Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill

Debate between Stella Creasy and Ian Paisley

3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 9th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a genuine pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), and I agree with every word he said.

I will be proud to vote today for new clause 1 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn), who is now leaving the Chamber. He made an incredibly powerful speech. I also support amendment 9.

I rise to address new clause 10 with great reluctance, because none of us wanted the governance of Northern Ireland to be in this position today. We all want to speak up for the importance of devolution but, as my hon. Friend said, human rights delayed are human rights denied. New clause 1, new clause 10 and amendment 9 all speak to the human rights challenges. I understand the concerns of the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) about it being the thin end of the wedge, but I see this as a temporary way of dealing with something that this place is centrally about: protecting the human rights of every UK citizen.

Those of us who are strong defenders of devolution and human rights tread carefully. Section 26 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 charges this place with upholding our international obligations for the whole United Kingdom, even when the Assembly is sitting. As we have now not had an Assembly for two years, and as it is unlikely the Assembly will have sat for three years at this rate, it is even more important that we ask what our obligations are so that we do not see human rights denied.

The Women and Equalities Committee has been very powerful in stating that on these two specific issues, especially in the past couple of years, our country has been censured for what is happening in Northern Ireland. Members will know that I am a passionate defender of women’s rights, and I believe powerfully that we will never have true freedom if women do not have the same control over their bodies as men. If we say to women that we will force them to continue an unwanted pregnancy, they will always be second-class citizens compared with their male counterparts. That is exactly what we are saying to our fellow UK citizens in Northern Ireland. As the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs said, these amendments are about equality. They are about treating every UK citizen equally; in Northern Ireland there are no such rights.

The right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) talked powerfully of fatal foetal abnormalities. I cannot imagine what it is like for somebody who so desperately wants a baby to discover that their baby will not live. All our hearts have gone out to Sarah Ewart, but those court cases were not just about fatal foetal abnormalities; they were about sexual violence, too.

We are not living up to our obligations to protect the rights of the women of Northern Ireland—those 1 million women are UK citizens. If we do not act on these issues and find a way, in the absence of an Assembly, however temporary, to deal with this issue, it will not only be Sarah Ewart who has to go to court. We will be in the invidious position of rape victims having to go to court to have their rights upheld. That is torture, which is why the UN Committee against Torture censured our country and said that how we treat the women of Northern Ireland is torturous.

That is why it is right that we find a way through. I am very conscious of the words of the Women and Equalities Committee, which said that the Government need to set out a clear framework and timeline for addressing the breaches of women’s rights in Northern Ireland, which have been identified by CEDAW, if there is no Government in Northern Ireland to take action.

[Ian Paisley]

The hon. Lady knows where I stand on this issue, and my position is very different from hers. She rightly indicates that there needs to be a framework, but if new clause 10 were to become law, abortion would take place in Northern Ireland without any framework whatsoever. It would be completely and totally unregulated. We have no idea of the scope. Would we have terminations at 12 weeks, 28 weeks or right up to birth?

We would have no regulations on where abortions could take place. There would be no regulatory framework on who could carry out those abortions, and there would be no regulatory framework on sex selection or, indeed, disability denial. All those matters require careful and considered regulation and legislation. Unfortunately, new clause 10 is not careful and does not give the time or scope for any of these matters to be properly considered.

[Stella Creasy]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising those issues, which are myths that need to be dispelled, although I understand his concerns. The CEDAW report talks about the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, which is why a woman who is raped in Northern Ireland and seeks a termination after becoming pregnant will face a longer prison sentence than her attacker. It is why, in November, a mother who bought abortion pills online for her child—she was a child, because she was a 15-year-old girl in an abusive relationship—faces a jail sentence.

We must deal with the effects of this anachronistic, ancient law in Northern Ireland. My constituents, and constituents across England and Wales, are exempted from that Act, but it does not mean a free-for-all. In fact, new clause 10 is crafted in terms of statutory instruments under the Northern Ireland Act.

