Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Lord Morrow Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Monday 15th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Morrow (DUP)]

My Lords, I support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, this evening. I do so not just because I have attached my name to it, but because I emphatically agree with what it seeks to achieve. Anyone who knows me is aware that I am an advocate for a strong law-and-order approach to crime; for those who break the law, the punishment must fit the crime—which often includes imprisonment. This amendment, however, is trying to protect the dignity of female prisoners.

The female prison estate is currently run as a mixed-sex institution. This is because the Ministry of Justice’s policies permit prisoners of the male sex who identify as transgender and fulfil certain criteria, resulting in them being held alongside vulnerable female prisoners. Some of these prisoners have been convicted of the most serious violent and sexual offences and are biologically male.

It surely follows that women’s prisons should be separate-sex facilities to preserve, as far as reasonably possible, the safety, dignity and privacy of women in prison. Since the Corston report in 2007 it has been acknowledged throughout the criminal justice system that women in prison exhibit patterns of vulnerability that distinguish them both from women in the wider community and from male offenders. It is also worth noting that female offenders report disproportionately high rates of previous experience of violent and sexual abuse, and experience high rates of mental health problems.

Where women in prison have been victims of violent and sexual assault, prison is often the very first time they can be confident that they will be away from their abusers, who are usually men. I strongly contend that, where women in prison have been victims of sexual and violent abuse at the hands of males, the presence of any offender of the male sex may have an inherently traumatising effect, regardless of the nature of the offence committed.

It is the Ministry of Justice policy—namely, The Care and Management of Individuals who are Transgender —that permits prisoners of the male sex to be housed in the female estate. The policy states that all male prisoners who identify as transgender and who are in possession of a gender recognition certificate must be allocated to the female estate. This is irrespective of any conviction, offending history, risk profile or anatomy, including those who are high-risk prisoners and those convicted of violent and sexual offences against women.

I too was going to refer to the judicial review that was brought in March 2021, but the mover of the amendment has adequately covered that, so I will refrain. However, I shall again emphasise one line: while the policies were found not to be unlawful, it should be said again that the judgment acknowledged the negative impact of the policies on women in prison.

Furthermore, there is no requirement under the Gender Recognition Act 2004, if people fulfil certain criteria, for them to have surgery or medical treatment to obtain a GRC. It is a fact, as has already been referred to, that GRCs have been obtained in prison by males convicted of violent and sexual offences who have been transferred to the female prison estate. The latest data available on the number of male-sex prisoners who identify as transgender dates back to 2019, but back then it was 11 in number. I understand that new data will be available to be released, or at least is expected to be released, this month. Forcing women to share accommodation with prisoners of the male sex, particularly where those prisoners have been convicted of violent or sexual offences, arguably engages Article 3 on the right not to be subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

I urge your Lordships’ House to support this reasoned and sensible amendment, which is clearly intended to respect female prisoners, including their rights and dignity. Not to do so could be interpreted as not caring how female prisoners end up. Indeed, the conditions that they are subjected to could be construed as part of their prison sentence—which of course they are not, and never should be.

[Baroness Meyer (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 214 seeks to eliminate the risks and dangers to women in prison by the muddled use in legislation of the terms “sex” and “gender”. They are not interchangeable. They have come to mean very different things. Matters have reached such a pitch that I am tempted to paraphrase the 18th-century man of letters Dr Samuel Johnson and say that “Allowing a person with a full set of male genitals the legal right to serve a sentence in a women’s prison is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all”. It is, not to put a too fine a point on it, barking mad.

Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Lord Morrow Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 22nd October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Morrow (DUP)]

My Lords, advocates of the Bill avow that assisting terminally ill people nearing their natural end to kill themselves is compassionate. The tragic stories which they highlight of suffering individuals make a compelling case. Which one of us is not troubled by the thought of suffering, especially when we know a time is coming when we all must face up to the painful reality of death?

However, it is crucial that we examine the assertion that changing the law to allow a medical professional to assist another’s suicide without sanction fits with our general ethos of care. We would not fathom validating or facilitating a mentally distressed person’s desire for suicide to minimise their anguish, however traumatic, and it would be deeply unethical and sinister to suggest assisted suicide to a disabled person struggling with the burden of their condition. What makes it legitimate to introduce it as an option because a doctor makes a judgment that an individual has approximately six months to live?

