Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill

Baroness Barker Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 15th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Eames (CB)]

My Lords, I approach this discussion from the unique position that I held until retirement as the earthly leader of the Anglican Church in the whole of Ireland, which of course included the Church of Ireland in Northern Ireland. When your Lordships recognise the dates for which I was privileged to hold that position, you will understand that most of those years linked to and were absorbed by the Troubles. Therefore, as I listen to a debate of this nature about politics and dates and, interwoven with that, personal attitudes to such sensitive issues as marriage of same-sex individuals and the extremely sensitive issue of abortion, my mind centres not on the legal principles involved or the dates on which this House or the devolved Administration made decisions but on the ordinary people I know in Northern Ireland, who are, above all else at this stage, totally frustrated by the lack of a local Administration, by the lack not just of elected people making decisions in their own country but of a sense of purpose and with it a sense of hope. If anything has deteriorated since the Good Friday agreement, it is the eradication of genuine hope that things can get better and remain better. When I approach issues which I recognise are sensitive and on which each of us has our own individual attitude, I look again at the frustration I just mentioned.

There is a wealth of suggestions of what will bring the local parties together. Virtually every month we are given a different interpretation of the state of those talks. It is not easy for the Minister to continue to reassure us that progress is being made, because people in Northern Ireland say, “We have been here before; we have heard this, it has been explained to us, and where are we now? Nothing is happening”. Into that morass fit sensitive issues such as the two that are now dominating this discussion and, with respect to your Lordships who do not have very detailed knowledge of what life in Northern Ireland is or what makes its people tick, who want to make decisions which will have the sense of being imposed, who explain to us constantly, “We do not want direct rule; we want the people of Northern Ireland to feel an identity of their own”, to this I say, “Hear, hear. We want that”, but when we look at the situation as it is, it is again one of total frustration.

What can usefully be suggested? I believe the suggestion stems from much we have heard in this debate. The word is “recognition”—of sensitivity, of the limits of sensitivity and the horizons of sensitivity, but recognition that sensitivity is something deeply personal in human relations and in human ambition, and nowhere more so is that evident than in such cases as same-sex marriage and abortion.

There is so much in the amendment before us that turns from giving an identity to the people who matter most—the people of Northern Ireland—that they are being considered, and that their needs, wants, views and hopes are not being discussed in the face of the truth of devolution. Even though to our eyes devolution is not working at the moment, that is no reason for any of us to say that it is not worth giving it a chance.

My plea at this juncture in our discussion is to recognise, as I said at Second Reading, because of the history that has brought this little part of the United Kingdom to where it is now, the need to be sensitive and to understand what we are talking about, because we walk on many graves.

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, it is always instructive to listen to the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, and his text—sensitivity—is one that I hear very much. I want to take this opportunity to do the thing that this House does best: to speak on behalf of those whose voices are not heard or cannot be heard or who are often drowned out.

I could not be in my place last week, but I listened subsequently to the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan. I have listened to her on many occasions, and she does, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said, make a compelling personal case for her beliefs and experiences. In this House, we do not hear from the 1,000 women a year who leave Northern Ireland to come to the mainland to receive the treatment to which they are entitled as citizens of the United Kingdom. We never hear from them. We never hear from the poor women of Northern Ireland who do not come because they cannot afford it or cannot get the time to come over. We do not hear from any of those people. When we talk about matters to do with devolution and the constitutional settlement, I say to the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames: yes, listen to the people of Northern Ireland, but listen to the people of Northern Ireland whose voices are drowned out and are not being heard.

The noble Lord, Lord Deben, who made a very compelling speech, has been the most unlikely of allies to me at times. I say this to him: those of us who are on my side of the argument on the issue on which we do not agree do not wake up of a morning and decide that we are going to get up and talk about Northern Ireland without bothering to go to talk to the people of Northern Ireland—the men and women whose lives are directly affected. All the proposals which have come forward on same-sex marriage and on overturning the abortion law have come after not just the odd conversation but many years of working with communities in Northern Ireland to change the law. The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, was right about frustration. There is absolute and utter frustration in Northern Ireland and a loss of hope that they too might enjoy the same human rights as the rest of us. The noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, said there is no right to abortion. No, there is not, but there are some human rights to which each and every one of us is entitled and which women, in particular in Northern Ireland, have been consistently denied.

This is not a rushed measure to overrule constitutional niceties. It is a long and considered attempt to give all the people of Northern Ireland the equal rights and dignity to which all citizens of the United Kingdom are entitled. I suggest to the noble Lords, Lord Deben and Lord Cormack, that we have waited years for that to happen. To kick it down the road now will be seen, not least in Northern Ireland by those who are losing hope in their political institutions, as yet another reason that we have failed them. I believe that in this Parliament we have a right to say that after all this time, the time has come.

[Baroness Tonge (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I shall speak very briefly on this subject. As some noble Lords know, I was a GP and a family planning doctor and I saw hundreds of women who suddenly found that they were pregnant and did not want to be. I have been at the sharp end of the despair, misery and fear, and often the lack of sympathy from families and partners. I have experienced this. I have seen this despair. If a country has a law that permits abortion, it does not make women have abortions; it just gives them the right to choose whether they continue with the pregnancy. If the law is there, and it is a good law, they can have the abortion so early that they can carry on with their lives.

It is not for the rest of the community to decide what happens to these women. It is for them. I wish people would realise this. It is a very personal decision. As the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, said, it is a human right for a woman to have control over her body, and if she does not want to be pregnant after she becomes pregnant accidentally, she has a right to end that pregnancy. It is her body and she has control over that body—or should have.

Noble Lords have talked about more consultation in Northern Ireland. I have been in touch with doctors in this field in Northern Ireland for years, and the women of Northern Ireland are crying out—not all of them—and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, said, they are coming over here and spending huge amounts of money to get an abortion over here. I plead with noble Lords to have some human kindness and sympathy and to allow women to decide this for themselves by extending the rule to Northern Ireland.

There is one point that I hope the Minister will clarify. We ratified CEDAW—the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women—in 1986. If we have done so, that is a UK matter, not a devolved matter. It is not to be passed down to the people of Northern Ireland—or Scotland, for that matter, but Scotland has already dealt with this issue—but is for the United Kingdom, and if people in Northern Ireland want still to belong to the United Kingdom, they have to accept that there are some things that the United Kingdom is committed to, and this is one of them. Women have the right to have an abortion. Not to allow them to have an abortion is a form of extreme violence to some women. If you have seen the lengths that women will go to to have an illegal abortion—