I am mindful that the British Medical Association, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Royal College of Midwives, and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists have all set out proposals for medical guidance. Absolutely, abortion should be regulated. Absolutely, there should be clear guidelines. Nobody is seeking to change the term limit we have in England and Wales. The question is whether the law should be underpinned by criminal legislation or medical regulation, which is what new clause 10 would allow us to consider. It would therefore allow us to answer the question about the inequality of experience between my constituents in Walthamstow and the constituents of the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) in Northern Ireland.

A thousand women from Northern Ireland have had to travel to England and Wales to have an abortion in the last year, and those are just the women who can travel. What a horrible, lonely journey to ask somebody to make at the most vulnerable moment in their life. That option is not available to women in an abusive relationship, who cannot get childcare or who cannot afford to travel.

New clause 10 is carefully crafted to respect the fact that, at the moment, we do not have an Assembly. If there were an Assembly, it could step in and deal with the criticisms that have been levelled at us by the UN. It could deal with the decisions made by the Supreme Court, which have not been enacted only because of a technicality. New clause 10 would mean these situations can be dealt with. Medical regulations could be introduced, but it would be done through a statutory instrument. It does not prescribe what the regulations would be, so it does not remove any of the protections the hon. Gentleman talks about.

Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill

Debate between Stella Creasy and Ian Paisley

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 8th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

I echo the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn) in paying tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) and for Ealing North (Stephen Pound); the latter is sitting on the Front Bench. I have known him a very long time. I shall always be incredibly grateful for his support and enthusiasm in teaching me the power of the woggle, the necker and small children to effect great change in this country. He will be missed by many in this House, because he is a great friend of scouting.

I also pay tribute to the hon. Members for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) and for Belfast South (Emma Little Pengelly) for setting out so clearly and emotively the passion that people feel at this time and for talking about it from a constituency perspective. Sometimes in this place people forget just how powerfully we feel, because of how we spend our lives. I hate it when people talk about politicians being out of touch, because we do nothing but be in touch, whatever political party we represent. We live, breathe and feel the frustrations of our constituents, and we are all here tonight because we feel their frustration that this piece of legislation was put forward six months ago as a temporary stopgap in the hope that progress could somehow be made. It was suggested that it was a necessary evil.

I am pleased that the Government have recognised that they should not try to suggest that this new piece of legislation is just a narrow, small change in the date, when what it is doing is extending those quite substantial powers to make legislation and change the law in Northern Ireland that were given six months ago on what was presumed to be a temporary basis. The Bill requires scrutiny; I particularly contest its powers around statutory instruments, which we know have been controversial in other areas of policy. Indeed, many of us have already sat on Statutory Instrument Committees about making direct change in Northern Ireland. We need to scrutinise not just the date, but the use of those statutory instrument powers. I am also conscious that the civil servants have said that they feel uncomfortable about the position they have been put in and about the fact that this legislation has been pushed through Parliament as an emergency measure, when, as people have said, we are now looking at three years without any change in the situation in Stormont.

I have been working on the Back Benches with colleagues in every other party—except the DUP at the moment—on these issues because we recognise that there are two sides of the coin. This relates particularly to the amendments that I want to support tomorrow. The human rights issues that they raise go to section 26 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998, which charged this place with the responsibility to uphold our international obligations, even when there was an Assembly in Northern Ireland. It is important for those of us who are proud of devolution, of being able to give power to people and of ensuring that they can exercise it, that we recognise the check and balance that this place provides in that process. Section 26 speaks precisely to that when it comes to human rights.

There is a specific definition of human rights. It is not about a single policy area; it is about a set of rules and obligations that we as the United Kingdom have signed up to for generations, and now find that we particularly need to uphold. This relates to a woman’s right to choose what happens to her body and to a person’s right to choose to marry who they love and have that recognised. Human rights speak to basic freedoms—not the freedom to do what we want, but the freedom to be who we are without feeling that that makes us second-class citizens. These are core freedoms that each of us has come into this place to uphold. They are issues on which we need to work together.

[Ian Paisley]

I understand the hon. Lady’s position, although it is very different from mine. Does she recognise that there is not a right to terminate an unborn life under the European convention on human rights?

