Complications from Abortions (Annual Report) Bill [HL]

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 6th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, spoke at Second Reading and I welcome the opportunity to speak again to set in context what the Bill is part of and is all about. I, too, have to disagree fundamentally with the noble Lord, Lord Weir of Ballyholme, though not on the necessity for accurate data and statistics. You cannot separate the Bill from the wider context of what is going on in the politics of reproduction, reproductive health and gender identity.

I spoke last time about the international campaign being organised largely by religious nationalists across the USA, Europe and Russia, which has a specific aim to destroy human rights, reproductive rights and the international organisations responsible for upholding them. If people wish to doubt me, I suggest they read any number of reports, but the one that sets out the fundamental basis of the campaign is from 2018 by the European Parliamentary Forum on Population and Development, Restoring the Natural Order, which sets out how a small group of people have set out to overturn the human rights framework that we developed following the horrors of World War Two and over the past 50 years in order to “restore the national order”. They have a number of specific objectives within that. Key among them are making sure that the definition of marriage and family pertains only to heterosexual people, and definitely overturning access to abortion and contraception. Overturning divorce laws is part of what they want to do as well as rejecting compulsory sex, reproductive and health education and, perhaps most interestingly of all, making sure that the first and primary educators of children must always be the family, even if that is to the exclusion of public education. It is a clear agenda.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, was right. If you want to see how it is unfolding, just look at what is happening in states in America and in Hungary and Poland, because what is happening in the USA is not stopping there. It is funded by billions upon billions of dollars in Europe, mostly emanating from America but also from Russia, and in Africa. This is part of that.

It is important and relevant that we look at that today because the data you get relies entirely on the questions you ask, and the questions you ask are determined by the outcomes you want to achieve. As some of us watch this campaign unfolding in its different manifestations, one thing we have noticed is that it is moving on. The people behind it—the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Heritage Foundation and all those massive Christian nationalist organisations and Catholic and other religious institutions in Europe—have realised that, to make to make their campaign more widely palatable, they have to move away from being largely a bunch of male-led organisations. They have removed themselves through a number of different front organisations and changed the language they use to talk about rights and so on.

From those of us who have fought for human rights for 50 years, they have learned the importance of having your messages framed in terms of rights—the rights of people to resist a liberal elite that argues for things such as equality and equality laws, which are inevitably disproportionately affecting some people, particularly poorer people. They say, “Rather than relying on what we’ve done so far, we actually need to go further. We need to create the information that will back up our campaign”. Interestingly, in some cases they have set up private universities which produce research that appears to be proper academic research but is in fact grey research, always leading inevitably to the conclusions that support their back-up. They produce books and reports. This is not new. Noble Lords in this House have for years seen the dodgy dossiers that come from the Christian Institute—all that kind of stuff. That is what is happening and that is why it is important that we make sure that the statistics that we get on abortion—and, incidentally, access to contraception—are timely and accurate.

Noble Lords have mentioned this, and they are absolutely right: the politicisation of data in this area is really important. The increase in the number of women being prosecuted because they have had a miscarriage comes as a direct result of this campaign. I do not think that those of us on our side of the argument have anything to fear. We kept statistics when we introduced telemedicine and medical abortion. In advance of it, those on the other side of the argument were full of dire warnings that all sorts of crimes would be committed. They were not; the statistics and the data have shown that.

I have nothing against the improvement of the collection of data in the health service, but my plea to the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, is that, when the Government look at this issue—and I believe that we should—I ask her to ensure that the statisticians are able to resist the political pressure being exercised across all the different parts of government and organisations because of this campaign, which is being waged on a number of different fronts. Ultimately, it is a pernicious campaign that will damage all sorts of people, including minorities, but will be particularly harmful to women and girls.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I join this debate to follow up the powerful speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Barker. I have been involved in women’s rights for a very long time; I started a magazine called Spare Rib in 1972 and within that we campaigned all our lives for things such as abortions. I can honestly say that I think the life facing a young woman today is more frightening than the life that faced me as a young woman.

I look at what is happening online, where you can download a very simple app. I had a lunch for Laura Bates the other day, which many noble Lords came to. She explained that I could download an app, take a photograph of the noble Baroness, Lady Freeman, right beside me, press a button and have a photograph of the noble Baroness naked—not with Kate Moss’s body, but with the noble Baroness’s body. You can do this at 11 or 12. It is really threatening being a young woman today. There are many things that are out of our control. We, as older women who have had successful lives, have to fight fantastically hard to protect this next generation from a lot of the stuff that is coming down the pipe.

I very much listen to and know about the conspiracies and the power happening in America to try to alter fundamental rights such as abortion. I find it extremely distressing that measures such as this should come to the House of Lords and even be debated seriously, and that there should be a politicisation of women who face abortion. Frankly, nobody wants an abortion; I cannot think why people ever thought that. Nobody wants one. There are several things you do not say when you ask yourself, “What do I want to do in my life?” No one says, “I want to be an alcoholic”, or, “I want to have an abortion”, or, “I want to be a druggie”. You do not put those on your wish list. They happen and we should protect women and support them all the way through, as the noble Lord, Lord Patel, spoke about in his fantastic debate earlier. These are people who need our protection and our love. I really support the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, in bringing this forward. I will take part in any further debate because this is vital, and we are vital to this. Our voices really matter here.

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Moylan again for bringing to our attention the issue of the reliability of statistics on the complications of abortion. It is absolutely right that, in all healthcare, we have correct and accurate data that health service providers can use to understand the safety of procedures.

It is the usual practice for Committee to include discussion of the amendments that have been tabled to the Bill, but here, of course, there is only the proposition that the only substantive clause should not stand part. This, therefore, has necessitated a general discussion of the underlying principles behind the Bill in a restatement on this side of the Chamber of our positions.

At Second Reading, I said that our view was that the Bill performs “an important service” by highlighting

“the absence of accurate, comprehensive statistics in respect of abortions”,—[Official Report, 13/12/24; col. 1990.]

but I explained in the same speech that improved data collection and reporting does not require legislation for it to be delivered. In short, I do not depart from that view, but this Bill has allowed an informed debate to emerge about data in this field. It presents an opportunity to urge the Government to do more to rationalise data recording and collection, so that proper evidence-based medicine can be implemented. In this respect, I endorse what my noble friend Lady Finn said about data collection and statistics more generally.

In answer to a Written Question asked by my noble friend, the director-general of the Office for Statistics Regulation stated that that office—the OSR—had not completed a compliance check on the abortion statistics collected by the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities since as long ago as 2012. That raises important issues of data quality. I am glad to note that it has now been agreed that the OSR will carry out a long-overdue compliance check on those statistics, but only after the Department of Health and Social Care has been able to update the design of the abortion notification system. This seems, to me and to others on this side, the wrong way round. Surely it would make more sense to complete these compliance checks before making alterations to the ANS. That way, the department will be able better to understand any deficiencies in the system—and we know there are some. I hope the Minister will be able to comment on this and address it.

Overall, my noble friend has raised an important concern. I suggest that the Government must now take steps to ensure that the data are gathered on a more reliable and consistent basis.