Abortion (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2022

Baroness Smith of Basildon Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2022 Lords Chamber

We should think very carefully about waving this legislation through today. If the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, presses her amendment to a vote, I will certainly support her.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, it is on days such as today, as the Minister may agree, that there is a feeling of déjà vu. I think he is the third Minister I have faced at the Dispatch Box on this issue, and the debate has been very similar to previous ones. I thank him for his very measured tone and the detail in his speech introducing this matter. I will not repeat the legislative background; noble Lords who have spoken both for and against will have heard what he said.

I suspect that there is a great deal of regret from the Minister in bringing this forward, because it is quite clear from the beginning of this debate—I looked up my previous speeches over three or four years—that Ministers were doing everything they could to encourage and support Northern Ireland to provide the services itself. There has certainly been no indication at all from the Government, as far as I am aware, that they wanted to be in this position. They wanted Northern Ireland to ensure that there was provision of services in the way the law requires.

I also thank the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which has not been mentioned so far, which looked at the detail in its very helpful report. I hope the Minister’s department and other departments will take note of the comments made about the inadequacy of the Explanatory Memorandum. I have raised this kind of issue previously in the House. However, I commend the responses; once it was prompted by the committee, the department provided better, fuller and more detailed answers to the points raised. I hope it will become the norm that Explanatory Memoranda will provide more detail than we saw in this one, as the information was provided only later when the committee asked for it.

As we have heard, this is an issue where feelings run deep, as is any issue regarding abortion. It is significant that a number of the speeches made about the constitutional position of devolution came from Members who have already expressed a deep-rooted opposition to the principle of abortion taking place. In some ways, I commend the noble Lord, Lord McCrea, because there was an honesty in his speech, which, as he saw it, was about the rights of the unborn child, not the constitutional issues. For him, this is a matter of principle; he thinks that abortion should not take place and was quite honest about it. He did not deal with the wider issue, which the Minister dealt with in his speech and will no doubt deal with again at the end.

We heard noble Lords refer to the debate on Roe v Wade taking place in America; the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke, made a wise intervention on this point. There is always a danger that you end up in a ridiculous situation whereby, because of the actions of politics, women living in one state move to another or travel elsewhere to access services they were previously able to access in their home state.

That is what is happening in Northern Ireland. The noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, said that abortion is available in Northern Ireland. Nobody is suggesting that no abortions have taken place. The Minister never made that point. The point is that, as previously agreed by your Lordships’ House, the provision of services is inconsistent, sporadic and not available to everybody who requires them. The noble Baroness shakes her head, but if that were not the case we would not need to be here today. As I said, time and again, the Government have provided opportunities for the Department of Health to bring forward proposals for the provisions required, as we have debated previously, but that has not happened.

I welcome the fact that the Government are still engaging with the Department of Health to ensure that there is still opportunity for services to be provided. However, I am conscious that, from what he and the Secretary of State in the other place have said, there is no intention to delay this matter further. I think the Government recognise this; as the Secretary of State said, “I fully suspect that we will have to provide these services.” Can the Minister say anything about the timescale? That would be helpful because this debate has been rather long and drawn out; there is an appetite for change.

A lot has been made of opinion polls and the views of people in Northern Ireland. I think the Minister will rely on them in his response, but I would point out that the 2019 internet poll, referred to several times, showed the majority of people not supporting the question about the imposition of changed abortion legislation by the Westminster Government. However, a 2020 poll showed that only 16% of people in Northern Ireland thought that no change to current abortion legislation was needed. A lot can depend on how the question is asked, but the idea that there is no appetite for change is wrong. Indeed, in the other place, Stephen Farry spoke about a vote in the Northern Ireland Assembly—he thought it was at the beginning of March—when a Private Member’s Bill that sought to adjust some of the existing legal provisions around access to abortion was defeated by a majority of MLAs. There is movement in Northern Ireland now and there are different views; we should take account of all of them.

We will support the regulations because it is the right thing to do. I welcome that the Minister has recognised the deep-seated views on this issue. However, in addition to my question on timescales, I have a second question about the extraneous services around abortion services. They are not a stand-alone provision. The provision of sexual health services and the whole wider landscape of reproductive sexual health is really important. I want to be assured by the Minister that, alongside the provision of abortion services, advice on contraception and sexual health will be provided. These things come as a package; they are not something to be seen in a vacuum. I hope the Minister can say something about that and about education on these issues, because that will be extremely important going forward. As I say, we should not see these services in a vacuum.

I thank the Minister for the way in which he presented his case. The noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, will decide whether she wishes to put her amendment to a vote. If she does so, we will not support her; we will support the Minister.