Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019 Section 3(5)

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

First, let me say that I believe very firmly in the principle of devolution for Northern Ireland. As someone who served in the Northern Ireland Assembly for 12 years and on his local council for some 26 years, I can attest to the fact that local people having power in their own hands to shape local outcomes is worth having.

During the period 2007 to 2017, representatives from the main parties in Northern Ireland worked together to deliver for our people. I believe that all parties who served in the Government can point to significant achievements in improvements to our public services, keeping the cost of university education down, and record foreign direct investment. Devolution works. It is a source of profound sadness and frustration to me that Northern Ireland has gone so long without a fully functioning Executive and institutions. The absence of the Executive has had a damaging effect on our society. Essential reforms of public services, particularly healthcare, are waiting to be actioned, as my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast South (Emma Little Pengelly) said. Decisions about the future of our education system have also been left to wait. This is not good enough.

It is important to state in simple terms why we are in this position. The decision to collapse the institutions was taken by one party—and one party, by refusing to return to them, is preventing Northern Ireland from having a devolved Administration. Hon. and right hon. Members need to know that there can sometimes be a tendency to blame the two parties—Sinn Féin and the DUP—by saying, “A plague on both your houses.” This is a lazy analysis. The truth is that my party, the DUP, stands ready and willing to return to Stormont tomorrow. We have no red lines; we have no preconditions.

For everyone’s information, I understand that a recall of the Assembly has been asked for by different individuals across Northern Ireland and the parties have to respond to that. Just so that everyone understands what that means, if we were able to have a recall of the Assembly at Stormont on Monday, a First Minister and a Deputy First Minister would have to be in place so that they could make these decisions. That is what the people who contact me want to see. That is what this House should be talking about—devolution that can actually work. The absence of devolution is the greatest instability in Northern Ireland. It is important in a post-conflict society like ours that political vacuums are not allowed to develop. Local politicians working strongly together is the surest way to deliver stability, which is so important for our people but also for potential investors in the Province.

The abortion section of this report is quite simply mind-blowing. I speak today unapologetically on behalf of the 100,000 children who live today—who have a life today—because of the legislation that we have in Northern Ireland. If that had been changed when it was proposed before, those 100,000 children would not be alive today and would not be contributing to society. The proposal that the women of Northern Ireland should be subject to great indignity between 22 October and 31 March would be deemed wholly unacceptable by any self-respecting democracy, including Great Britain.

[Jess Phillips]

I wonder on what evidence the hon. Gentleman is basing the idea of the children walking around today. As somebody who has myself had an abortion, I can guarantee that had I had the child that I aborted, my son Danny would not be walking around today, so where is the evidence for what he is suggesting?

[Jim Shannon]

I can very clearly state the evidence. The evidence is on record. It has been agreed by Government bodies that the figure of 100,000 is correct. The hon. Lady can sneer, smile and laugh, but the figures are on record. I am very happy to put them on record again to make sure: 100,000 children live today because we do not have the abortion legislation that there is here on the mainland.

[Emma Little Pengelly]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this figure was challenged whenever it was put out? It was challenged the entire way to the court, and the court ruled that it is a defensible figure in terms of the laws in Northern Ireland. We may disagree very strongly on a number of matters. However, I can say very categorically that those people who strongly take a different position care just as much about women, but they also care about this issue. We should be respectful of that and the different views we have across this House.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. She has made the case clearly, and I agree with her.

[Stella Creasy]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Lady has had her chance.

It would have been one thing for this House to vote to impose abortion on Northern Ireland in the face of every Member of Parliament representing Northern Ireland voting against the measure, in the knowledge that the most recent abortion vote of any UK legislature on primary legislation was in the Northern Ireland Assembly in February 2016, when the people who should be making the decision voted not to change our law in any way. A national opinion poll last week showed that the majority of people in Northern Ireland do not want to see the liberalisation of abortion planned by Members of this House.

When I think about what will be imposed on my part of the United Kingdom from Tuesday, I am left utterly speechless. Between 22 October 2019 and 31 March 2020, the only law on this that will be in place in Northern Ireland will be the Criminal Justice Act (Northern Ireland) 1945, which is not engaged until the point at which a child is capable of being born alive. That effectively means that we would have a legal void in protections for the unborn until at least 21 weeks of gestation, and potentially up to 28 weeks’ gestation. It means that from Tuesday some unborn animals subject to research will have more statutory protection in Northern Ireland, thanks to the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986, than some unborn human beings. It is absolutely unbelievable that anyone would do this, and the Members responsible need to look at themselves very seriously. It is deeply troubling.

It also means that from Tuesday, quite unlike any other part of the United Kingdom, we will effectively have unregulated abortions, with all the attendant risks for women. The Government say in this report that they intend that the NHS will not significantly change the way it provides abortions until 31 March, but I find the emphasis that they place on this deeply disturbing. The Minister knows that; I spoke to him this afternoon about it.

