Conscientious Objection (Medical Activities) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Cashman and Lord McColl of Dulwich

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

[Lord McColl of Dulwich]

Thank you—that is very helpful.

Somebody did suggest that there was not a great number of people with a conscientious objection. The NHS employs 1,200,000 people. Surely they can find enough people who would not be offended to be asked to do abortions. Has anyone thought about that? No. Surely it is possible for the NHS, with such a large workforce.

[Lord Cashman]

Again, I come back to the provisions in Clause 1(2). The noble Lord says that there are enough people within the National Health Service—for quite a few months I was a porter at the old Westminster Hospital—but his argument, I believe, goes that there will be other people who could do it. For that to happen, you need to delegate and pass it on, but according to Clause 1(2),

“‘participating in an activity’ includes … delegation … or supporting of staff in respect of that activity”.

[Lord McColl of Dulwich]

There are 1,200,000 employees in the NHS. Surely there are people who can do the delegation, so there would not be a problem.

[Lord Cashman]

My Lords, perhaps I have not made myself clear. There would be no duty on the person who did not want to be engaged in the process to delegate it onward to somebody else, according to the provisions of Clause 1(2).

[Lord McColl of Dulwich]

That is exactly right but, as I keep saying, there are hordes of people around—1,200,000 people—so you can surely find somebody who can delegate it. The noble Lord keeps pointing to the Bill, but surely there are so many people around in the clinic that somebody can do the delegation and make the arrangement.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, I am sure that the noble Lord is right in his interpretation of the Bill. It lays no duty on any other person to carry out that delegation and he is correct that there would be other people working in the service who would doubtless carry on as they do now. One abortion takes place every three minutes in this country, which is 20 every hour, 600 every working day and more than 200,000 every year. There have been more than 8 million abortions since 1967. Clearly, there is no shortage of people willing to participate in such procedures, but this Bill is about those who are unwilling to participate in them.