Conscientious Objection (Medical Activities) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord McColl of Dulwich and Lord Alton of Liverpool

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

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

Or not.

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

Digital Economy Bill

Debate between Lord McColl of Dulwich and Lord Alton of Liverpool

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 20th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 25YD. I find myself very surprised by Amendments 25H, 25W and 25YC. I appreciate that in some technical sense these amendments may not jeopardise the principle that what is illegal offline is also illegal online, but as a matter of practice and enforcement, they most certainly do jeopardise the spirit of the principle.

The Bill is very clear that the age verification regulator must enforce the law with respect to illegal pornography to the same standard that exists offline. These amendments, however, deliberately change this and thereby, albeit without perhaps making significant amounts of illegal pornography legal, certainly ask us to support the proposition that our law should instruct the regulator to make space for all but the most violent, illegal pornography. What kind of message are we sending to society? If we vote for these amendments today we will be giving the wrong message. We cannot go to the length of using valuable parliamentary time to change the Bill as it stands through these amendments, which as a matter of practice make space for violent pornography, without sending a message that violence against women is in at least some sense acceptable.

The definition of extreme pornography and material is an inadequate replacement for the prohibited material category which the amendments seek to remove. It will cover only the explicit and realistic portrayal of violence which is life-threatening or likely to result in serious injury to just a few specific parts of the body—breast, anus and genitals. This leaves a range of violent acts and behaviour which we would be saying, courtesy of amendment to Clause 16, is acceptable to be portrayed in online pornography but which would not be granted an R18 certificate, or indeed any other certificate by the British Board of Film Classification for distribution in other ways.

The British Board of Film Classification guidelines state that material to which it refuses to give a certificate includes depictions of the infliction of pain or acts that may cause lasting physical harm; sexual threats, humiliation or abuse; and material, including dialogue, likely to encourage an interest in sexually abusive activity which may include adults role playing as non-adults. I believe that if such material is to be included in the new standard for the acceptable level of violence and abuse in pornography online, we are setting the standards in the wrong place. It puts a sheen of acceptability on materials portraying violent and abusive actions and, in doing so, communicates to the viewer that such attitudes and behaviour towards women are permissible.

In the light of what is already known about the overlap between the use of violent pornography and the development of attitudes which condone violence against women, and sexual aggression, this is deeply concerning. The government Amendment 25H to the definition of pornographic material, and what material can be blocked by the regulator, also places question marks over the standards applied to other formats, by which I mean DVDs and video-on-demand services. I recognise that the internet is a vast place, but simply because there might be different values reflected in different corners of the web, should we capitulate and reduce our standards? I would say not.

The Government have tried to protect the application of different standards set out in other legislation with Amendment 25YU to Clause 27. While the actual legislation may not be changing today for DVDs and video on demand, the pressure to adjust how that legislation will be enforced will be hard to resist. Furthermore, Amendment 25YV implicitly recognises that there are different standards applying in other formats that will no longer apply to the internet, breaking the premise that what is illegal offline is illegal online. This not only disproportionate but extremely risky.

I understand that there are concerns about the original definition of prohibited material, which is being removed by Amendment 25W because of out-of-date CPS guidance, but surely that is a temporary state that will in time be remedied. Making a permanent change to the definition of what pornography is acceptable to supply behind age verification goes beyond addressing the issues on which the CPS guidance needs updating. On touching on the CPS point, I must engage with the argument made by some that the Government are compelled to make these changes because the CPS guidance on the Obscene Publications Act is out of date. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, has pointed out, that argument is absurd. If the CPS guidance is out of date, it should update it; it is ridiculous to argue that Parliament, which is sovereign, should have its freedom to do the right thing fettered by the fact that CPS guidance has been allowed to get out of date.

Anyone voting for Amendments 25H, 25W and 25YC will be voting to make space for violent pornography online which the Bill as currently defined does not do. If there is a Division, I shall be duty bound to vote against, because I could not possibly associate myself with an attempt to make violent pornography more available than this Bill currently suggests that it should be, respecting as it does the offline enforcement standards. A vote for these amendments must inevitably have the effect of conferring some level of approval and some measure of normalisation of violence against women. If there is a Division, I shall vote against.