Abortions need not come from the NHS. From Tuesday, it will be legal for private clinics to provide abortions in Northern Ireland. The Independent Health Care Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2005 place a statutory duty on the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority to register and inspect independent hospitals and clinics that meet the stated requirement for registration, but those regulations are wholly inadequate. We must have legislation in place that protects people.

Currently, there are two conditions that would require an independent clinic to be registered with the RQIA: the first is that an independent clinic intends to carry out a prescribed technique or make use of prescribed technology; and the second that a medical practitioner working in the clinic is not otherwise engaged in providing services to health and social care in Northern Ireland. Abortion provision is not a prescribed technique or technology under the regulations, which means that only independent clinics that do not employ any doctors who also work for the NHS will be subject to this regulation. Again, a minefield of regulation.

Moreover, and this is of huge concern, this regulation will be quite unlike that pertaining to abortion clinics in England, where the activity of providing abortions is subject to abortion-specific regulation and the premises are subject to abortion-specific regulation and a series of abortion-specific required operating standard procedures. It is about the technical parts of the procedure. The Minister knows this; we talked about it this afternoon. None of those abortion-specific regulations will apply in Northern Ireland on Tuesday for at least five months.

Another important safeguard that currently applies in England but will not apply in Northern Ireland on Tuesday is regulation 20 of the Care Quality Commission (Registration) Regulations 2009, which deals with requirements relating to the termination of pregnancies. What is most shocking, however, is that the change in law means that from Tuesday there will be nothing to prevent someone without any medical qualifications at all from offering abortion services. With respect, I say that Government will thus cross a line that has never been crossed before: Government will potentially make backstreet abortions legal. This should not be about going back to the pre-1967 days, but it will be on Tuesday unless the Assembly returns by Monday. That recall is in process and hopefully can be achieved; if it can, this can be stopped, and the responsibility will lie with the Northern Ireland Assembly’s elected representatives, as it should.

Regardless of what one thinks about abortion, we cannot countenance this outrageous legislative framework for a day, let alone five months. In that context, I have a simple question for the Government and those in the Northern Ireland Office specifically: what were Government thinking when they agreed to the text of section 9 of the 2019 Act in the other place? They could have stood up for the women of Northern Ireland, as I am doing tonight, for the unborn and for babies alive in the womb, and pointed out that the safety implications of what section 9 proposed were just as inappropriate for the women of Northern Ireland as they would be for the women of England. They did not. This has to count as one of the most serious failures of governance that I have ever encountered. I say this honestly and respectfully to the Minister and to Government.

[Emma Little Pengelly]

We debated the matter in this House and we made it clear—I said it myself—that the way in which it was done, and I understand that it was made clear by the proposers, with the date as it was, left inadequate time to deal with many issues that need to be in place. We have ended up with a period when the regulations will not be in place. Some Members have already acknowledged that. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is wholly unacceptable, sad and disappointing and that it should never have happened?

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Shannon]

Yes, I agree with my hon. Friend. If the Assembly is not restored on Monday, the Government have an almighty problem on their hands.

I say again that the majority of people in my constituency are very clear that they do not want liberalised abortion in Strangford or across Northern Ireland. It would be better if the Northern Ireland Assembly made that decision, and I hope that the recall on Monday will be a way forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jess Phillips]

My hon. Friend makes an incredible point, and that is something we were told again and again when I and colleagues from across the House visited Northern Ireland with the Women and Equalities Committee. We absolutely met Church groups and pro-life groups, but we also met women who had been victims and had not been able to escape. We met migrant women who would not have had the paperwork to travel. We met lots of women who told us how tortuous the journey had been, as we heard earlier.

I think—in fact I do not just think, I know, because this House has voted for it—that this House wants the situation to change. This House wants things to change under the auspices of the powers in Northern Ireland, but that has not happened before this date. I therefore seek some more assurances from the Minister that this is not an issue that can just be given back to the Assembly halfway through. One of our colleagues from Northern Ireland made the point earlier that if a recall is successful over the next few days, there would be a First Minister in place if the Assembly is recalled as opposed to the Executive being formed—[Hon. Members: “Nobody said that.”] I am afraid somebody definitely did say that.

[Jim Shannon]

What I said was that if there was a recall of the Assembly on Monday—it takes 30 Members for that to happen—the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister will have to be nominated. Only then can it go forward. That is what I said; Hansard will prove that.

[Jess Phillips]

I retract, then; that was not how I heard it. So even if the Assembly is recalled, unless the First Minister can be nominated, as has been explained, we are still in exactly the same position as we are today where our legislation continues to roll over.

I ask the Minister to understand why people—women mainly, but lots of people in this House—have felt the need to come here and make these representations, and why we feel more nervous about this issue than we do about equal marriage. No mention has been made of that issue. My experience in this House is that a woman’s right to choose is, for some reason, much more difficult for people to deal with than the idea that you can love who you want, although both have been difficult over the years. I ask the Minister specifically to say that there is nothing going on that we should have to be concerned about, because it very, very much seems to us and to the women of Northern Ireland who have been in touch with us today that that is what is going on.