the bill intended to outlaw conversion therapy against trans and gay people is so 'extraordinarily broad', the study claims, that it would even protect those who call themselves 'catgender'.
Primary school pupils could also be taken to court over remarks made about classmates who want to change sex, according to the damning assessment of Labour's Conversion Practices Bill co-written by Britain's former equalities watchdog, while parents face up to five years' jail if they refuse to fund their children's gender surgery.
The report says the draft legislation breaches the right to a fair trial by introducing the contentious ideology of 'gender identity' into law by the back door, and will allow activists to bring private prosecutions against their opponents.
Baroness Falkner, former Chairman 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 report, published by think-tank Policy Exchange, brands the draft legislation 'ideological, authoritarian, unworkable and wholly unsuitable for a democratic and pluralistic society'.
It highlights the fact that the description of 'transgender identity' in the bill includes someone who 'identifies 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
This encompasses hundreds of alternative gender identity labels according to the study and would even include 'catgender', described in an online dictionary as someone who has 'a very strong connection to cats or other felines' or who experiences 'delusions of being a cat'.
'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 warns.
It also points out that practices previously used to force gay people to change their sexual orientation – including electric shock therapy and 'corrective rape' – are already unlawful.
And it says figures cited to show the current prevalence of conversion therapy – such as a survey suggesting as many as 30 per cent of transgender people have been subjected to exorcism – are 'wildly improbable'.
The Government claims the purpose of the bill is to 'fill gaps in the criminal law' but the new report warns it will instead criminalise parents who try to dissuade 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.'
Because there is no minimum age for prosecution, it warns, '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 said: '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.'
Sources added that the claim about cats was 'nonsense' and insisted the bill does not define any new genders in law.
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