[Stella Creasy]

I recognise that the hon. Gentleman and I are on different sides of this, but if he will forgive me, I will come to the international obligations that we as a country have signed up to that I believe are relevant in considering this Bill. This Bill allows for action in the absence of an Assembly, but it does not absolve us of our responsibility to comply with international obligations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stella Creasy]

Let us be very clear. The reason why a woman in Northern Ireland who is raped, becomes pregnant and then seeks a termination faces a longer prison sentence than her attacker is because of the 1861 Act. It is because of that Act that, in November 2018, a mother faced a jail sentence because she sought abortion pills online to try to help her 15-year-old daughter, who was in an abusive relationship. This legislation is affecting the lives of UK citizens.

When these issues are not being dealt with due to the lack of an Assembly, and when the Government, who have sworn to fulfil these international obligations, are saying that we will just have a big exclusionary gap when it comes to Northern Ireland, what do we do as parliamentarians? We all swore to uphold the Good Friday agreement and joint equivalency.

[Ian Paisley]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Stella Creasy]

Thousands of citizens in Northern Ireland have emailed their MPs in support of change. Thousands of citizens in Northern Ireland have said, “Please don’t make us wait anymore,” just as thousands have said they want the right to love whom they love, to marry them and to have that recognised. We know people want change, and we know that, in 2016, 70% of people in Northern Ireland said that no woman should ever go to prison for having an abortion, but that is the situation we are in. We know that 65% of adults in Northern Ireland—

[Ian Paisley]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Emma Little Pengelly]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Stella Creasy]

I have listened, and I want to meet my obligation to not make a long speech—an obligation that we have all been trying to uphold this evening. I promise that I am coming to an end, and I have taken interventions.

[Ian Paisley]

We have until 10 o’clock.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. The hon. Lady has indicated that she is coming to the end of her speech, so do not continually ask her to give way; she is clearly not going to, and she is quite right to say so. Although there is quite a lot of time, we do have other speakers to fit in.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Paisley]

As my cousin knows, I will always give way to her on other matters in these important debates, but seeing the look of consternation on the face of Mr Deputy Speaker, I fear that if I were to go into a separate analysis of our policy and how we would implement it and put in place a common assembly sometime in the future, he may call me to order. I would happily debate that point with the hon. Lady if she were to raise it at a later stage. I would do so even if she were to bring forward an Adjournment debate on the subject. I look forward to debating that issue.

The point that I did leave out in the hope that my colleague, the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon), was going to intervene on me was this issue of bad law. I know that no one in this House—whether it is the hon. Member for Walthamstow or any other Member—wants to put in place bad laws, but sometimes the consequences of actions that we take lead to very bad laws. It may not be the intention, but it can ultimately be the impact. Certainly, the intention of some of the amendments that have been tabled would, in my view, really compromise matters relating to the sensitive issue of abortion rights. For example, they could lead to sex selection abortions in Northern Ireland, and they could lead to a massive increase in the number of abortions of disabled life. We could see problems arise where there is no proper management or scrutiny of where abortions take place. All these issues have been flagged up by a number of groups that have been looking at the problems that would arise if a quick solution were found, which does not exist, to a very difficult set of circumstances that pertain in Northern Ireland. We need to tread cautiously on this issue and not just think about brushing away some pieces of law and some protections that we have, because suddenly everything will be open to change, and that could be very detrimental indeed. The changes could also have an impact in England and Wales: if we were to create a set of circumstances where the laws in Northern Ireland would be so open to abortion, basically anything could go. We would then have a set of circumstances in which Northern Ireland would be well out of kilter on this issue with the Republic of Ireland where I understand that abortion will be limited to the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. We would have a situation where it could be right up to the point of birth in Northern Ireland. That would be absolutely terrible and something that is clearly not the desire or the intention.

[Stella Creasy]

indicated dissent.

[Ian Paisley]

I accept that it is not the intention of the hon. Lady, but it is the point that has been put forward on a number of occasions by experts on these issues.

