Ministerial and other Maternity Allowances Bill

Lord Winston Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 22nd February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, let me declare an interest: I am the chairman of the Genesis Research Trust, which deals with research into women’s diseases and in particular with pregnancy problems, miscarriage, stillbirth and infertility among many other things including cancers. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord True. Should I have said “the noble person”? Perhaps not. I do not wish to behave in any way disrespectfully. He very helpfully listened to our problems beforehand and I hope that will continue before the next stage of the Bill.

Rather like the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, I have to say that every single one of us in this Chamber, every single person outside in the street and every citizen of the United Kingdom was born from a mother’s uterus. We forgive the muddled biology that we heard a little earlier in this debate. The fact is that only a woman can give rise to a baby. The environment in the womb is critical to our development until we finally die at the age of 70 or 80, if we are lucky. That is important. That defines so much of what makes our humanity. Michael Meaney, who is a very great biologist from Canada, showed very clearly in the studies he did in Toronto and later in Singapore, where I have been somewhat associated, that what happens during pregnancy at various stages affects the development of the baby, including its cognitive ability, its functions and the diseases that it might develop later on at the age of 40, 50 or 60, as have many other scientists. That is fundamental and that depends on the woman, her health and the way she is protected, so we are extremely grateful for the Bill. That the Attorney-General has this opportunity is terrific. The problem is that that does not always apply to some women who have stress with their hormones and all sorts of other problems.

Let me leave Singapore for a moment and come to domestic matters because this is critical. The noble Lord, Lord True, might like to hear from me that, in 2018, 2,943 babies were stillborn, and for 60% of them the cause was unknown. Birth defects were a very minor problem. In many cases, it was poor medicine. Sometimes this was avoidable, but in many cases the reason for stillbirth is completely unknown. These women leave hospital absolutely bereft, and many of them never recover after that loss of a pregnancy. That loss of life within them is critical to that person. If that is not enough, let me remind the House that something close to 200,000 women each year miscarry a pregnancy, and some of them will miscarry several times. I think my record was a woman miscarrying 19 times before she finally gave up being pregnant. One of the commonest things I heard during my professional career from these women when they sat in front of me in tears having had a miscarriage or a stillbirth was, “I do not feel that I am a proper woman.” That was a very common phrase in my clinic in the last 40 years.

If that is not enough either, let me remind the House that about one in 20 women is infertile and they strive hard to become women by being pregnant. That is a goal like none other in their lives. It is for them the most important thing they can do. This is not some aberrant mentality. It is natural. It is born as a result of our evolution as humans. It is part of our humanity, and it is essential. Most of them do not achieve it. For example, figures in Europe show that, after six cycles of in vitro fertilisation, only 43% of women get pregnant. We tend to forget that there is no treatment for them. That is very important.

We are rushing this Bill through for a particular reason, and nobody would doubt the need to get it thorough for the Attorney-General, but what message does it show to women who have lost babies or lost a pregnancy or lost the life within them? Most of them come from poorer, disadvantaged communities. That is true for most diseases that affect us, and it certainly applies to diseases of pregnancy. We have one of the highest stillbirth rates in Europe. We still do not understand why.

Finally, if the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, decides to press her amendment to the Motion to a vote, I will join her because I think it is important to consider this. I think the Minister will see that there is a growing head of steam. I know he was left carrying the baby on this Bill. It was not something that he desires and he had nothing to do with the drafting. We understand that very well, but it is still a problem. Why would I want to go through the Lobby? I would go through the Lobby because I owe it to the hundreds of women who sat in front of me in tears saying, “I don’t feel a proper woman.”

Ministerial and other Maternity Allowances Bill

Lord Winston Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 25th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. She is of course right: minorities must always be carefully guarded, as long as they behave legally, but majorities have their rights too. It is important that that is recognised. We need to live in a more mutually tolerant and respectful society.

I am very glad not to be going—metaphorically—into the Division Lobby tonight. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord True and his ministerial colleagues for recognising the overwhelming view expressed in the debate at Second Reading on Monday evening. Those speeches were made not because the people making them were intolerant; rather, because all of us were concerned about the role of women in society and the way in which some people have sought to marginalise it. It seemed, to me and to others, quite absurd that a Bill with “maternity” in its title contained not a single reference to “woman” or “mother”.

I rather share the views of my noble friend Lady Noakes, who set us off on a very good path on Monday night with her regret Motion, which she did not press to a Division. If we were to put one word in, my marginal preference would be for “woman”, but there is no more wonderful word in the language than “mother”. I am happy not to join the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, in pressing his amendment, to which I am a signatory, but rather to accept with due gratitude the Government’s recognition and incorporate the Winston-Lucas amendments throughout the Bill—because that is what it amounts to.

The problem with a Division is that it would have sent out unfortunate signals, most of all signals that the Government were not prepared to recognise the obvious. They have now done so; for that, many thanks. I am one of that group of colleagues who has met my noble friend Lord True on two or three occasions this week. We have been grateful to have sometimes robust discussions with him. He has clearly listened and talked to his ministerial colleagues. For me, the most powerful lesson of this week is that it is a wonderful illustration of how your Lordships’ House can reach across parties. We must recognise that we were a group made up of Members from political parties, the non-aligned and the Cross Benches, who had a common aim and a common purpose: to entrench toleration in this particular legislation. Not a single one of us opposed the Bill itself. There were, of course, those who criticised the Bill on Monday for not going far enough or being inclusive enough; those were valued comments and doubtless we shall come to them again.

