Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Tonia Antoniazzi and Caroline Johnson

Report stage
Tuesday 17th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

Wow. I would like to know if the hon. Member actually knows of any woman who would put themselves in that situation if there was not coercion or control of some kind. Obviously, a lot of research and conversations have been going on for years on this issue. I understand that people across the House have deeply held religious views—indeed, I was brought up a Catholic. My issue, from what I have been told, is this: how would that woman go about it? If it was by taking abortion pills, she would have a baby. Painting a picture of killing an unborn child in that way does not help to serve what we are doing in this place. We need to protect the women. [Interruption.] I need to make progress.

In the meantime, doctors, nurses, midwives, medical bodies, abortion providers and parliamentarians have come together to try to end the criminal prosecution of women on suspicion of illegal abortion offences. This is a specific and urgent problem, and one that is simple to fix. New clause 1 is the only amendment that would protect women currently at risk of prosecution and protect abortion services. That is why it has the explicit backing of every abortion provider and every organisation that represents abortion providers in England and Wales. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the Royal College of Midwives, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the Royal College of Nursing also endorse it. Numerous violence against women and girls groups, including the End Violence Against Women and Girls Coalition, Refuge, Southall Black Sisters, Rape Crisis England and Wales, Imkaan, and the Centre for Women’s Justice, are also behind new clause 1.

The public overwhelmingly support this change too. I implore colleagues not to lose sight of the moral imperative here: namely, vulnerable women being dragged from hospital bed to police cell on suspicion of ending their own pregnancies. This is urgent. We know that multiple women are still in the system awaiting a decision, accused of breaking this law. They cannot afford to wait.

We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to put an end to this in a simple and secure manner. This is the right change at the right time, so I implore colleagues who want to protect women and abortion services to vote for new clause 1. Let us ensure that not a single desperate woman is ever again subject to traumatic criminal investigation at the worst moments of their lives. There must be no more Lauras. There must be no more Nicola Packers.

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

I rise to speak in support of new clause 106, which stands in my name, but first I will speak briefly to new clause 1, which we have been discussing so far. The hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) spoke about some pretty harrowing cases, and said how the first lady was utterly traumatised by having had her abortion at home, which she received via telemedicine. My new clause seeks to make women safer by ensuring that they are seen and given the opportunity for proper medical consultation before they get to the stage where they are given inappropriate medication because of a misunderstanding, and then end up traumatised, delivering a relatively mature foetus unexpectedly at home.

The hon. Lady did not say during her speech whether she believes that a baby should be terminated right up to term, but I want to put on the record that I do not. I work as an NHS consultant paediatrician, and I have cared for and personally held babies in my hands from 21 weeks and six days’ gestation right through to term. I am very aware that babies from, say, 30 weeks upwards have a more than 98% chance of survival, so although I am supportive of women’s right to choose early in pregnancy, I am not supportive of similar rights in relation to healthy babies right up to term.

Until the pandemic, women had to attend abortion clinics, where they would see a professional and talk through their desire for an abortion and the reasons for it. At the clinic, it would be checked that the woman was pregnant and how far pregnant she was. The hon. Lady raised cases of women who believed they were so far pregnant, but who turned out to be much further pregnant, which are well known; sometimes it goes the other way. One of the key reasons for this confusion is that women often bleed in early pregnancy, and they may believe that those bleeding episodes represent a period; when a woman thinks that she is 10 weeks pregnant, therefore, she may actually be 14 weeks pregnant.

That consideration is important in the context of accessing an abortion because at-home abortions via telemedicine are allowed only up until 10 weeks. The reason for that is not to be difficult or awkward, or to make it more difficult for women to access abortions; instead, it is a safety issue, because we know that complications are greater later in pregnancy. What happens in the early stages is that the procedure essentially causes the foetus to be born. If that happens to a baby much later in pregnancy, the procedure will cause it to be born when it has a chance of survival, which can lead to a traumatic experience for the mother as they deliver a much larger foetus than expected. It can lead to bleeding and, in one case I am aware of, has led to the death of a mother who was given pills to take at home when she was much further along in her pregnant than she had expected.

Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Tonia Antoniazzi and Caroline Johnson

2nd reading
Wednesday 12th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

I am grateful to have the opportunity to contribute to the debate, which I have really enjoyed listening to. I particularly enjoyed the contribution of the hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Alison Hume), who talked about writers and stories. Her discussion reminded me of the book I am reading with my son, Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton’s “The 39-Storey Treehouse”, where they have just built a book making machine and have gone off to enjoy themselves while the book is written. I do not quite know how the story will end yet. That reminds us of the balance between the benefits that innovations such as AI can bring and the challenge, as the hon. Member said, of ensuring that people are fairly remunerated for their efforts, whether they be on building the machines or writing the stories.

I will direct my remarks to two particular areas of the Bill. First, clause 141 deals with what it refers to as “purported intimate” images, otherwise referred to as deepfake pornography images. There are images of all hon. Members and a majority of our constituents online, fully clothed—at least, I hope so—but individuals can take those innocent images of us or our constituents and use computer software to insert them into another image, generating images that appear to show an individual in an intimate state, undressed or engaging in sexual activity. Why do they do that? For their own sexual gratification, to share with others—perhaps for money—or to humiliate, threaten or control the individual in the image or their loved ones. That has a devastating effect on people’s lives. No hon. Members will be surprised to hear that 99% of victims of that evil crime are women.

