Ministerial Severance: Reform

Debate between Emily Thornberry and Mark Pritchard

Tuesday 6th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Emily Thornberry]

If we are given the great honour of serving the public as the next Government, our Ministers will not deceive the public. We will be straightforward, and we will do our utmost to serve them to the best of our ability. We will be a Government to be proud of; we just need to have an opportunity.

For the purposes of explaining our motion, I will go through each of the five categories where a flaw in the rules was exposed in 2022-23 and give one example for each of how someone benefited. Mr Deputy Speaker, I have informed each of them that I am going to be raising their case.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

Before the right hon. Lady moves on, will she give way?

[Emily Thornberry]

I will.

[Mark Pritchard]

I know this is an Opposition day debate, where the Government will get bashed—that is part of the convention and traditions of this House. However, on an important constitutional point, I think the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) alluded to the former Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss). Does the right hon. Lady think that ex-Labour Prime Ministers and ex-Conservative Prime Ministers—thankfully I do not think we will ever have a Lib Dem one; we can agree on that—should have no private office arrangements supported by the state? Those people have been at the highest level as First Lord of the Treasury, having had access to top-secret and classified materials, and will probably be under constant threat for the rest of their lives. Is she honestly saying that a Labour Government would no longer support former Prime Ministers of whatever political party?

Superfast Broadband

Debate between Emily Thornberry and Mark Pritchard

Wednesday 24th June 2015 Westminster Hall

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

I believe that I know what the right hon. Gentleman is going to say. In advance of his speech, may I say that, despite the fact that he sits on the Government side of the Chamber, I am likely to agree with everything he says on behalf of my constituents in Islington South and, in particular, Tech City?

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

Order. Before the right hon. Gentleman continues, I will just remind the hon. Lady that she has only just arrived in the Chamber, so did not hear my earlier comments about the number of interventions and their brevity. I hope next time she will arrive a little earlier in order to hear the Chair’s remarks.

[Emily Thornberry]

I hope that my intervention was short enough, Mr Pritchard.

Abortion Act

Debate between Emily Thornberry and Mark Pritchard

Wednesday 9th October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Emily Thornberry]

If the hon. Gentleman will hold his breath, I will get there. In my view, it is not in the public interest for us to behave in this way. We must make it absolutely clear that, as a country, we have no truck with this. I am a staunch advocate of women’s right to choose, but I do not accept that that corners me into supporting something as plainly monstrous as gender-selective abortion.

I am also concerned that if the public see abortion as being used for gender selection, support for abortion will erode. In my view, there has been and remains a clear majority, albeit a silent one, in favour of abortion, and their views are reflected in the very thoughtful contributions made today by the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) and my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott). We must not play into the hands of the likes of those who claim that the most dangerous situation to be in in Britain today is to be in a womb and to be a female. We need to take a sensible view of this.

My second objection, which was echoed at the time by the former Director of Public Prosecutions, Lord Macdonald, was about the amount of deference that the CPS seemed to be showing the medical profession. The CPS seems to believe that doctors can have the discretion to disapply the law in their surgeries. It seems to me that when a roofer breaks the law, he is hauled into court and faces the prospect of prison. When a doctor does, he should also be hauled into court and should not simply be heard by a panel of his peers with no criminal powers. That is taking the idea of “Doctor knows best” far too far. The rule of law has to apply to all equally; otherwise, it is meaningless.

Following the outcry, the DPP, Keir Starmer, has issued a statement seeking to explain further the reasoning behind the decision. That statement, which comes a full month later, introduces a number of new lines of argument, while quietly dropping some of the old ones. Mr Starmer now tells us that the evidential threshold for the allegation that this was a gender-based abortion has not been met. He says that that was because other factors were alluded to during the discussion between patient and doctor. Instead, the matter hinged on whether the doctors fulfilled their duty under the Abortion Act to carry out a sufficiently robust assessment of the risk to the pregnant woman’s mental and physical health to reach a good-faith opinion that the continuation of the pregnancy would involve a risk, greater than if the pregnancy was terminated, to the woman’s mental and physical health. The director explains that there is no guidance on how a doctor should assess that and therefore no yardstick by which to measure whether the doctors’ assessments fell below a standard that any reasonable doctor would consider adequate. The director concludes that it would be of questionable public interest to prosecute amid such uncertainty.

That is a more elegant and persuasive way of hoofing the matter back to the GMC. Gone is any suggestion that we will not prosecute criminal attempts because the victim is unharmed. Gone is any impression given by the earlier statement that the very fact of the GMC’s involvement is sufficient and that the criminal courts need not be involved. Gone is any suggestion that it is somehow okay for doctors to abort fetuses merely because they are female.

I am reassured by the director’s statement that had the decision boiled down to one of whether to prosecute on the basis that the doctors attempted a gender-specific abortion,

“there might be powerful reasons for a prosecution in the public interest”.

To my mind, the director’s statement illustrates the need to ensure that the DPP personally signs off all decisions about prosecutions under the Abortion Act 1967, whether those decisions are in favour of or against prosecution. I hope that the Attorney-General can assure the House that that is what will happen in future.

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

Before I call the Attorney-General, I note, just for Hansard, the unusual circumstances in which we have present at the debate three Ministers: the Minister responsible for public health, the hon. Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison); the Solicitor-General; and the Attorney-General.