Road Safety Powers: Parish and Town Councils

Debate between David Smith and Sam Rushworth

Monday 30th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sam Rushworth]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point about communities where there are schools. Toft Hill primary school, in my constituency, is on the A68, and children have to cross the road in difficult conditions—the school lost its lollipop person who had been helping the children to cross.

[David Smith (North Northumberland) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is being very generous with his time. As hon. Members have said, it is a testament to the importance of the issue that we are all here this evening. The Minister can relax as on this occasion I will not talk about the A1—I will in future—but about the northern bypass in Morpeth, which has a 60 mph zone. In 2023, Labour party activists and the local parish council made a case to the county council that a safer crossing was necessary, but the issue has not moved on. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is local people, local parish councils and local town councils who understand their circumstances best, and that they should be listened to and given more power in this regard?

[Sam Rushworth]

On the matter of parish councils, I recently met members of Staindrop parish council, who have been asking for more than a decade to have two crossing points at the entrance and exit to their beautiful village, which is on the main road between Bishop Auckland and Barnard Castle. Traffic often does not drop its speed down to 30 mph. Pensioners in Staindrop have said that they feel put off from doing something as simple as crossing the road to attend a social function because of their fear of crossing that road. It is a travesty that Staindrop parish council can ask for the same thing over and over again, but the highways authorities just keep saying no.

Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between David Smith and Sam Rushworth

Report stage
Tuesday 17th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[David Smith (North Northumberland) (Lab)]

I rise to oppose new clauses 1 and 20 and to support new clause 106. All the new clauses concern the issue of abortion.

Through the process of decriminalisation, new clauses 1 and 20 will introduce the possibility of de facto abortion up to birth for any reason in this country, for the first time in history. Let me be clear: this means that it will no longer be illegal for a woman to abort a full-term, healthy baby. That would be a profound change in the settled position on abortion in this country for the past 58 years—an extreme move that polling has shown that the vast majority of the country does not want. Indeed, recent polling shows that only 3% of the public support the idea of abortion up to birth. New clause 106 would diminish the risk of women being criminalised for abortions beyond the current legal limit through the reinstitution of in-person appointments. That is popular; recent polling shows that two thirds of women back a return to in-person appointments for abortions.

I do not want to be standing here talking about abortion. It is not something that I came into Parliament to do. I am also very conscious that, as a man, I should be very careful about commenting on the experience of women. However, I feel that new clauses 1 and 20 give me no choice but to speak against them, despite my huge respect for the mover of new clause 1 in particular.

What are we trying to achieve here? If the aim is to decriminalise women in difficult situations, I have huge sympathy for that. For eight years I was the chief executive of a homelessness charity that housed and supported women in desperate situations, many of whom were traumatised, dependent on substances, with fluctuating mental ill health conditions and extensive experience of the criminal justice system. A common theme among them was that they had been abused and harmed from a very early age, consistently into their adulthood. The women we served and supported still had agency. They still had free will. If their circumstances were desperate at times, they nevertheless often confounded those circumstances to rise above them. However, they also made decisions that they regretted. They made decisions, at times, that those around them—and even they themselves, later—were appalled by.

[Sam Rushworth]

I recall, a few years ago, supporting a woman in a hostel who was traumatised by her own decision to abort a child. Does my hon. Friend agree, in the context of this language about protecting people, that we also need to protect people from these decisions when they are not made with the proper safeguards and protections in place?

[David Smith]

I do agree. If something is absolute—in terms of the new clauses, as I understand them—it must cover all eventualities, and what we are trying to say is that we simply do not believe that it can.

I have heard it said that no woman would induce an abortion after 24 weeks, but we cannot introduce such a profound change in abortion law on the basis of a simple hope that no woman would take such a drastic step. If we remove the possibility of criminal prosecution for abortion post 24 weeks’ gestation, it is a certainty that some women will take that drastic step if there are no sanctions and no wider consequences.