Conscientious Objection (Medical Activities) Bill [HL]

Lord Turnberg Excerpts

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

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood]

With respect, I stand precisely with the Supreme Court. I think those 13 tasks were analysed and responded to by the court in precisely the right place. Of course these borderlines are not easy to draw, but the court went to infinite pains to draw them as precisely as possible, consistent with the proper exercise of conscience if you are what was there described as involved in a hands-on participatory role, but not otherwise. It is simply an ever-widening sphere of activity ever further from the actual direct termination if you simply throw the exemption open to anybody on an administrative or managerial basis. I stand with the Supreme Court; it is a decision to which I would happily have subscribed.

What is now sought by this Bill is a significant, if necessarily worryingly imprecise, enlargement of the scope of the conscience clause. I shall add only this. As I observed at Second Reading, two responsible and respected bodies, the Royal College of Midwives and the British Pregnancy Advisory Service intervened in the Supreme Court proceedings in the Doogan case, opposed the petitioners and supported the opposite view. They opposed giving a broader scope to the right of conscientious objection. They suggested that to do so put at risk the provision of a safe and accessible abortion service and could put at risk the employment of those with less extreme conscientious objections than the two petitioners. Be that as it may, it certainly must not be assumed that the existing law risks a diminution of the obviously necessary workforce involved in giving effect to lawful abortion rights.

I concentrated my observations on Clause 1(1)(c), on termination, but in truth they apply similarly across the entire scope of the Bill. I therefore strongly urge the Committee to accept Amendment 1.

[Lord Turnberg (Lab)]

My Lords, I strongly support the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, and others. I apologise to the Committee for not being here for Second Reading for various reasons. I was almost prevented from coming today, but I managed to struggle here. I have the utmost respect for the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, and for the reasons behind her Bill, but when I examined it I was immediately struck by what seems to be a conflict between, on the one hand, putting a patient’s best interests first and, on the other, the doctor’s conscientious objection to providing certain treatments. I should perhaps explain how I came to that concern and why I support these amendments by expressing my interests.

I was in the distant past dean of the faculty of medicine in Manchester—a faculty, incidentally, that included nursing and dentistry as well as medicine—and then president of the Royal College of Physicians. In both roles, I was at pains to instil high standards of care in our students and trainees, but I must say that I was brought up short later when I became president of the Medical Protection Society. In that role, I had to face doctors who had failed their patients in one way or another—quite a shock to the system after what I had been trying to do until then to ensure ethical and moral behaviour, focusing heavily on putting the patient at the centre of everything that we do as doctors.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness O'Loan]

I may have misunderstood the noble Lord, but I think that he said that the Bill would enable a doctor who will not engage with a particular process to prevent somebody else from engaging in that process. Is that what the noble Lord said? Could he explain to me why he said it, if so, so that I can understand better?

[Lord Turnberg]

The wording of the Bill makes sure that a doctor who has conscientious objections to a procedure has a responsibility under the Bill to prevent others being involved in such procedures, and in their training and supervision, which makes it very difficult for someone working with them to carry out such procedures.

[Baroness O'Loan]

Can I ask the noble Lord to refer me to the section of the Bill that does that, because it is not the intention of the Bill, and I actually do not believe that it is the effect?

[Lord Turnberg]

I can. Clause 1(1)(c) refers to:

“No medical practitioner with a conscientious objection to participating in … any activity … required to prepare for, support or perform termination of pregnancy”,


in this instance.

[Viscount Craigavon (CB)]

My Lords, I spoke at Second Reading against this Bill, very much in support of the result of the judgment of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale. From what she says towards the end of her judgment, we are not tied to the literal meaning of “hands on”. I also refer to the article on this Bill in the House magazine by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, in the week of the Second Reading, where she employed the apparently simple phrase the “taking of human life”. In terms of realising that we all do not share our definitions of the same starting point and end point of life, I believe that in this field we do not all have the same premises to anchor our consciences. To the extent that this Bill is built upon a particular version of what is meant by “human life”, we are bound to end up with differing conclusions and disagreements.

As has been made clear by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, at the end she enlarged on her “hands on” phrase with her examination and analysis of the 13 tasks of the petitioners’ role. I believe that is the best definition of the phrase that we need, which has been very fully covered by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood. He, like me, regards that as an anchor for interpreting the current law.

To go back to a much earlier part of the noble and learned Baroness’s judgment, to paragraph 11, she went back in time to help to show how the law had arrived at the present situation, and how “participation” had come to be defined. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, gave details of the case that I was going to mention—the 1989 case, in the House of Lords. The noble and learned Baroness interestingly said that it was,

“a case which all parties accept was rightly decided”,

the “all parties” being the parties before her in that case.

I shall not give the details of the Janaway occupation, which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, gave, but it was decided then that participating meant actually taking part in the process of terminating the pregnancy. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, added that it did not have the extended meaning given to participation in the criminal law, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, again enlarged on. So that submission failed and, apparently, all parties to the present case agreed it was rightly decided, as I said.

I mention all this detail in order to ask whether we are in danger, by this Bill, of having to reverse what was decided in 1989, or even earlier. The Bill is trying to solve very complex problems by the very heavy imposition of a statute law that is quite unsuitable and insensitive for what it is trying to achieve. When we come to Amendment 15 it will be seen how much the weight of this statute law proposal would need to be softened by a more balanced and humane approach. For the moment, I fully support Amendments 1 and 3.