Offences Against the Person Act 1861

Debate between Stella Creasy and Ian Paisley

Tuesday 5th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stella Creasy]

Absolutely. Indeed, this is in line with respecting the work that has been done in the Northern Ireland Assembly, when it was constituted, on abortion rights. Working parties had started to look at the kind of medical regulation that might be required. Because there is no Assembly at the moment, those rules cannot be taken forward. However, even if there was an Assembly, OAPA—unless these provisions are repealed—would define that conversation.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

The hon. Lady will of course know that when the Assembly debated this matter in 2016, it totally rejected the proposals she is making to the House. Does she agree with me that removing sections 58 and 59 means there would be no regulatory framework whatsoever in Northern Ireland to govern legal abortions. A massive hole would be left in the law in Northern Ireland, and there would be no right for medical practitioners to exercise their conscientious objections.

[Stella Creasy]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention because it is helpful for people to understand how the DUP interprets the situation. I obviously interpret it differently. I look to what happened in the Assembly, when the DUP argued that the idea, in relation to fatal foetal abnormality, required proper consideration—the DUP did not reject it—and, indeed, set up a working party, which has just issued a report on how conditions leading to access to a medical abortion may occur. I therefore do not think that the idea that this was rejected out of hand by the Assembly is fair.

I would gently highlight to the hon. Gentleman that there have been two Assembly elections since then, so there is no guarantee that the view of the Assembly would be the same as the view in 2016. The argument he is making is precisely for the Northern Ireland Assembly, or indeed for the civil servants, to fill the gap, rather than against the gap being created, by repealing this UK legislation.

Let me be clear to other Members in the Chamber who may have heard the suggestion that there would not be any safeguards—

Health, Social Care and Security

Debate between Stella Creasy and Ian Paisley

Wednesday 28th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin), I begin by thanking the good people of my constituency for returning me to this place. I pledge to continue to work as hard for them as I can.

We lost two good people of Walthamstow during the election period, and I want to pay tribute to them for their work in our local community: Eleanor Firman, who was a passionate campaigner, and Councillor Nadeem Ali, who had so much to give the country and whose life was brutally cut short. Both of them would have been joining me to look at this Queen’s Speech and asking what it could do for our local healthcare services. They would both have been passionate advocates for our campaign for the future of Whipps Cross hospital, 40% of whose buildings were built before the NHS came into existence. It treats 450 people every day at its A&E, the highest figure in the country. If ever there was a group of NHS workers who deserved a pay rise, it is the nurses and doctors there. That is why I and many others on the Opposition Benches are rightly furious when we hear the Government saying that they have got the message but see that they are not acting.

Over the past seven years, we have seen how austerity has torn the social and economic fabric of our country, and we can now see how threadbare things are. We look at the Queen’s Speech and see a need to echo the call for investment in policing. We have a massive amount of gang crime in Walthamstow, and the cuts that the Government are talking about simply will not help. Many of my constituents have raised deep concerns about education and school funding cuts, as they see teachers having to buy goods for their schools. They see the rising levels of personal debt and, like my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue), they are worried about that. They also see the sustainability and transformation plans ruining our NHS.

What is missing from this Queen’s Speech is as important as what is in it. The Government say that they are committed to equality, but many of us know that the fight for equality is not just about defending existing rights but about the advances that need to be made. It is women from Northern Ireland who will pay the price for the coalition deal that the Government have made unless we in this House speak up. The ruling in June this year was very clear that those women were being discriminated against as UK taxpayers in their access to abortion rights. The Secretary of State, whatever his personal views on the matter, has the ability to provide the funding to enable those women to access services here. Thousands of women have to travel from Northern Ireland, and I do not understand why a decision made in Belfast should influence what happens in my hospital in Walthamstow or in other hospitals across this country.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

I respect the hon. Lady’s genuine interest in this subject, but it is important for the House to recognise that this is not a matter for Belfast; it is a matter for NHS England.

[Stella Creasy]

The hon. Gentleman and I are on the same side in agreeing that it is for English and Welsh MPs to decide what happens in English and Welsh hospitals. The Secretary of State needs to listen to the opinions of Members on both sides of the House and act accordingly.