Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Lola McEvoy and Tom Hayes

Report stage
Tuesday 17th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Tom Hayes]

I want to start by aligning myself with, and commending the speeches of, my hon. Friends the Members for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge), for Ribble Valley (Maya Ellis), for Monmouthshire (Catherine Fookes), for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) and for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy). I am proud to stand alongside my colleagues and was proud to listen to what they had to say today. And because of what they had to say today, I have less to say, which will allow more people to speak.

I have been sent here by my constituents to defend and further their right to safe and illegal abortion. My inbox has been inundated with messages from constituents who are concerned, and who want to be able to have safe and legal abortions. They want to be removed from the criminal justice system, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gower said, because we have situations where clinically vulnerable women, who have gone through some of the worst experiences that anybody can go through, will in some cases be arrested straight from the hospital ward, hurried to cells and made to feel unmitigated levels of shame and guilt, on top of the physical and mental traumas they have already experienced.

[Lola McEvoy]

My hon. Friend is articulating exactly the point, which is that very few women, if any at all, take the decision to have an abortion lightly. It is an incredibly difficult, painful and hard decision, which is physically and mentally very tough to deal with. Does he agree that that is the crux of what we are doing here: alleviating some of the pain that those women are having to go through?

[Tom Hayes]

I thank my hon. Friend for that really powerful intervention. I completely agree. If in this place we can do one important thing today, which is to send a signal that we wish to alleviate that pain, then we should do it.