Conscientious Objection (Medical Activities) Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Thornton and Lord Steel of Aikwood

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 23rd March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Steel of Aikwood (LD)]

My Lords, Members will realise that Amendment 1 and the amendments associated with it in the grouping go to the heart of the argument in this Bill. I am sorry that I was not able to be here for the debate at Second Reading or I would have spoken then, but it might be helpful to the Committee if I give a brief outline of how the conscience clause arose in the first place. I say that because most noble Lords believe that the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Bill, as it then was, began under me in the House of Commons. That is not the case. That Bill was passed by this House in the mid-1960s. It went through all its stages here and was waiting for a Member to pick it up in the House of Commons.

In the meantime, going back as far as 1939, there had been an interdepartmental committee of inquiry, involving the Department of Health and the Home Office under the late Sir Norman Birkett KC, which argued that the abortion law should be changed. My Bill, which was passed by this House under the auspices of Lord Silkin, was in fact the sixth attempt in the House of Commons to change the law on abortion. The others had all failed not through lack of support but through lack of time. I drew the third place in the ballot, which meant that I had the time to introduce the Bill.

The first thing I want to say is that it is wrong that issues of this complexity and seriousness should be left to the lottery, which is what it is, of the annual ballot for Private Member’s Bills in the House of Commons; it is not the right way to proceed. Once an issue like this comes before both Houses, the Government should provide the necessary time, both Houses should of course have a free vote, and we should proceed in that way. The same thing happened with my Bill on retirement. It would never have got through the Commons had it not been for a Conservative MP who picked it up.

The Bill I presented and which was carried at Second Reading by a large free vote was the Bill that came from this House. However, during the Committee stage many amendments were made to the Bill, largely by myself. Most of them had nothing to do with this Bill and I shall not go into them, but the important one was the conscience clause. How did that come about? Quite simply, I had in my constituency the leading Catholic seminary known as St Andrew’s College, Drygrange. Its representatives were naturally a bit upset that their MP was introducing a Bill to which they were so strongly opposed, so they asked me to speak to them. I think that I went twice, if not three times, for discussions with them. It was they who suggested that in view of the strong opposition to the Bill, there should be a conscience clause, given that under the new legislation no person was required to undergo an abortion, so nor should any person be required to participate in an abortion. I went to meet them armed with an important document which had been published by the Board of Moral and Social Responsibility of the Church of England, entitled Abortion: An Ethical Discussion. Unfortunately it is now out of date and out of print, but perhaps I may quote two short extracts from it.

In referring back to the fact that Catholic tradition had changed over the centuries—from the moment of animation to the moment of conception—the report argued:

“It cannot be maintained, however, that this ‘absolutist’ position has ever commanded, or commands now, general acceptance in the Christian conscience … If we were to accept the absolutist principle and declare the foetus to be in all circumstances inviolable, this pamphlet would end at this point. There would be really nothing more to be said: there could be no further discussion, in terms of Christian ethics, of the problems attending the complicated pregnancy … and a Christian committee could have nothing to say to the legislature except to advocate a total prohibition of all induced abortion. Such a determination would be, in fact, a novel departure from the Christian moral tradition”.


That was the argument I put to the college representatives, but I accept their argument that it was wrong, in passing the legislation, to inflict responsibility on those who strongly objected to it. I came back from those discussions to talk with other members of the committee, including the late Norman St John-Stevas, who was a leading opponent of the Bill. We worked together to introduce the conscience clause as it now stands in the law.

Then, a few years ago, two midwives who had reached a senior position in Glasgow objected to being involved in the administration of abortion in the hospital. The health board took them to court and argued that the conscience clause should not be extended to the extent they were arguing for. The case went up to the Supreme Court, which made it quite clear that it supported the original intention of the Act. Its judgment said:

“Parliament will not have had in mind the hospital managers who decide to offer an abortion service, the administrators who decide how best that service can be organised within the hospital … the caterers who provide the patients with food, and the cleaners who provide them with a safe and hygienic environment. Yet all may be said in some way to be facilitating the carrying out of the treatment involved”.


That is why I believe the Bill is wrong in principle. It seeks to reverse the Supreme Court’s decision, which is upholding the law as it was passed by this Parliament. I beg to move.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, my name is added to this group of amendments. I intend to speak very briefly to say that the purpose of the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Steel, is to redefine in the Bill what constitutes participation in an activity to bring it into line with the existing law. This would mean that healthcare professionals could opt out of hands-on participation, such as performing a surgical abortion or dispensing abortion pills, but not out of things such as organising a staff rota where some of the staff on the rota might be taking part in abortion services. This is because we support the right of healthcare professionals to opt out of participating in a hands-on capacity. The noble Lord explained the history, roots and the discussions that led to this and why it has been maintained for so many years as the acceptable and sensible way forward. It is not just my view or that of these Benches. It is also supported by medical bodies such as the British Medical Association, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and many other organisations, including the British Pregnancy Advisory Service. I will leave my remarks at that while we have this debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Thornton]

I just want to add two words to that. The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, is completely correct. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, and my noble friends Lord Turnberg and Lord Cashman have summarised the situation. I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, is right: the Bill does not improve the position that the noble Lord, Lord Steel, came to all those years ago.

I say to the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, that assertion is not evidence. I read her speech at Second Reading in which she used the word “evidence” but did not give us any evidence. Assertion is not evidence. In this Chamber, when you want to make a case and prove it to noble Lords under the scrutiny system, the evidence has to be evidence and not assertion.

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

My Lords, we are running out of time and the Committee will want to try to dispose of this amendment before we rise. I begin with a note of agreement with the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, which is that this debate has been of a very high order. There has been no waste of time and no filibustering, and it has been the House of Lords at its best.

The reason I began by quoting from the document produced by the Church of England in 1965 is that that was the basis on which the Church of England and subsequently the Church of Scotland, to which I belong, and indeed the Methodist Church endorsed the reforms of the abortion law. Their endorsement rested very much on the arguments produced in that report. However, I agree with what the noble Viscount, Lord Craigavon, said: we have to respect those who took a very different view.

It will not surprise noble Lords to know that, because of the 50th anniversary of the Abortion Act, I have lately been getting quite a lot of correspondence—half fan letters and half hate letters. If I may quote from one that came in on Wednesday, it will show the sort of thing that we ought to take into account:

“For more than 46 years laws which lethally discriminate against new human life have brought about the senseless deaths of more than 8,000,000 unborn babies. Abortion is truly the holocaust of our time, but the one ignored by the mainstream media, and, it seems, just about everyone else too”.


It is because I sympathised with and respect that view that I undertook, in discussion with the Catholic seminary, the introduction of the conscience clause. The problem I have with the Bill is that it is not clear where the line is to be drawn. For example, if you are appointed as the chief executive of a health board, everything underneath that health board is under your jurisdiction. What happens if you have a conscientious objection to abortions being carried out? That is the fundamental problem with the Bill: nowhere is a clear line drawn.