Abortion (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2021

Charlotte Nichols Excerpts

Monday 26th April 2021 General Committees

[Sir John Hayes]

It is a cause of regret when a confused Parliament does the wrong thing, but it is a cause of sorrow when a Government make that worse. The prevailing parliamentary confusion is based on a calumnia. To highlight the absurdity of where we stand, the Government now effectively acknowledge that today’s vote was secured on the basis of a misunderstanding, a misinterpretation, a mistaken grasp of what we had to do and must do. The argument of its protagonists on 9 July 2019 about section 9, to which these regulations pertain, was that it was vital to ensure that we met “our international obligations”. Indeed, after 9 July, even the Government suggested that that was the case. When confronted with the Stormont vote of 2 June 2020, the Secretary of State explicitly told the BBC that it made no difference because of our convention obligations.

However, the explanatory notes for today’s Committee make it crystal clear that none of that is the case. They say, of paragraphs 85 and 86 of the CEDAW report—I draw the Committee’s attention to these explanatory notes, for the purpose of clarity—that

“those recommendations are not binding and do not constitute international obligations.”

That directly contradicts what the House was told by the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) and others in July 2019. I have here her speech, in which she describes them as just that, “international obligations” that must be addressed.

The most striking thing about the regulations before us is how different they are from the last section 9 regulations—those of 2020. The 2020 regulations were concerned with abortion, but these regulations are much wider in scope, as my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge said. A clumsy, catch-all, calamitous approach is typical of the way Westminster has handled this topic. It still seems extraordinary to me that we should have greeted the restoration of Stormont in January 2020 with a vote only five months later to undermine devolution in respect of such a sensitive policy area.

We have heard from the Northern Irish representatives here, who after all speak directly for those who are affected by the regulations we are debating. Quite what the feeling is like in that place, a feeling expressed both in public consultation and in the votes in the now reconstituted Assembly—

[Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)]

rose—

[Sir John Hayes]

I will come back to those matters in a moment; first, I happily give way to the hon. Lady.

[Charlotte Nichols]

The point that the right hon. Gentleman made regarding people being directly affected by this is, I think, false. When I was a teenager and had my own abortion at the Liverpool Women’s Hospital, there were women and girls from Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland who had travelled to Liverpool for that service, and we have heard today about the number of people who are travelling over. It is not only people in Northern Ireland who are affected by this, because in areas such the one I represent, in GB, there will be people who are struggling to get on the waiting list for these services because people who should be able to access them in their own communities in Northern Ireland are having to travel here to get them. That is what we are seeking to address today.

[Sir John Hayes]

But these regulations apply to Northern Ireland, and what I said was that the people in the Committee who are elected in Northern Ireland by the people of Northern Ireland have spoken with absolute clarity about the views there—expressed not only in the Assembly and by both communities in Northern Ireland, by the way, but in every poll and test of opinion that has been taken in Northern Ireland, including among women. I think we have to pay some heed, rather as I pay heed to the hon. Lady’s experience from her own part of the country, to those who speak for and represent Northern Ireland.

It is unsurprising—