Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Winston Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 2nd February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

It would be part of the process of investigation. In that context, I sympathise very much with the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, which would provide a further filter. There should be a prosecution only in cases where there has been a clear breach of the law. These are very sensitive matters and need to be conducted sensibly. But we have to stand on principle here.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, I have the greatest respect for the noble Viscount, but I fear there is a difference between speaking in theory and practical reality. I want to point out that I have certainly killed at least one baby at term myself; possibly two.

There is a condition called ectopic pregnancy. Very occasionally, pregnancies grow outside the womb or motor outside the womb during the course of the pregnancy. They are left outside the uterus, where they leave a huge hole in the abdomen, placing the bleeding mother at grave risk when the placenta is removed. In this situation, without any alternative, I did what I thought was a caesarean section in both cases to find that once I had opened the abdomen, the uterus was not in fact pregnant, but I was faced with a baby outside the uterus with a placenta. One baby was clearly very abnormal, with various limb abnormalities; the other baby looked completely normal. Both babies were delivered and—thank goodness, with the help of my colleagues—we were able to save both mothers’ lives. As the noble Lord, Lord Patel, will agree, the bleeding is a very frightening situation in the operating theatre.

If I may, I will tell the Committee the story of someone who was a patient of mine for about seven or eight years. Laura had a very rare condition—there are many rare genetic conditions—in her case, Lesch-Nyhan syndrome. This is a curious disease which tends to affect only boys but can occasionally affect any foetus. Laura had a series of pregnancies. About four of them ended in miscarriage. She desperately wanted a baby. Eventually, she conceived successfully, although she was often infertile, and finally had a baby. She gave birth to a baby rather prematurely, about four weeks before term, who had Lesch-Nyhan syndrome.

Peter was seriously abnormal. He had all sorts of neurological problems. He was unable to eat properly. He was unable to move properly. As a teenager, he had to be strapped in his wheelchair to prevent him mutilating himself. That did not stop him mutilating himself and eventually he started to bite off his lips and his tongue, so he had to have his teeth extracted, and that was not sufficient. He could not be moved around in his wheelchair, because if he was upstairs he would want to tilt himself downstairs. Peter continued to live a very long time; I do not know exactly when he died, but I think he was about 18.

We could do nothing about this lady, but we realised she had this genetic defect. For a long time, we tried to work out the mechanics of it. We eventually sourced the DNA. It was a particular mutation which occurs in very few families in this country. Mutations such as this occur in different ways in different pregnancies, not infrequently; in this case, her mutation was very difficult to deal with. After eight years of trying, she attempted to have more pregnancies because she desperately wanted to have a baby who was free of disease. The risk to her, of course, would be having another baby who might be handicapped and that, of course, would be an immense hardship for that family. That is often one of the big problems for people who try to terminate or deal with these sorts of conditions. Anyway, she had about a dozen pregnancies and eventually we put back into her uterus an embryo which we thought was normal—there was a great deal of resistance in Parliament at the time to this kind of procedure—but she had a live baby, who fortunately was well and was a boy.

That is another example, but it is also fair to say that there are many situations where you have obstetric abnormalities; for example, a baby born with very severe skeletal abnormalities. That could sometimes be unknown. A woman may not report to have her baby for whatever reason during pregnancy until screening is too late and she has not had ultrasound or any other care. That happens in poor families generally. It is inevitable in any society, however good your medical practice might be.

Sometimes, when close to term, a woman is suddenly found to have an abnormal pregnancy in her uterus, which would prevent labour being successful. A caesarean section would probably result in a dead baby but, alternatively, sometimes these babies have been what we call morcellated: you actually try to disintegrate them because it is the only way you can save the mother’s life, if she is critically ill at that stage.

This is a very serious issue and unless one fully understands that these things are possible, one has to recognise that you cannot—

[Baroness O’Loan (CB)]

I have the greatest respect for the noble Lord. I wonder whether he will give way; I thank him. The situations which he describes are all provided for in the Abortion Act.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness very much for her point, because I appreciate that she is giving me a brief rest during a very emotional speech in my case. I apologise for it being an emotional speech, but when you have dealt with such patients frequently for many years, you forget exactly how serious this can be.

I have seen many women requesting terminations at all stages of their pregnancies, even very early and sometimes after in vitro fertilisation to get them pregnant. That is an extraordinary issue and you would not expect it to happen, but actually it happens throughout pregnancy. The women have such serious problems which may not show up as the kind of psychological problem that has been described.

