Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Monday 2nd February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)]

My Lords, to conclude, I do not have long comments on this. The Attorney-General would be there in such cases to examine whether something illegal and wrong has occurred, and he could withhold his consent for a prosecution if he considered that that was not the case. He would look at the particular circumstances. He or she would act quasi-judicially and independently of government.

Amendment 456 strikes a perfect balance and should give reassurance to women who have good cause to have a late termination, while preserving the criminal offence for those cases where a late abortion cannot be justified. It therefore meets Clause 191 half way, and I urge fellow Peers to support it.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

Can I clarify something in relation to the amendment? Very often the women we are talking about are not prosecuted and do not end up in court. The problem is that the process is the punishment—as we know from other instances.

How does the noble Lord deal with the fact that the majority of the women we are talking about—it is still a small group—are having police raids when they have maybe just had a baby? There was a 19 year-old who gave birth, who did not even know she was pregnant, and there was a police raid. Her family were completely disrupted. She was completely distraught and traumatised, and that process went on for six years before she was cleared. This amendment would not solve that, would it?

[Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)]

I cannot speak to that sort of case, and I entirely agree that it sounds terrible. But the police are there to investigate; that is their job. They have to do it according to rules and codes of practice and, if the system works properly, that sort of case should not arise. At least in this amendment there would be a filter before any criminal prosecution could be instituted.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Gerada (CB)]

My Lords, until recently I was head of the Royal College of GPs. Our college is fully in favour of decriminalisation of abortion. As Professor Hawthorne said:

“No woman should face prosecution under antiquated laws that were created before women were even allowed to vote. This change in the law is a vital piece of protection for the reproductive and health rights of women”.


I would like to pick up a few issues. I have been fortunate enough to work in the NHS, in a legal state in terms of abortion, which has been absolutely fabulous, because I have seen many young women and girls and older women coming and needing terminations of pregnancy and I have guided them through it. I want to talk about a few things—for a start, telemedicine and “medicines by post” and the assumption that this is somehow a bad thing. I would like to turn it all round and say that this is a patient-centric initiative. Imagine having to travel far and to have to go past your abusive husband or abusive partner to say where you have been all day. This is humane and patient-centric and about 50% of women choose this option.

It does not mean that they do not get a proper assessment. Many people are assuming yet again that it is a sort of tick box. It is an hour-long consultation with pre- and post-termination counselling and at any point the woman can be seen face to face. I have also been hearing an assumption that it is an unsafe procedure. I think that I heard—I may have misheard—that one in 17 women end up having complications from having had a medical termination. That is not the figures from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. It says that, under 10 weeks, one in 1,000 women have heavy bleeds and at, over 20 weeks, four in 1,000 do. Those women are in hospital. Clearly it is very different. It is nothing like one in 17. You also have to compare that—we have the comparator—with women who miscarry at home without having an abortion, who probably end up in hospital, as I did twice as a young woman when I had miscarriages. I also want to pick up the issue that somehow telemedicine is a process without any legal requirements. Of course it has legal requirements. It is currently, and will continue to be, regulated under the abortion law. What we are doing is decriminalising it.

I then want to talk about foeticide or foetal sex selection. Foetal sex can be determined as early as 10 weeks and many women choose, for one reason or another, to know the sex of their child. Both my daughters-in-law—I was going say my sons but, of course, for the purpose of this, boys cannot become pregnant—chose to determine the sex of their child, just as many people do. It is perfectly legal to determine the sex of your child—at the 20-week scan, anyway, you can choose to determine the sex. Women can then choose to have a legal termination if they so wish, though I am struck by the noble Lord, Lord Winston, saying that there are legal implications. This is conflating the issue of decriminalisation and sex selection. I personally am against sex selection, but it is not part of this argument about decriminalisation.

I would also just like to address the under-16s and compulsory safeguarding assessments under what I assume would be a multi-agency assessment, including the police and social workers. As the law stands, women under 16 can obtain an abortion and obtain sexual health advice and contraception without safeguarding implications—clearly noble Lords all know about Gillick competence and Fraser guidelines. This would be a retrograde step. These young girls would not come to see us. They would probably end up like one patient who I saw very late in pregnancy. She presented with a rash on her abdomen, which is the rash with stretch marks; she was 32-weeks pregnant. She was so terrified—and this was before the law changed—of admitting that she had had unprotected sex and had not had her period. Compulsory safeguarding is a retrograde step and has nothing to do with this decriminalisation, which I fully support.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I mainly want to defend Clause 191 remaining in the Bill, but with some reservations. Before that, I want to acknowledge public interest in this issue and a popular worry that it is all about legalising abortion up to birth. That is what is being discussed. Worse than that, people believe that somehow this legal change was rushed through the other place almost by the back door. Legalising abortion up to birth is not what is contained in Clause 191, but I have sympathy with the public’s confusion over that and criticism about how the clause was added to the Bill in the other place.

The noble Lord, Lord Carter, spoke about some of this and everybody else has now mentioned just how little time was spent discussing this in the other place. More important, most people did not know it was coming. Most members of the public were not expecting such a big change in the law. Wherever you stand on this, abortion might be a settled entitlement for women—most people accept that abortion exists in society—but it is still a morally charged, difficult discussion. For some, conscience is involved. There are contestations, certainly about when life begins.

We cannot deny it: if anything talks to going beyond 24 weeks—and, as we have heard today, even 24 weeks is contentious or becoming so; it should not be, but it is—the public are perfectly right to be a bit furious and feel that somehow the democratically accountable system has been snubbed. I say that because this debate needs more discussion and depth. I am glad to hear that we are getting some of it here, but we certainly did not get it when the clause was brought into the Bill in the House of Commons. That has led to a big backlash, which, as it happens, is not necessarily the best atmosphere in which to conduct a rational, reasoned debate.