Complications from Abortions (Annual Report) Bill [HL]

Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 13th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I commend the noble Lord’s Bill to the House. It offers a moderate proposal that ought not to be controversial. Whatever one’s view on the issue of abortion, it is clearly in the interests of public health and patient safety to ensure that accurate data is collated and reported concerning the scale and nature of complications from abortions, as with any medical procedure. As the noble Lord has explained, current reporting is deficient and has not caught up with the changes concerning how an increasing number of abortions now occur.

As well as supporting the comments that the noble Lord has made, I wish to make two further points in relation to the Bill in the short time available to me. First, I note that while the 2023 Department of Health publication on which the Bill is based records data more accurately than previous reporting, it acknowledges in its own annexe that it does not include complications under the code O044. That code records “incomplete” abortions, where part of the unborn baby remains inside the mother after an abortion.

That report includes hospital episode statistics relating to incomplete abortions where they have led to additional complications but not to incomplete abortions themselves. However, given that any incomplete abortion routinely requires further treatment to remove the remaining parts of the baby to avoid the risk of infection, it seems to me that those also ought to be included in any accurate recording of statistics.

The second point I want to make is in relation to Northern Ireland, as all noble Lords would expect. While I understand that the Bill relates to England in order to correspond to the November 2023 report, I would like to see an improvement in data collection and reporting in Northern Ireland. Since abortion was decriminalised in Northern Ireland, reporting on abortions has been woefully inadequate. Indeed, we appear to have even less data concerning complications than the limited data published in England.

The regulations attached to the Northern Ireland abortion law require abortion providers to report

“Particulars of any complications experienced by the woman up to the date of discharge”.

That means we have the same problem as in the rest of the UK, because complications which arise after discharge, and which come to light in a hospital setting only when a woman seeks further treatment, are unlikely to be recorded in official statistics. It would be really good if we had better information and data in Northern Ireland, as here in the rest of the UK.

Data informs health trends; it gives transparency and understanding, but, above all, it ensures patient safety. The purpose of this Bill is to have accurate data, and I am very happy to support it.