Abortion (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2021

Debate between John Hayes and Maria Miller

Monday 26th April 2021 General Committees

[Sir John Hayes]

That is true, and the Committee that considered this issue before this Committee said that it was unprecedented in respect not only of Northern Ireland, but of any of the devolved nations. The decision that this Committee looks set to take—I will not put it more strongly than that—in supporting the regulations is so exceptional as to be noteworthy, as I described, and the hon. Lady has amplified.

It has been acknowledged that these issues understandably give rise to strong views, but on a matter as sensitive as this what is happening is particularly reprehensible. It would be reprehensible on a constitutional basis, regardless of the issue, but on a matter that causes such grave concern in Northern Ireland it is all the more so.

Today’s regulations are the continuation of a process that has fallen far short of the standards to which we as legislators should hold ourselves. I am not for one minute suggesting that people in Scotland and Wales think as the people of Northern Ireland do concerning abortion, but the precedents flowing from the way in which we are treating Northern Ireland with respect to the sustainability of the current devolution settlement across our kingdom are obvious.

Do not tell me that this is a matter of the sovereignty of Parliament, which we have heard suggested once or twice. Parliament has been sovereign since 1707. The fact that it can do certain things does not mean that it must do all things or should even do those things that it can. Parliament is sovereign by way of our constitution. By that constitution, it constrains itself by convention, and there are few more important conventions than upholding the Union and the Acts of Parliament that underpin it.

I recommend our Attorney General’s views on judicial activism and the creeping role of the Supreme Court in making public policy. If those views are not sufficiently persuasive, I recommend the views of the former Supreme Court judge, Lord Sumption, who has been clear that democratic legitimacy relies on the judiciary knowing what its constraints should be.

[Mrs Miller]

Surely my right hon. Friend is arguing against himself. If the Committee decides not to act today in introducing laws that improve the situation in Northern Ireland the Supreme Court will have no better action to take than effectively to put law in place of a vacuum. The current situation has been judged to be in convention with human rights, so we have no choice other than to act on that particular point.

[Sir John Hayes]

My right hon. Friend is right; the Government’s best course of action is to repeal the changes that were made when there was no devolution settlement. There is the prospect of further legal challenge, which I would certainly strongly support given all the things I said earlier about the 1998 Act establishing the devolution settlement; about the fact that this has been described again today by a Committee of this Parliament as being unprecedented; and about the basis on which the Assembly was reassembled and its legal underpinning. What we are doing today is highly questionable and I recommend that the Government think again.

The Minister says that Northern Ireland has some opportunity to interpret the regulations and come forward with its own settlement that stays within the law but does not go as far as some would want. That is true. Northern Ireland can come forward with a settlement, but these regulations are effectively a gun to the head of the people of Northern Ireland, saying, “Either you do what we want by your own decision or we will decide for you.” I hesitate to say anything critical of the Minister because I regard him highly, but it is a slightly deceptive argument to suggest that the Northern Irish can sort this out when a gun is being placed against their heads.

Not for nothing are many people in Northern Ireland very proud of the “One Hundred Thousand” report, confirmed by the Advertising Standards Authority as showing that probably 100,000 people are alive in Northern Ireland today who would not be had the Province embraced the Abortion Act 1967.

Moreover, when talking about the sovereignty of Parliament we must recall that a key aspect is that no Parliament can bind its successors. Section 9 was passed in a Bill the introduction of which defined its purpose in terms of the restoration of the Executive. That was in a previous Parliament and it could have been—it would and should have been—this Government’s course of action to say, “That was then and now is now.” A different Parliament and a different set of arrangements in Northern Ireland necessitates a different approach. That would not have been unreasonable given what I said about the need to maintain the integrity of devolution.

Rather than asking Parliament to pass these regulations, the Government should recognise the current reality and instead ask our new Parliament to welcome the restoration of the Assembly and to repeal section 9, as I said in response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke. In making that point, I would say to the advocates of abortion that that would be a debate to have across the House, but more especially in Northern Ireland. If those who want abortion to be more widely available in Northern Ireland make their case and persuade their elected representatives to share that view, living in a democratic kingdom, the majority view will prevail.

It is important to say that the regulations are of course about abortion and its availability in the Province, but they are about something much more: how much we value devolved decision making, how much we respect the different opinions that prevail in different parts of this kingdom and how much we really believe that the sovereignty of this Parliament is enhanced when we are big enough to say that people in different parts of the kingdom can come to different conclusions from the majority view here.

Do we care so little about the distinct regional identities of our Union, unless we take exactly the same approach to abortion in Northern Ireland as in the rest of the United Kingdom, that we would extinguish people’s opinions and eliminate the majority view there? Are we to honour devolution only when those to whom we give power agree with us? Will the Government be content to build their future on past mistakes? Is this an Administration who listen, or do they dictate?

To misunderstand the salience of those questions, or the significance of the answers, would be among the worst political miscalculations of any Conservative Government since the Union began in 1707. As we sit under the gaze of Joseph Chamberlain—

Abortion (Northern Ireland) (No. 2) Regulations 2020

Debate between John Hayes and Maria Miller

Monday 8th June 2020 General Committees

[Sir John Hayes]

In her advocacy of clarity and certainty, perhaps we can be clear and certain about those who were just named in the intervention by the hon. Member for Upper Bann. Can I ask a straightforward question? Will she back the Bill that will be presented to the House to prohibit the abortion of people with cleft lips and palates or clubbed feet, who are currently under the law in this country, let alone in Northern Ireland, being aborted, but could live and be successfully treated?

[Mrs Miller]

I will look carefully at the measure that my right hon. Friend is talking about because although this is a live debate, it should not fog what is a wrong and inappropriate system in Northern Ireland where women in very difficult situations have not been able to access a service which I am afraid his and my constituents would take for granted. That is not right.

Sir David, I will make progress and I am sorry to colleagues who would like to intervene—maybe I should speak a little more before accepting any further interventions. The simple truth that we found when we spoke to people on the ground in Northern Ireland of all views—it is our obligation as a Select Committee to have done that—was that there were some doctors who believed that referring women for an abortion in England was unlawful—fact; and that women were being forced to bring back the remains of their foetuses in their hand luggage because they were not able to be treated more formally for fear of being reported to the police. These are the sorts of things that we found in the Select Committee inquiry—practices that we would not accept in any other part of the United Kingdom. I gently ask DUP Members who are unhappy about this coming into play to look at the detail of those inquiry submissions to understand the reality of what was happening on the ground for too many women.

In the absence of an independent regulator of health in Northern Ireland, can the Minister confirm again—I asked him this question on the Floor of the House—who will monitor the implementation of these new regulations which have to include the expansion of training and medical facilities, because there is no independent regulator to do that? What obligations are there on the Northern Ireland Government to ensure that any future re-evaluation of this policy has to be human rights compliant and has to be compliant with the international obligations of the United Kingdom of which they are part?

The Select Committee recommendations included the very useful recommendation that the General Medical Council should run a campaign to raise awareness about how to complain about a doctor if they fall short on standards expected under the law, particularly with regard to abortion. That would help to increase public confidence and, perhaps, confidence among doctors about what is lawful and what is not lawful, because in our conversations with doctors only a year ago, it was clear there was a huge amount of confusion.