To choose the path the Bill sets before us would entail a radical shift in our approach to care and suffering. There would be a class of individuals whose suicides we would endorse—lives that we would no longer consider worthy or valuable enough to prohibit any involvement in ending. Once we became accustomed to inducing death as a means to alleviate suffering, what would prevent us extending its usage to those not in their last few months of life?

The Bill provides that in determining a terminal illness:

“Treatment which only relieves the symptoms of an inevitably progressive condition temporarily is not to be regarded as treatment which can reverse that condition.”


A diabetic reliant on insulin could easily be deemed to have less than six months to live without treatment, triggering the option of assisted suicide.

To present any form of medical suicide as complementary to a compassionate society is a dangerous masquerade and one that threatens to undermine the fundamental ethic at our nation’s core. The Bill would legitimise the involvement of doctors—society’s preservers of life—in the procurement of death. Legalising assisted suicide is the wrong answer to the right question: how do we best care for and support vulnerable people nearing the end of their life?

The Bill is a dangerously misguided piece of legislation which I hope your Lordships’ House will reject.

Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Lord Morrow Excerpts

Friday 18th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Morrow (DUP)]

My Lords, we have heard much in this debate today about choice and compassion, so it is perhaps not unreasonable to look carefully at some of the claims we have heard as well as examine the noble and learned Lord’s Bill and ask ourselves to what extent it accords with these principles. We are regularly told by proponents of the Bill that there is overwhelming support for allowing assisted suicide. The contention that between 70% and 80% of the public support this Bill is presented as a foundational justification for the Bill before us today. But how robust is that? Polling conducted last weekend by ComRes for the charity CARE and published by various media outlets today, including the Telegraph, confirms that 73% of people support assisted suicide while 12% oppose it. However, when people are informed about the various public safety considerations, those figures change dramatically. Some 42% of those who initially supported the idea of assisted suicide change their minds. The end result is that the 73% in favour to 12% against becomes 43% in favour to 43% against.

Facts are what matter in this debate. When people are presented with the facts and the complex reality of assisted suicide sinks in, it is clear that there is no apparent consensus among the populace that the proposed change is desirable. Then we are assured by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, that his Bill facilitates assistance for suicide for terminally ill people and no one else. But if compassion is an underlying principle of his Bill, where does that leave people with distressing, incurable illnesses that are not terminal? On what grounds does the noble and learned Lord exclude them from something that he clearly sees as a benefit?

Again, if autonomy and choice are underlying principles of the Bill, where does that leave people who are suffering but physically unable to end their own lives if supplied with lethal drugs for that purpose? I say this not as a supporter of the noble and learned Lord’s Bill—far from it—but to highlight the fact that inconsistencies such as these cause many people to worry that a law to assist the suicides of terminally ill people will not stop there.

We do not have to look far to see that happening. In Holland and Belgium, assisted suicide and euthanasia are now being offered to categories of people such as those with mental health problems and children who were not intended to be recipients when those laws were enacted only a few years ago. The noble and learned Lord will no doubt say that his Bill is modelled not on Dutch or Belgian legislation but on the assisted suicide law in Oregon. But let us ask ourselves what is the more appropriate comparator for assessing how an assisted dying law would work in this country—a small, sparsely populated and largely rural state on the far side of America or a densely populated and urbanised country just across the North Sea on the edge of Europe?

Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg, a writer and graduate student who advocates for disability rights and justice, writes:

“Advocates for death with dignity believe that they can put enough safeguards in place”.

However, what happens to people who are sick, in pain and alone, who do not realise that they have worth? They do not realise that we can fight the idea that it is better to be dead than ill or disabled. Their reaction to fear cannot be surrender, not when life is at stake.

Pressure on vulnerable people at the end of life is not novel or imagined, it is very real. It is truly life or death. We have already been warned in the press last week by Professor Theo Boer of the regulators of the Netherlands’ euthanasia law not to go there by changing our law. He was a supporter of the Netherlands’ euthanasia law when it was passed 12 years ago, but soaring death rates and elastic interpretation of the law have convinced him that the mere existence of a law licensing assisted suicide for euthanasia is an invitation to resort to it. Fear of dying, or even of dying badly, should not be motivation for assisted suicide but motivation for improved care. As proof, Boer warns, the issue of assisted suicide represented in the Bill before us today is a genie we should not let out of the bottle.

Many today have made reference to their postbags. I, too, have a postbag, and mine is running at 20:1 against the Bill. I am not talking about Northern Ireland as a region; I am talking about the whole of the United Kingdom.