I do not believe that any woman goes through a termination of pregnancy lightly. She certainly does not want to damage herself and do her own abortion. That is an extremely rare situation. The risk here is that we are trying to make law which is just impractical, in the real sense of the word, when we have such a range of syndromes and a population in which we cannot in fact diagnose pregnancy all the time, and never will be able to in people, for example, who are very poor or otherwise live in very serious circumstances and are damaged.

[Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)]

My Lords, the debate that we have just been having illustrates perfectly why the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, is so apt. His amendment would insert a requirement for the Attorney-General’s consent before criminal proceedings could be instituted in these cases, and that consent would require the Attorney-General to examine all the circumstances of the difficult cases we have been discussing in detail.

I have a few brief comments. As we have heard, Clause 191 arose from an amendment to the Bill in the other place but, astonishingly, it received less than two hours’ debate, as I understand it. It was approved without evidence sessions, yet it would be a major change to abortion law. Given that polling apparently reveals that a mere 1% of the public support abortion up to birth, and having regard to the scant debate in the other place, I am hesitant about making such a radical change to abortion law. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, is the perfect solution. It is a compromise: a balanced amendment which maintains the existing criminal offence but recognises that there may be more finely balanced cases—

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[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

No, I have already had one, and I am happy with it, thank you.

This is not scaremongering. We need only to look at other countries to foresee what the consequences of decriminalisation would be. Sex-selective abortion has been a significant problem in Canada since abortion was decriminalised. An article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal has outlined that:

“Easy access to abortion and advances in prenatal sex determination have combined to make Canada a haven for parents who would terminate female fetuses in favour of having sons”.


Evidence of sex-selective abortions has also been found in Victoria, Australia, since decriminalisation—so much so that one doctor was investigated by the medical board of Victoria for failing to refer a woman for a sex-selective abortion. Australian broadcaster SBS reported that there are higher numbers of boys than girls being born in some ethnic communities in Australia since decriminalisation.

If we go down the path proposed by Clause 191, we could expect the same to happen here, risking profound social and demographic problems. Estimates suggest there are more than 140 million missing women and girls across the globe, in most part resulting from sex-selective abortion and postnatal sex-selection infanticide.

Sex-selective abortion in China, arising in part because of the country’s one-child policy, created enormous demographic challenge in the country, with media reports describing how millions of men have struggled find a wife in the country.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

Does the noble Baroness accept that sex selection has to be done under the auspices of the regulatory authority, the HFEA, and that it is illegal in this country and has remained illegal? It would be very difficult for clinics to use that technology without the support of the HFEA.

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

I remind the noble Lord that there is already an issue in this country: BPAS suggests online that it is not illegal to have sex-selective abortions, so there is some dispute about that information.

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[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

I thank the Lord for that. But I think one of the American learned societies of obstetricians, gynaecologists and other kinds of medicine that indicates—as do other sites—that there is technology that is successful from seven weeks on, and certainly from nine or 10 weeks. There are differences. These differences are the subject of debate among medical professionals. I can see the noble Lord shaking his head.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for giving way. Just as a matter of information, I must tell the noble Baroness that in a clinic I have run for over 40 years which does ultrasound on every patient with a high degree of expertise, these measurements are not that accurate; they really are not. There is a real risk that you get the wrong stage of the foetus completely—at least a month out, if not more.

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord, and I respect his expertise, but I think there is a debate about how successful scans are and from what stage. We can debate that on another occasion, but there is evidence that scans can be used successfully. I will not take any more interventions, because my time is running out and I have one more amendment to go through after this.

There is evidence that first-trimester scans are generally safe, non-invasive and commonly used to confirm pregnancy, identifying due date et cetera. At the moment, the requirement is that the medical practitioner believes in good faith that the pregnancy will not exceed 10 weeks when the medicine or the first dose of a course is administered. I contend that the condition stretches the idea of belief and good faith unreasonably widely, so the medical practitioner simply accepts what they are told, perhaps by the pregnant woman who may be speaking in perfectly good faith—we have seen tragic cases of this—but is mistaken, or else that it is only after the gestational age of the baby has been reliably ascertained that the medical practitioner is in a position to believe in good faith that the pregnancy meets the conditions stated. My amendment would not change the Act.