It is important to recognise the work of Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge. She introduced a private Member’s Bill in this area last December. It was unfortunate that the Government chose not to support her legislation at that time, but I am grateful that they have drafted this clause of the Bill, which has the same effect. It was Baroness Owen’s tenacity and explanations that persuaded the Government to ensure that the threshold is consent, rather than the victim needing to prove intent, in the use of images. She persuaded them to increase the penalty to include imprisonment, reflecting the severity of the crime. She also persuaded them of the need to amend the Sentencing Act 2020 to end the somewhat farcical situation in which an individual will be prosecuted for creating an image and, at the end of the court case, have that same image handed back to them as part of their property.

The Government gave the Baroness one further undertaking. Sometimes, images are not discovered immediately after they are taken; or, if a group of images is found on someone’s computer, it may take a while to identify the victim. In such cases, a six-month timeout loophole can cause individuals to get away with these hideous crimes. The Government undertook to amend section 127 of the Magistrates’ Courts Act 1980, which limits jurisdiction to within six months of a crime, to ensure that people caught for a crime after six months has elapsed or whose prosecution takes place after six months have elapsed can still be held to justice and account. I ask the Minister to explain why I cannot find that in the Bill—it may be there and I just cannot find it. If he could clarify that point, I would be grateful.

The other point I want to raise is accuracy. We have talked a lot about data, but data is useful only if it is accurate. We will all have heard the story of baby Lilah, a beautiful baby girl born in Sutton-in-Ashfield who was registered as male by accident. It is not very easy to have side notes in digital data. How do we ensure that data is accurate? Three clauses in the Bill may help us with that. Clause 45(6) says that information must be accurate, clause 28(3) and (4) suggest that the Secretary of State must check listed organisations for data reliability, and clause 140 requires the Secretary of State to produce a data dictionary to ensure that we know the definitions of all the data points.

The Secretary State spoke about the huge opportunity that data offers the NHS. I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, as I am a consultant paediatrician. Others have talked about the huge opportunities that AI and data use and research can present to the NHS, but there is also a risk. How does the Minister intend to define sex? The Labour Cabinet and the Prime Minister have repeatedly struggled to define what is a woman. Leaving that to secondary legislation, considered in a small Committee, is not sufficient scrutiny for such an important matter.

Earlier in the debate, the Secretary of State referred to the powers that the Bill gives the Secretary of State under secondary legislation and why things are not included in the Bill itself. This issue should be given more scrutiny than that of an SI Committee. It is important to protect women: women’s sport, women’s privacy and women’s single-sex spaces. It is important for intimate care. Many people want to receive intimate care, particularly domiciliary care, by somebody of the same sex. How will they know if the data is not available?

Data is also important to protect those with a trans identity. Many blood reference ranges are different for males and females. Haemoglobin varies from laboratory to laboratory, but is roughly 13 to 18 in males and 11.5 to 16.5 in females. If data is not complete or accurate, some individuals may receive unnecessary investigation. Data for screening and other health messages is important. We do not want male people called for cervical screening or men not to receive prostate information.

[Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady is making some excellent points on sex and gender and the collection of data—she knows that I share her views on that. It is incumbent on the Minister and the Secretary of State to ensure that data is collected according to sex. However, does she agree that the previous Government put us in the situation that we are in?

[Dr Johnson]

It is certainly true that across the western world at the moment, there seems to be some confusion on some of the basics of biology and humanity.

Data is important for protecting children, too. One data provider listed in clause 28 is the Disclosure and Barring Service. GB News reported that there were 12,000 prosecutions between January 2019 and June 2022 of people on the sex offenders register who did not inform police of data changes. It is crucial that data is accurate and up to date, so will the Secretary of State commit to the integrity of biological sex data in the Bill and in the Government’s datasets?

Last September, the UK Health Security Agency released data on sexually transmitted infections by sex and sexual orientation, which is important because of the different epidemiological nature of infections in the different populations. However, the footnotes said that men were defined in the data as cisgender and transgender men, and women as cisgender and transgender women. That somewhat undermines the data integrity and the purpose of splitting the data in the first place. Data that is wrong, unhelpful, misleading or misused by malicious actors can be dangerous. Many are concerned. How does the Minister plan to define sex, and what are his plans for incongruous data?

In the debate in the upper House, it was reported that 3,000 people have changed their sex data in their passport, and 15,000 have changed it with the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency on their driving licence. It was said in the House of Lords debate that up to 100,000 people may have incongruous official datasets between items such as passports and driving licences. How does the Minister intend to resolve that if we are to have one large dataset for each person?

Finally, clause 45(8) sets out that a person may need to pay fees in respect of disclosure. Will we expect people to pay for their own data, and, if so, how much? I know Labour is very keen on increasing taxes, but can the Minister guarantee that the cost will never outweigh the admin cost of producing the data?