Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Baroness Falkner of Margravine and Baroness Thornton

Committee stage
Monday 2nd February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

My Lords, we are coming back to the terminally ill debate that we had on Friday. Women may well be—although not in this particular case—coerced by partners to take pills when they would not otherwise have wished to do so. Perhaps noble Lords who have tabled amendments to do with face-to-face consultations have that in their minds, as a face-to-face consultation would require deeper insights on the part of medical professionals—pills by post do not.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

I would like to proceed a little further and then I will give way to the noble Baroness.

If we wish to change abortion law, we are perfectly entitled to do so as a society, but this clause raises significant questions that I hope the Minister will be able to answer, even though—I accept this—the Government said on Second Reading that they remain neutral on the clause and that they anticipated a free vote. As the clause seeks to repeal Sections 58 and 59 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861 and the Infant Life (Preservation) Act 1929, can the Minister explain how charges could be brought in a case such as Mr Worby’s and others? This was a poisoning and an attempt to procure a miscarriage without the woman’s consent—and it happened without repealing those offences.

As the Government have not carried out a consultation on this proposed change, how will providers of pills by post be regulated further to ensure that late-term pregnancies still carry protections under the Abortion Act and other criminal law? Will the Government commit to carrying out an overall review of the extent of the problem with police investigations of these women and to opening discussions with the relevant authorities to ascertain how better to focus police interventions? That is the objective of our Amendment 456.

On all sides of the Committee, we recognise the distress caused to women by unfounded police intrusiveness. There must be other measures that could address how that can be done with care. Upholding the rights of women in terms of their bodily autonomy, as well as society’s obligations to provide the appropriate medical care for them at this vulnerable point of pregnancy, exists on the one hand. On the other, we have obligations to the rights of the unborn child.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

I will say one more sentence before I sit down, and I will be happy for both noble Baronesses to intervene then.

We have obligations to the rights of the unborn child, as that is what very late-term abortions are about in terms of viability. These things engage our ethics and responsibilities in law. I suggest that the Minister seeks to engage with those of us tabling amendments to guide us on how we in this Committee can do both responsibly.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

If you are being coerced into ending a pregnancy outside the law, and if you report that to the police, you yourself will be investigated for a criminal offence. That would be the case even though it is clear—as we know from that court case—that the man is the person who has coerced you into doing that. Can the noble Baroness say how this can be right? If a woman goes to the police in those circumstances—why would she?—she would be investigated for a criminal offence. That is what the law says now.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

In the Worby case, the woman discovered what had happened to her, went to the police and was not investigated.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Debate between Baroness Falkner of Margravine and Baroness Thornton

Committee stage
Friday 30th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

I am slightly puzzled. I have of course read the Minister’s letters, but I am not quite sure why the noble Baroness is speaking about these in the middle of a discussion about clause 1 standing part. Is she supporting the clause standing part or not? Surely that is the debate we are supposed to be having.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

My Lords, perhaps reference to the Companion will help reduce the noble Baroness’s confusion about my speech. The Companion says that, once the Chair has put the Question,

“a general debate on the clause may take place”.

I am highlighting problems with the clause. Clause 1 is the substance of the Bill and an equality impact assessment is fundamental to our understanding of whether it should stand part.

To come back to the letter, it refers to the possibility of generating comparative evidence on the wider matters, but that would not have produced sufficiently robust conclusions. The matter raised was that the EIA did not deal with any detail of all those certain protected characteristics because it focused on access to assisted dying. Access to assisted dying is not relevant to the safeguarding risks that we have all spent some eight days in Committee debating. The letter says:

“We intend to update both the Impact Assessment and the Equality Impact Assessment should the Bill receive Royal Assent, once detailed implementation work has been completed”.


That will be too little too late. It is of no assistance to Parliament in considering the Bill and its potential consequences. Indeed, the whole point of an EIA is that it is done before or at the time a decision is taken. I refer again to the Cabinet Office guide to making legislation. A failure to undertake a comprehensive EIA means a failure to comply with a public sector equality duty, as post hoc analysis cannot generally cure a failure to have due regard to equality implications at the time a decision is being made.

That is what the courts consistently emphasise. R (Blundell) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions 2021 noted that post-decision equality analysis is not sufficient to fulfil the duty, as it is supposed to be a real, open-minded consideration of the equality implications, conducted with substance and rigour, not a rearguard box-ticking exercise.

In concluding, I say to the Government that an accurate assessment of how the Bill impacts people who share each of the nine protected characteristics does not betray that position of neutrality. In fact, it is the converse: withholding information is not an act of neutrality but the opposite of that.

The Constitution Committee published a report on the Bill on 11 September, lamenting that supporting documents, including the EIA, “were issued late” or were not available. In the other place, Ministers gave the excuse that the Bill was “highly dynamic” and likely to undergo significant changes during scrutiny, so it was important to wait until the committee concluded its work so that

“we know what it is that we are assessing the impact of”.—[Official Report, Commons, Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill Committee 30/1/25; col. 282.]

Now we are told that there is insufficient evidence to produce conclusions that are sufficiently robust. I suggest that the Minister review what both the EHRC and the letter submitted by 59 Members of this House have asked her to do and come back with some more positive news at an earlier date.