Abortion (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2022

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2022 Lords Chamber

Any fundamental constitutional changes, such as the bypassing of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 and other relevant legislation, and the Good Friday/Belfast agreement, should be made only in primary legislation, where they can be scrutinised and debated fully, not via a regulation such as this. Your Lordships’ House should not approve these regulations. I beg to move.

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I give my whole-hearted support to the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, and thank her for tabling it. This is a free-vote issue, of course, and the proceedings here today are of huge interest to the people in Northern Ireland. There are not many controversial issues in Northern Ireland that can be defined as neither orange nor green and cannot be interpreted by anyone as sectarian. This is one such issue. On a lot of Northern Ireland political issues, I am sure I probably would not agree with the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, but this issue unites people across faiths and communities with different identities in Northern Ireland.

Up until 2019, as the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, has said, Northern Ireland had the right to decide its own laws on abortion. Then, some politicians here in Westminster decided that they could overrule the hard-won devolution settlement, and their campaigning was pretty tireless. But for me, this goes to the heart of whether devolution is to be meaningful. The Belfast/Good Friday agreement is meant to be the basis of all political decisions in Northern Ireland, and these regulations—and indeed the whole way the abortion debate has been handled by the Secretary of State—are, I believe, driving a coach and horses through that agreement.

I hope that Members of your Lordships’ House will actually take away the word “abortion” and not talk about abortion itself and their own personal views on the rights and wrongs of abortion, because this is much more fundamental. This is a fundamental constitutional change being proposed by regulation. The Secretary of State presented the regulations in the other place as changing the Northern Ireland Act in a limited and specific way, but that is simply not the case. These regulations set a precedent. They go right against the constitutional guarantee and give the Secretary of State power to make any decisions he sees fit, ignoring the will of the people of Northern Ireland.

Back in 2018, the Secretary of State said:

“it would not be appropriate for Westminster to seek to impose its will, or to be the arbiter of an issue that has long been devolved to the people of Northern Ireland.”—[Official Report, Commons, 5/6/18; col. 220.]

What happened? Why has he changed his mind? He has done a complete U-turn, and perhaps the reason is that he was being held prisoner by so many women actively campaigning on this issue. Now he wants to be the Minister of Health in Northern Ireland, or perhaps the Permanent Secretary of the Department of Health.

I genuinely think that the way this whole issue has been handled is shameful, and even more shameful when there are so many other crucial issues in Northern Ireland that the Government have chosen not to push forward. When it suits Her Majesty’s Government, they want devolution and they believe in devolution. When it does not suit them, they take away devolution, and that is what this is about today. Forget the issue of abortion: this is about the constitutional sabotage of devolution and the 1998 Act.

[Baroness Suttie (LD)]

My Lords, I speak in favour of the regulations before us this afternoon. As others have said, abortion is always a complex and highly emotive issue that is ultimately a matter of conscience for noble Lords. But in the debate this afternoon I think it is important to try to hold on to the facts and acknowledge why we are once again having to debate these issues. As the Minister set out in his opening remarks, we are debating these regulations because the Northern Ireland Department of Health has failed to make progress on implementing the 2020 regulations.

The 2020 regulations sought to bring Northern Ireland in line with the rest of the United Kingdom on reproductive rights for women and to ensure that the whole of the United Kingdom met its international requirements through CEDAW. I am very pleased that the Minister acknowledges the importance of adhering to our international legal obligations. In essence, we are debating two issues: the United Kingdom’s adherence to international treaty obligations, and the provision of equality of access for women in Northern Ireland to the same levels of reproductive healthcare as women can access in the rest of the United Kingdom.

For those colleagues who are concerned about the potential impact of these regulations on the devolution settlement in Northern Ireland, as a very firm believer in devolution, I believe that these are an exceptional set of circumstances that should not create a wider precedent. It would of course have been hugely preferable for the Northern Ireland Executive to have fulfilled their responsibilities directly following the adoption of the regulations in April last year. In that respect, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan. However, once again, Northern Ireland finds itself without a functioning Executive, so it is currently not possible to make progress in this regard.

The international treaty obligations in CEDAW were signed by the United Kingdom as a whole, so the Government in Westminster have a duty to ensure that the whole of the United Kingdom implements them in full. This debate is really about implementing a law that has now been in place for over two years. It should not be about reopening or unpicking what should be a settled matter. A woman’s right to choose in Northern Ireland remains in a precarious position. The reality is that women continue to be forced to travel to England for abortion services; some women, in certain parts of Northern Ireland, continue to purchase unsafe abortion pills.

Whatever one’s personal view on abortion, surely this is an unacceptable position. There is an urgent need to see consistency of services and rights to reproductive health across Northern Ireland. For this to be possible, it is important that the commissioning process be concluded as soon as possible, to ensure that services are fully accessible to all who need them. Can the Minister reassure us that the necessary funding will be made available, and give an indicative timetable for this to be concluded?

In summary, these regulations are about ensuring that every part of the United Kingdom adheres to our international treaty obligations, so that every woman in Northern Ireland will finally be entitled to the same level of reproductive healthcare as women in the rest of the United Kingdom. I therefore urge noble Lords to support these regulations and to reject the amendment to the Motion from the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan.