Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Bill

Debate between Steve Baker and Stella Creasy

2nd reading
Tuesday 29th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

I rise to make what I hope is, in comparison, a relatively brief speech, but I have some questions about how this Bill will work. I hope that will meet your requirements, Mr Deputy Speaker, because I think it is important that we ask these questions and that we centre in this debate the people of Northern Ireland. We have already talked a lot about the institutions, the challenges with the protocol and, indeed, Brexit, as well as about who needs to be flexible—this Government, the European Union—but I think it is absolutely key to talk about the public in Northern Ireland and how they are affected by this legislation. I say that as somebody who has now lobbied five separate Secretaries of State about Executive formation legislation.

Members who were here before 2019 will remember the last incarnation of this legislation, which led to the situation in which we finally had legal abortion in Northern Ireland. It is with the provisions of the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019 and how this Bill will affect that in mind that I want to ask these questions. As I said earlier, it has now been 1,134 days since we passed that legislation, and this House took a decision that we wanted to support access at local level that is safe and legal for women in Northern Ireland. We agreed subsequently, in the abortion regulations in 2020—it is 973 days since they were passed—that there should be a service on request up to 12 weeks and that beyond that, up to 24 weeks, two medical professionals could certify that a woman should have an abortion if there was a greater risk of mental harm or physical harm if she did not, which is very similar to England and Wales.

I raised that because one thing to remember in all of these debates is that decriminalisation and legalisation do not mean deregulation. Indeed, the legislation that we have seen flowing from the 2019 Act absolutely sets out how access to abortion should be provided. The challenge for many of us, though, is that during all that time, that has not happened. Time and again, we have seen the 2 million women in Northern Ireland denied that right. Abortion might be legal, but it is not accessible. Indeed, in July this year we heard that a woman in Belfast who had suffered from pre-term premature rupture of membranes was told that she had to travel to Liverpool. We have seen many more not able to access pills.

The reason we have been given for that through the last three years is basically a stand-off between the Northern Ireland Health Department and the UK Government, with the Government upholding the human rights of women in Northern Ireland set out in the 2019 Act. In the last three years, women in Northern Ireland have directly suffered because the previous incarnation of the Bill had not been delivered. All of us in the House recognise that it is one thing to win an argument—it might be another thing to win an amendment—but delivery and implementation are where change happens.

[Mr Steve Baker]

The hon. Member has won the argument, and I can tell her that we are making enormous progress towards delivering abortion. The Government can confirm that services will be commissioned in Northern Ireland before the Bill passes through the other place.

[Stella Creasy]

I thank the Minister for that confirmation. I hope he will join me in paying tribute to all those women in Northern Ireland who have continued to work on the issue, championing their sisters and neighbours—those who need these services—through the political dysfunction and patriarchal discrimination that has led to a situation where we might have decided that something was legal through a previous incarnation of the Bill, but it was not accessible.

Referral of Prime Minister to Committee of Privileges

Debate between Steve Baker and Stella Creasy

Thursday 21st April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Baker]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady. I think she will recognise the spirit and inspiration of what I am saying, as people did on Tuesday, but I do not wish to be drawn excessively into theology about the timing of one’s repentance, and I will move on.

Many Members of this House—I can see some of them on the Opposition Benches—choose to live their lives under certain commands: to love even their enemies, to bless those who curse them and, yes, to forgive as they are forgiven, sometimes for grave matters. So when I sat here and listened to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister say the words he said in the House of Commons—which I will not put back on the record, because people know what he said—and when I read them again in Hansard, I think that is an apology worthy of consideration of forgiveness for what went on, because this has moved beyond law. As far as I know, no one else in this country is being investigated by the police for retrospective offences—it is gone, it is behind them, it is past—but those in No. 10 Downing Street are being held to a higher standard in ways that other members of the public are not. [Interruption.] I can hear Members barracking, but that is right.

When we imposed these not merely draconian but barbaric rules on other people, everybody in the centre of power should have understood that they had to obey not merely the letter but the spirit of those rules. There should have been no cake in No. 10 and no booze in No. 10; these things should not have happened. I do not defend or condone in any way what happened.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am mesmerised by the hon. Gentleman’s psychic powers if he does not understand that all offences are retrospective—unless he knows someone who is going to commit an offence. To err is human and to forgive divine, but to transgress repeatedly, as the report already shows us, is something else. Is it not important that we have this inquiry now to understand whether that has happened and there has been a repeated offence against the House? In the past year, half of the public have lost what little trust they had in politicians. The longer this goes on and the more repetition there is, the more all of us are besmirched. Is it not right, in the spirit of forgiveness and redemption, that we are all given the opportunity for salvation?

[Mr Baker]

Not for the first time, the hon. Lady tempts me to give her references. On the point about repeated offences and forgiveness, I would encourage her to look at Romans 7. She invites me to clarify what I said. Of course all offences are retrospective. My point is that the police are treating Downing Street staff especially harshly in a way that the rest of the public are not being treated. [Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) wants to say that is not true, I will take his intervention.