Conscientious Objection (Medical Activities) Bill [HL]

Earl of Oxford and Asquith Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 26th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Oxford and Asquith (LD)]

My Lords, I find many reasons to support this Bill on moral, philosophical, legal and practical grounds, but I wish to be brief and I shall try to confine myself to four or five points. First, there is inadequate protection in the law at the moment, I believe, for the issues of conscience addressed by the Bill. Yes, there are lines of professional guidance issued by the General Medical Council and the General Pharmaceutical Council, but the guidance is not underpinned by statutory provision, and guidance is easily changed by a small number of people or by pressure groups. The presumption of conscientious objection can be quickly eroded.

Secondly, I disagree with the arguments of some previous speakers that the Bill will restrict access to any service that the National Health Service is obliged to provide. What it does is to clarify the right to conscientious objection in so far as case law has indeed narrowed the interpretation of what participation actually means in the operations under consideration. Furthermore, since the passing of the Abortion Act 1967, medicine has developed to the extent that the role of the doctor or surgeon is now less prominent than it was then. There are now nurse prescribers and pharmacist prescribers, and it is doubtful that the present state of the law adequately protects those practitioners if they wish to invoke an objection against becoming involved.

Thirdly, on practical grounds alone, it is clear that the current state of the law is deterring some nurses and, indeed, newly qualifying doctors from entering on a career in obstetrics and gynaecology. There is not only a fear of discussing this issue; people are being put off from applying for such posts lest their moral convictions result in a failure to advance in these careers. This is not a question of adherence to a specifically Christian confessional morality. I know of one case in which a distinguished registrar, a highly skilled and eminent gynaecologist who is a Muslim, was undoubtedly sidelined in his career because of his objections to conducting the kind of operations addressed in this Bill. He did not find that the protection offered by Clause 1(3) before noble Lords today was available to him. But, as the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, has said, it is not even a question of confessional adherence to any religious belief. The right invoked in this Bill of any individual, irrespective of belief, is fundamental to our law, and it is fundamental to European laws.

To conclude, I have lived much of my working life in countries and under regimes whose citizens have had no presumption to conscientious objection or to the protection of freedom of conscience. When conscience is not so protected within a society, it is discernibly the case that individuals may develop as diminished human beings—as a person who may have no alternative but to act in violation of principles that he or she recognise as defining his or her humanity. To withhold or deny this protection can have a profoundly damaging effect on personality and, ultimately, can lead, in my observation, to the impoverishment of moral beings. Thus I agree with the broad thrust of the argument advanced earlier by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay. For these reasons, I believe that the passage of the Bill, maybe in an amended version, will present the world with a refined example of British medical ethics, destined to be the admiration of many.