Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019 Section 3(5)

Debate between Baroness Hoey and Stella Creasy

Wednesday 16th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Stella Creasy]

I hope they can, because then the Minister could answer the words of Lyra McKee’s partner, who said:

“It seems that pleas from people who have seen their loved ones murdered mean a lot less than the demand of church men desperate to repress women.”

Lyra McKee’s family are deeply concerned by the way in which her memory and legacy have been used in the debate.

The Minister has to show us, not just by next Monday, but until March next year, that he is prepared to uphold what is in the legislation about acting expeditiously to protect the human rights of women in Northern Ireland. That is not the same as giving powers to the Assembly to deal with it. That is not what is in the Act. He needs to be honest that that is how the Government now intend to deal with it and get the House’s approval for that.

The consequences of not doing that are very real for women in Northern Ireland. The Minister knows that, right now, we cannot tell women in Northern Ireland who might need an abortion how they will access that service next Tuesday. He and I have talked about the issue of pills. We are all worried about women accessing products online that may not be safe. In 1967, when the House legislated to exempt women in England and Wales from prosecution, we did not say, “Look, it’s okay, you can continue to have a backstreet abortion, but at least you will be able to go to a doctor.” We recognised the importance of making sure that people could access safe procedures. Yet it is very clear that that will not be the case for women in Northern Ireland from next week.

Many hon. Members will have heard the brave words of Sarah Ewart, who had to take our country to the High Court because her rights were violated. She had a fatal foetal abnormality and she was not able to seek support in her home nation of Northern Ireland to deal with that. Indeed, when faced with that horrific prognosis, the response that she got from doctors was, “I’m not going to get prosecuted to help you.”

Hand on heart, none of us can say that from next week that situation will change for women in Northern Ireland. Indeed, with hand on heart, many of us have to look Sarah Ewart in the eye, because the Supreme Court has said that it will wait to see what happens with this legislation before acting to see whether the Government have to uphold the human rights of women in Northern Ireland. What a shameful situation that we are still quibbling over treating our fellow UK citizens with dignity and respect, in the way that we would expect for our constituents here in England and Wales.

There is nothing in the legislation that will change the time limits and nothing that will change the existing medical regulations that would allow abortion to take place. It simply removes the criminal element and sees this as a medical matter. It sees women as able to make choices over their own bodies, just as men would wish to do.

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

I understand my hon. Friend’s passion about people in Northern Ireland being treated equally. This is not to divert us from that important issue, but does she not think, as a Labour Member, that our party should allow people in Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom, to vote for Labour candidates? Does she not think that that is a democratic principle? Yes, this issue is hugely important, but it is about a principle of democracy.

[Stella Creasy]

What I do know is that you, Mr Deputy Speaker, would not forgive me for straying into what is essentially a family matter for the Labour movement. The Labour movement has stood up for human rights around the world. We stand up for the human rights of the people of Northern Ireland to love who they love and to marry who they want, yet when it comes to the human rights of women in Northern Ireland to have control over their bodies, suddenly this place is stuttering.

The Government have issued guidance on this legislation, but there is no public information campaign. What do we say to people in Northern Ireland next week? Can they go to a doctor and ask for misoprostol and have an early-term abortion—yes or no? It will not be illegal any more, so physicians could certainly prescribe the pill, but the Government have not done the work to tell people what the legislation will be. We will be in an interim period. That is exactly why the legislation was drafted not just with decriminalisation in mind, but to keep the regulatory period as short as possible to avoid this confusion.

What the Minister has done tonight, by waving in front of one party in this place the opportunity to kill this measure through providing the role of the Assembly, is to create further confusion about how women in Northern Ireland will access their basic rights. We know that he is going to do that, because he has talked about having a public consultation on how to do abortion, as though it is something that we all have an ability to make happen. People on Twitter think that I have the ability to do that, but I want to be very clear that I have never made an abortion happen.

The point here is that we do not ask for public consultation on other healthcare issues. At no point do we put the concept of doing a vasectomy up to people in the community, yet somehow—