Health and Care Bill

Baroness Brown of Cambridge Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Report stage
Wednesday 16th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I want to intervene briefly, partly because I believe I set a hare running which I perhaps need to explain. I want also to ask the Minister replying to the debate a few questions.

I am told that I am not whipped to vote for this amendment, even though the Liberal Democrat Whip is to support the amendment—those of us who have a conscience reason not to support the amendment do not have to do so. I take that as being not a free vote, which is why I was of the view that, nevertheless, we were being whipped. Make of that what you will. I shall be voting against the amendment, unless the Minister can clarify certain points.

We heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, in introducing her amendment, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that essentially this amendment changes nothing about the law on abortion. But we have also heard that if that were the case, we would not need this amendment at all. If it changes nothing, why is this amendment here? So it must be changing something. What I am not at all clear about is what protections are actually in place. The 1967 legislation was very tightly drawn. The nature of abortion in 2022 is much more widespread. The provisions are not perhaps quite as Lord Steel would have anticipated.

This is a very detailed amendment. We have heard that it is very simple but it is also very detailed. It explains who women need to see. They are supposed to be seeing people either via video or via telephone. I do not know whether any of your Lordships experienced telemedicine during lockdown, but it is not always very effective. If virtual medicine means a telephone call not on a smartphone, your doctor cannot see you. They have no idea how you are presenting or whether you are vulnerable. There is a real question about what certainty there is. Can the Minister say what security there is about telemedicine?

We also heard that women would still have to go through normal medical tests and so on. Where is this happening? In the amendment, all we hear about is things being virtual. At what point do we know that a woman is nine weeks and six days pregnant when she takes the first tablet? How do we know that she is not actually 22 weeks pregnant and not seen by anybody? How do we know what certainty there is? If this is, for many people, a conscience vote, do noble Lords, in good conscience, believe that telemedicine actually means that women are understood and their needs really recognised? Do they get the care that they would get if they were having consultations in a surgery?

[Baroness Brown of Cambridge (CB)]

My Lords, at this very late hour, I just rise to say that I hope your Lordships will not confuse individual anecdotes, however moving, with the very extensive scientific evidence base quoted by the noble Baronesses, Lady Sugg and Lady Watkins.

[Baroness O’Loan (CB)]

My Lords, what is proposed in this amendment is a fundamental change in the law. What we must look at is, I think, fundamentally for each woman, what actually happens in each situation, and what care is provided for the woman in that situation.

I believe that the Government were right to say that this provision would come to an end and that it is not necessarily safe. There are major uncertainties for many women when they conceive. They do not always know when their last period was, as noble Lords have said. But it is not just that. They do not always know the nature of their own medical health and the consequences of taking the telemedical abortion pills.

In that period after 2020 alone, 10,000 women needed hospital treatment for the complications arising from telemedical abortions. It is not an anecdote but a scientific fact that losing a baby, whether by miscarriage or by abortion, is a very bloody and, on occasion, very painful business, which gives rise to all sorts of problems and complications.