Abortion (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2021
Debate between John Hayes and Karin Smyth(3 years ago)
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Sir John Hayes
My right hon. Friend is right; the Government’s best course of action is to repeal the changes that were made when there was no devolution settlement. There is the prospect of further legal challenge, which I would certainly strongly support given all the things I said earlier about the 1998 Act establishing the devolution settlement; about the fact that this has been described again today by a Committee of this Parliament as being unprecedented; and about the basis on which the Assembly was reassembled and its legal underpinning. What we are doing today is highly questionable and I recommend that the Government think again.
The Minister says that Northern Ireland has some opportunity to interpret the regulations and come forward with its own settlement that stays within the law but does not go as far as some would want. That is true. Northern Ireland can come forward with a settlement, but these regulations are effectively a gun to the head of the people of Northern Ireland, saying, “Either you do what we want by your own decision or we will decide for you.” I hesitate to say anything critical of the Minister because I regard him highly, but it is a slightly deceptive argument to suggest that the Northern Irish can sort this out when a gun is being placed against their heads.
Not for nothing are many people in Northern Ireland very proud of the “One Hundred Thousand” report, confirmed by the Advertising Standards Authority as showing that probably 100,000 people are alive in Northern Ireland today who would not be had the Province embraced the Abortion Act 1967.
Moreover, when talking about the sovereignty of Parliament we must recall that a key aspect is that no Parliament can bind its successors. Section 9 was passed in a Bill the introduction of which defined its purpose in terms of the restoration of the Executive. That was in a previous Parliament and it could have been—it would and should have been—this Government’s course of action to say, “That was then and now is now.” A different Parliament and a different set of arrangements in Northern Ireland necessitates a different approach. That would not have been unreasonable given what I said about the need to maintain the integrity of devolution.
Rather than asking Parliament to pass these regulations, the Government should recognise the current reality and instead ask our new Parliament to welcome the restoration of the Assembly and to repeal section 9, as I said in response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke. In making that point, I would say to the advocates of abortion that that would be a debate to have across the House, but more especially in Northern Ireland. If those who want abortion to be more widely available in Northern Ireland make their case and persuade their elected representatives to share that view, living in a democratic kingdom, the majority view will prevail.
It is important to say that the regulations are of course about abortion and its availability in the Province, but they are about something much more: how much we value devolved decision making, how much we respect the different opinions that prevail in different parts of this kingdom and how much we really believe that the sovereignty of this Parliament is enhanced when we are big enough to say that people in different parts of the kingdom can come to different conclusions from the majority view here.
Do we care so little about the distinct regional identities of our Union, unless we take exactly the same approach to abortion in Northern Ireland as in the rest of the United Kingdom, that we would extinguish people’s opinions and eliminate the majority view there? Are we to honour devolution only when those to whom we give power agree with us? Will the Government be content to build their future on past mistakes? Is this an Administration who listen, or do they dictate?
To misunderstand the salience of those questions, or the significance of the answers, would be among the worst political miscalculations of any Conservative Government since the Union began in 1707. As we sit under the gaze of Joseph Chamberlain—
Karin Smyth
The Act of Union 1707 did not apply to Ireland, only to Scotland.
Sir John Hayes
That is true, but I did not claim otherwise. I said this would be one of the biggest mistakes since then.
As we sit under the gaze of Joseph Chamberlain, the radical who in the end became allied to the Conservative Government, and who always put conviction above convenience, perhaps today members of the Committee should put principle and conviction first, not convenience, and think again about the regulations. I invite Conservative members of the Committee—and, I hope, members across it—to oppose the regulations because that would send a signal to Government to think again, to listen, to redraw their plans and to behave in a way that maintains our Union, respects devolution and shows that, rather than ploughing ahead regardless, the Government are sensitive to the wishes and interests of the people in every part of the United Kingdom.