However, the thing that united all but two of the speakers on Monday was the problem of language. We are possessed of a wonderful language in this country. To anaesthetise it in the way originally suggested in the Bill was not really good. By the way, I noticed in the Times this morning that our colleagues in France are also having problems with inclusive language and all the rest of it, so this problem is not limited to our country or our time. We do not have an academy to protect our language in the way the French do, of course, but it is a rich and marvellous language. Quite soon, we will commemorate the anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth, which will give us another chance to recognise how rich, varied and wonderful our language is.

There is no more powerful word in the language than “mother”. The fact that it will now be in the Bill gives me great pleasure. I have not been deluged by letters—partly because I am very new to email—but I have had a number of them, some of which were heart- rending, from women who felt that they were being marginalised and not recognised. They rejoiced in the fact that they had, as one of them put it to me, some champions in the House of Lords.

This is not the end of the matter—it is not even the beginning of the end—but, as the greatest of Englishmen in the last century, Churchill, said, this is the end of the beginning. It is important that we review how language is used in legislation. It is important that we look at all the kindred aspects of toleration and how women can be properly recognised, having fought so hard for freedom. It is important that that can now be entrenched and not put aside or marginalised. This has been a good illustration of how colleagues can work together with a common purpose and a common aim. I am glad that we have, to some degree, realised that today.

[Lord Winston (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, first, let me say that I am more than grateful to the noble Lord, Lord True. At one point at Second Reading, he expressed a real sense of humanity, which is important here. Of course, like him, I recognise that “maternity” comes from the Latin “mater”, meaning “mother”, so it would be fairly ludicrous to exclude the possibility of “maternal” and other such words not being feminine.

Like other speakers, I have basically ditched my speech. I want to say just a few, hopefully relevant, things. In my life, there are four issues that have been really controversial and because of which I have received particularly extraordinary adverse and hostile press. The first was when I first discussed the possible causes of chronic fatigue syndrome with Professor Simon Wessely, who is now interested in helping the Government on mental health issues. That issue produced a storm of deeply unpleasant letters. Another is that being a Jewish member of the Labour Party who did not leave the party, that did not lead to anything other than some rather uncomfortable correspondence as well. I am proud of my Jewish heritage, as I am very proud to be British. In a way, this week we have seen a particularly good piece of common sense prevail in this country.

Noble Lords might remember that I raised the issue of bicycles on pavements. The amount of hostile stuff I received was unbelievable, including a few death threats. But perhaps the biggest single thing has been the question of transgender, which I first discussed about three years ago on the “Today” programme with John Humphrys. I had a lot of very unpleasant correspondence. I do not know who it was from. I presume it was from people who had a different sexuality, but I do not know for certain because I did not meet any of them. Many did not sign their name or give me an address, so it was impossible to know.

I was very upset to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, speak in the way she did, because we have agreed on many issues before. I have a massive respect for what she has done. I remind her that I was probably the first person, not only in this country but in Europe, to offer any in vitro fertilisation—it was free, of course—to lesbian couples. I am proud of that. It was important. I am certainly not a bigot or opposed to people’s different sexuality, and that certainly applies to transgender.

One thing I want to suggest is that, clearly, we will come back to this issue. We have forgotten something completely in this discussion that we really need to consider. It is all very well to speak about words, but they are often not being used correctly or with their proper definition. As a scientist and biologist, I recognise that there are very different views on gender, sex and sexuality, and they need to be stated very clearly.

For example, when it comes to sexuality, perhaps the greatest single biologist who has written on this and researched it endlessly is Professor Roger Short, a fellow of the Royal Society, who is now long retired. His work is really important—I dare not use the word “seminal”, but noble Lords will understand what I mean. He has shown, in various important pieces of research, that sexuality is not a single issue. We have genetic sex. Each of us has around 30 trillion cells in our body, which will be either XX if we are female or XY if we are male. That is something fundamental that develops from the moment of embryo genesis. Indeed, what I showed in my work many years ago was that, within three days of fertilisation, a male embryo’s metabolism is more active than that a female embryo. We even thought about trying to use this as a way to determine whether a woman would have a male or female baby during the in vitro fertilisation process, but the figures were not discrepant enough for that to be scientifically useful.

There is also gonadal sex. It is very clear that somebody who has a testis is at least male, while somebody who has an ovary is female. An ovotestis is exceptionally rare. It happens a few times, but invariably all those who have given birth with that kind of intersex have been female. They have all been XX and they predominantly all had an ovary.

There is germ cell sex as well, because we have cells in our bodies that are either sperm, in the case of a male, or eggs, in the case of a female. Those do not change, except in some rare situations. In reptiles, changes of temperature can affect the sex of an egg. It is true that marsupials and some weird voles, Microtus oregoni, seem to be able to dictate their sex to some extent with the environment. However, that is quite unique and does not occur in most mammals and certainly all humans, as far as we know.

Hormonal sex is also important, and it starts before birth, not simply at puberty. Testosterone starts to have an influence very early on in the womb. It is important to realise that women, too, produce the male hormone. In fact, if they do not, the chances are they will be infertile, and they certainly will not be as good at debating in the House of Lords than if they did have testosterone. Somehow, testosterone seems to create a feeling of wanting to express yourself in some way. I make that as a rather ludicrous aside, but noble Lords will understand what I mean.