Conscientious Objection (Medical Activities) Bill [HL]

Lord Bishop of Peterborough Excerpts

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

[The Lord Bishop of Peterborough]

My Lords, yesterday, the River Restaurant downstairs helped us to celebrate Burns Night all day. I thoroughly enjoyed the Scotch broth at lunchtime, but I resisted the main course as I was eating out in the evening. I even resisted the whisky bread-and-butter pudding. The main course which I resisted was vegetarian haggis, celebrating Robert Burns in a way that respected the consciences of those who do not want to eat meat. That is a very proper and good thing to do. There is no legal requirement to provide vegetarian haggis, but it was welcome to many and I think that I would have enjoyed it.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

It was indeed very good.

[The Lord Bishop of Peterborough]

Clearly the noble Lord particularly enjoyed it.

Yesterday was not only Burns Night; it was also for church people the festival of the Conversion of St Paul. In his teaching, St Paul is very strong in asserting that although Christians are free to make many decisions morally, they must always respect the conscience of those who are weaker—those who have a tender conscience. That is an absolute requirement of the Christian faith. Those whose consciences are more tender or weak than our own must be respected and not be forced to go against those consciences. We have the same teaching in other areas of religion as well. The Old Testament makes it very clear that the vulnerable and the weak are to be supported and helped. In the teaching of Jesus, he criticises those leaders who lay burdens on ordinary folk that are too heavy for them to bear.

In the history of the world since the time of Christ, in particular in our own country, we can see a great deal of influence by the Judeo-Christian tradition, including the development of free societies, of what we now tend to call liberal democracies. In those societies a great deal of attention has always been paid to the rights of consciences even when, because they are more tender and sensitive, they go beyond the views of many other people. Every free society respects the rights of conscience to a great extent, and we have some of that in this debate. Societies that restrict the rights of conscience tend to be those which are tyrannical and on the extreme left or extreme right of politics. In free societies, a great deal of tolerance is shown to those who have conscientious objections to all sorts of things.

This is not just a matter of religion. Conscience is a very deep part of what it means to be human. It is not only religious rights we are talking about; it is very deep human rights. People should not be forced to go against what they believe to be right or wrong. This Bill, which I support strongly and look forward to seeing further debated and possibly amended, recognises some changes since the Abortion Act. Today, most abortions entail far more involvement by nurses and pharmacists than they did in the early days. Methods of carrying out abortions have changed. I believe that it is right to extend the conscience clause, for example, to pharmacists since their involvement is greater than it used to be. As a society, we need to find ways to modify the law as it was set out in 1967, not just to affirm the conscience clause there. I believe that this is a matter of public concern, of public policy and for public debate. If the 1967 Act needs to be clarified, that should be done not just in the courts but in Parliament on behalf of the people of this country. If the 1967 Act is proving to be in some way unsatisfactory in that some people’s consciences are not being allowed for, we need to do something to modify it. That means not reducing the possibility of abortion or people’s freedom to seek medical treatment, which I want to underscore, but allowing those who have a tender conscience to exercise it. I support the Bill.

Conscientious Objection (Medical Activities) Bill [HL]

Lord Bishop of Peterborough Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 23rd March 2018 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Peterborough]

My Lords, I also spoke at Second Reading. I spoke then in fairly general terms about conscience and the importance of conscience. I may be expected now to speak from a specifically religious point of view, but I do not want to do that; I want to speak more broadly again about conscience and human rights, but specifically in the areas of these amendments. I am very grateful for what I have just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, who I believe puts some of the conscience questions very clearly and helpfully and in a new way for this House to hear. That eloquence is appreciated.

I specifically want to question Amendments 1 and 20. I would not want to question all the amendments that are here, but Amendments 1 and 20 bother me in various ways. Amendment 1 bothers me because this phrase “hands on” is very difficult to grasp hold of. I know that it was part of Doogan. It is there, and we have to take account of it in a serious way. But what does it exactly mean? I will use as an example Amendment 20, which talks about supervision. Supervision can be more or less hands on. It works in different ways. If you are supervising a relatively junior member of staff or someone inexperienced in a particular procedure, supervision may be very active and very proximate. It would be quite hands on—showing somebody how to do something and how to do it well and properly. That sort of supervision surely cannot be excluded. If we allow the conscience opt-out for hands-on reasons, “hands on” is very hard to define.