In the unfortunate event of the amendments passing, I shall vote for the excellent Amendment 25YD proposed by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, to which I have added my name. The amendment allows for the definitions of extreme pornography to revert to the current definition of prohibited material in three years’ time, subject to a review in two years. It future-proofs the Bill and provides a means of dealing with this problem without needing to bring forward new legislation and take up valuable amounts of parliamentary time. The three years will provide ample time for the CPS to update the guidance that it should never have allowed to get out of date and provide time for proper public debate.

The internet is a wonderful invention in many ways, but it can be used for ill. Standards on harmful material and pornography have been honed and developed in relation to videos and DVDs in the offline world over many years. It would be ill advised permanently to establish a separate and lower set of standards for the internet. Amendment 25YD will allow the Government’s amendments to address out-of-date guidance but restore consistency in the approach to pornography across all media after an appropriate time. I commend it to the House.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

I support Amendment 25YD in the name of my noble and learned friend, to which she spoke so well earlier on, and the comments of other noble Lords in the debate so far. The problem with coming to this point in legislation, which has proceeded all the way through the other place and is now on Report in your Lordships’ House, on a day when some 174 government amendments have been laid, is that it is very hard to do justice to genuine discussion or indeed scrutiny, which is what this House is supposed to do with these measures. Although I welcome the measured way in which the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Ashton of Hyde, introduced the amendment today and his assurance that there will be a Green Paper, I was also very taken by my noble and learned friend’s comment about the difficulties there would then subsequently be in having legislation. That is all the more reason not to legislate in haste, lest we end up repenting at leisure.

Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord McColl of Dulwich and Lord Alton of Liverpool

Friday 16th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord McColl of Dulwich]

My Lords, I would not dream of trying to rebut anything that the noble Lord said.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, I support what the noble Lord, Lord McColl, said. He is one of the foremost medical authorities in your Lordships’ House. We know that many of the royal colleges and the British Medical Association, speaking for 153,000 doctors, say that it is not possible to legislate safely—which is the point that the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, made.

However, I recall that when my late father was dying and I went to spend time with him during the last part of his life, the doctor told me that I should make long-term provision for long-term care. After he left the room it was the nurse, who was the wife of one of the policemen who worked in the Houses of Parliament at that time, when I was in another place, who said to me, “David, you don’t need to make long-term provision. In my view, your father will be dead before the end of this weekend”. Needless to say, it was the nurse rather than the doctor who got it right.

Many noble Lords will have read the briefing from the Royal College of Nursing, which arrived only today. It says:

“Terminal illnesses are often extremely unpredictable with periods of improvement and deterioration. This can make it extremely difficult to pinpoint when someone might die … we remain concerned that diagnosing that a patient is expected to die within six months could result in inaccurate judgements through no fault of the medical practitioner”.

That is the point that that noble Lord, Lord Warner, has just made. It could lead to litigation against doctors and nurses if we do not put in far better safeguards than the Bill provides at present.

[Lord McColl of Dulwich]

I thank the noble Lord for that intervention. I have been in practice for very many years and I still am. One of the things that always struck me was how wrong I was about trying to predict when a patient would die. I well remember a typical case of a lady who was only 28. She had inoperable cancer of her throat. She was in great distress, with pain and distressed breathing. I saw my job as a doctor to relieve all her symptoms, whatever the cost. I said to her, “If you like, I can put a needle into your vein and titrate you with heroin”. Heroin is a marvellous drug. You have to dilute it in a large volume and not use the small volumes in the ampoule, because if a gun goes off you might suddenly give them too much too quickly. I titrated her and asked her to tell me when all the symptoms had gone. Eventually she said, “Yes, that’s fine”. It was a huge dose of heroin. I had no problem about giving it. The strange thing was, not only did it not kill her, it gave her a new lease of life. It is unrelieved pain that is the killer.