Abortion Services Commissioning: Northern Ireland

Tonia Antoniazzi Excerpts

Tuesday 14th December 2021 Westminster Hall

[Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Pritchard. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) on securing this timely debate on the commissioning of abortion services in Northern Ireland. I am proud of her work, as my predecessor, for women and girls in Northern Ireland. I will endeavour to do all that I can to support them.

At the beginning of my parliamentary career, I worked as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the shadow Northern Ireland team and was a member of the Women and Equalities Committee. This afforded me the opportunities to work with colleagues in Northern Ireland and to have a greater insight into the inequality of women in Northern Ireland compared with the rest of the UK. I had the opportunity to meet the hon. Member for Belfast South (Claire Hanna) before she was in this place. I remember the conversation well. She spoke today about compassion and learning and that this issue is a journey. I think we all understand what a journey it is for women in Northern Ireland.

Being part of the Women and Equalities Committee when it did the report on abortion law in Northern Ireland gave me an in-depth view of the change that was needed to move forward. I pay tribute to all the organisations and politicians who spoke to us. Moreover, I pay tribute to the women who shared their deeply personal experiences with us as well.

The standpoint of the Labour Front Bench is that these women should have the right to make an informed choice. Any woman who suffers a loss or makes a decision to end a pregnancy should have support services available to them. I was very dismayed to hear that there is an 80% increase in need, and limited funding means that women have got up to a six month waiting list for support. How can this be acceptable in 2021?

I have listened to all of the speakers in today’s debate. It is important that we all understand and are respectful of each other’s views. I was brought up a Roman Catholic and my father was the deputy head of a Roman Catholic school. I had that one-sided view of the right to life. However, as a woman and having been in education for 20 years, I have seen at first hand the pain that girls and women have had to go through. That is why those services are so important. As my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd outlined at the start, this is not a debate about the mechanics of devolution; it is a debate about the rights and the duty of this Parliament to uphold the rights of citizens across the United Kingdom. The law is clear: we need to get on with delivering those services.

The hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) talked about the views of the people in Northern Ireland. I want to draw their attention to an Amnesty International poll, done by an independent research company in 2020, which

“demonstrates an overwhelming demand for change to Northern Ireland’s draconian abortion laws.”

It is important that we are fair, just and transparent about the data that is out there on the views of people in Northern Ireland.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd explained in her excellent speech, the changes to abortion laws extended abortion rights to the women of Northern Ireland. They were made in line with the recommendations of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women and affording women in Northern Ireland those rights was about aligning abortion policy across the United Kingdom. It was a key moment for us, but little has changed since March 2020 for women in Northern Ireland. This is the title of the debate, and the lack of the commissioning of abortion services in Northern Ireland is having a direct impact on women.

The debate is about the rights of women in Northern Ireland and their right to access basic reproductive healthcare without needless barriers. It is about their right to clear, accurate and impartial advice and guidance about their healthcare choices. There is a worrying lack of impartial guidance, if any guidance at all, on a woman’s right to choice when she finds out she is pregnant. The GP should be women’s first port of call and they do not always get the advice they need there. When women turn to the internet and google abortion services in Northern Ireland, they are led to services that put in delaying tactics, making it impossible for them to terminate their pregnancy if they wish to. It also forces more and more women to purchase abortion pills online. We should not be in that situation. Fortunately, those women are not living in fear of prosecution now when they use that service.

[Ian Paisley]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

Unfortunately, I need the time.

The lack of commissioning means that Informing Choices NI has had to withdraw its central access point and BPAS has had to come in to support it as well. Women have a right to have high-quality access services as early as possible and as late as necessary and those rights are currently denied to women because of the inaction of the Northern Ireland Executive, the Department of Health in Northern Ireland and the Secretary of State. It has been nearly two years since those essential services should have been made routinely available in Northern Ireland, but as colleagues have said, the reality for many women is that the change in legislation might as well not have happened.

The lack of funding or a commissioning framework has led to piecemeal service provision, with women’s access dictated by their postcode. Women in the Western Health and Social Care Trust area have had not access to services in nine months and they cannot go to another trust to access services, having to pay nearly €500 privately to go to Ireland or to England and access pills online if it is not too late. What should be a service for all becomes a service for a lucky few: those who can take a hit to their income, take a day off work or travel the hours to access healthcare. That is not fair. The impact of covid has also been felt in service provision and in the travel restrictions.

The reality for women in Northern Ireland is that access to basic healthcare rights is in no way guaranteed. Will the Minister and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland meet me to discuss an immediate way in which the Government can address the current crisis for women in Northern Ireland? What additional measures will the Executive put in place, especially in light of the new covid variant omicron, to ensure that the provision will be extended and maintained into the new year?

I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say, because this is a very important issue for women and girls in Northern Ireland.