If we mean literally touching the patient, that would exclude quite a number of things. If we touch the drip that will adjust the rate at which drugs flow, is that hands on? Yes, it almost certainly is. But step back a little bit: if you are passing something to the clinician, is that hands on or not? It gets a little harder to define at every remove from the immediate practitioner. “Hands on” is a difficult phrase to use, and to put it into law in this way would worry me. I would like to have a clear way of defining who the practitioners are—the practitioners in a medical sense.

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood]

I thank the right reverend Prelate for giving way. I have never intervened to interrupt somebody from that Bench before, but I just wanted to point out that “hands on” is explored and explained in very full detail. It means 13 different tasks; it is applied and very clearly spelled out. If we amend the Bill to use this phrase, everybody will then look at Doogan—there is about a page of text—and know exactly where they are. I do not know whether the right reverend Prelate had realised that.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Lord Bishop of Peterborough]

My Lords, I have read Doogan and I am aware of what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, is saying. That is not part of what is being specifically proposed in this Bill. It is one way in which the Bill could be read and interpreted, but once a Bill has been brought forward and becomes law, there are different ways of trying to interpret it which will create another legal minefield.

[Baroness Thornton]

I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate for giving way. When each piece of legislation was passed by Parliament—in 1967, 1989 and more recently—from that flowed a huge amount of discussion, in which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, and many other Members of this House were involved, about its application. This is not a new matter, and we know that that is what happens. A huge amount of consideration has been given to looking at how these particular pieces of legislation, such as the conscience clause in the Abortion Act 1967, should operate, including involving the royal colleges and all the other relevant parties.

[The Lord Bishop of Peterborough]

I am aware of what the noble Baroness is saying. I am using the example of supervision because it shows some of the complications in the phrase “hands on”. It is clear that supervision can mean a whole variety of different things—more remote or more proximate, so it is a difficult issue. I would strongly oppose Amendment 20 because in practice the word “supervision”, in practice, can mean helping the practitioner to do the job. It can mean ensuring that the job is done. It can mean without being strictly hands on but enabling the person to do something. That clearly will go against conscience in the way that the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, and others have made clear. The definition is difficult because “supervision” can mean different things. For me it is a matter of great concern about what is before us.

[Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con)]

My Lords, the thing that all the amendments in this group hold in common is the belief that conscientious objection should be provided only in relation to hands-on activity; that is, of actually performing the abortion. They suggest that other facilitating activities on which the performance of an abortion depend should not be included within the scope of the conscientious objection.

If we are serious about conscientious objection, this simply does not make sense. If we recognise that different people have different views about the morality of abortion and that while some of us regard abortion as perfectly moral and acceptable, others find it difficult to distinguish it morally from the taking of life of someone who has been born, we have to accept that the moral difficulty lies not just in the act of the abortion but also in the act of facilitating it, as has been mentioned. It seems to me that when we are clear that something is wrong, we are also clear that facilitating that thing, whatever it may be, is also wrong. We understand that if anyone who facilitates becomes complicit in the act in question, a moral responsibility is thus engaged. In this context, these amendments simply do not make sense.

If we were to accept the logic on which they rest, we would have to expunge from our law any recognition that someone who helps to facilitate an illegal act has any kind of culpability. Culpability should rest only with the person who does the act. Mindful of these considerations, it is difficult to see these amendments as anything other than an attempt to undermine and weaken conscientious objection. If someone genuinely believes that an act is wrong, the provision of a legal assurance that they do not have to do the act but only facilitate it makes the profession in question no longer open to them. It is as if they have been required to actually carry out the act itself. Anyone in this situation with a sense of integrity and wholeness that requires consistency across their moral life would have to leave the profession in that context.

I have friends who, when they went up for a consultant post in obstetrics, were asked the question, “Are you prepared to take your share of abortions?” If they said yes they were considered for the appointment. If, on the other hand, they said, “Yes, I am quite prepared to take my share of the abortions within the Act of 1967”, they were not considered for the appointment and they had to emigrate. I have many friends who had to do that.