Decriminalising Abortion

Debate between Stella Creasy and Martin Vickers

Monday 2nd June 2025 Westminster Hall

[Ms Creasy]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for giving that personal testimony. What she touches on is what we have seen in the debate in this country for several years now: the expectation that women should give a reason why they want to have an abortion or seek that kind of medical care. That is why the Trump playbook being brought into British politics—as we now see it is—is so dangerous in this context. When the leader of Reform, the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage)—I note that he is not here to defend his views—talks about the “ludicrous” nature of our laws and calls for a reduction in the time limit, he is not thinking of all those people who get that horrific diagnosis. He is sending a bat signal to his colleagues and fellow travellers in America: that under his watch it would be open season in this country—

[Martin Vickers (in the Chair)]

Order. I remind the hon. Lady that if she refers to another Member, she should have given that Member advance warning.

[Ms Creasy]

I do apologise, Mr Vickers. I just thought that, given his recent pronouncement and the interest that he has shown in this matter, the hon. Member for Clacton would be here.

Let me talk, then, about the vice-president of the United States—I hope you will understand, Mr Vickers, that I could not have asked him to be here today. He is one of those fellow travellers who believes that there are votes to be gained by using women’s bodies as a battlefield; that is what the debate about abortion in America has become. We are seeing American ideas—the concept of abortion until birth and the idea that women should be expected to explain themselves—being brought into our debates. I know that many of us will fight tooth and nail against those narratives and for equality, so I ask colleagues across the House: when people come for our abortion rights or propose further restrictions or “safeguards” for abortion, do we want the power of a human rights commissioner to back us up in those fights? This is our chance to have that: new clause 20 learns from a body of law and of practice in Northern Ireland about how we protect abortion properly. We do not just decriminalise it; the new clause would properly protect abortion.

I listened to my hon. Friend the Member for Gower, and I urge her to reread new clause 20, because from what she said, I do not think she has read it properly. Rather than concentrating power in the hands of Ministers —precisely because of the risk that comes from any future Government that may seek to use secondary legislation powers—the new clause would actively restrict them. It has a triple lock and states, first, that regulations can be made only to uphold that human rights approach and, secondly, that they cannot be used to reduce access to abortion, or to amend section 1 of the 1967 Act—which new clause 20 keeps in play as a list for regulation rather than prosecution, so it does not touch the time limits either. The new clause then states that any attempt to undermine that human rights lock can be done only with the support of the entire Parliament.

Any new Member of Parliament here today has probably had the pleasure of sitting on a Delegated Legislation Committee in the last year and wondered quite what they are doing in a small Committee Room. The answer is that they are making law, but doing so in a Committee where the balance of power has been determined by the Whips and where the Government get to decide who sits on that Committee. Those are secondary legislation powers. It is entirely conceivable that new clause 1, if passed, would give those secondary legislation powers—they are in the policing Bill—to a future Government without any restriction.

EU-UK Summit

Debate between Stella Creasy and Martin Vickers

Thursday 22nd May 2025 Westminster Hall

[Martin Vickers (in the Chair)]

Sorry—I was told you had finished, Sir John.

[Ms Creasy]

Sir John was just getting started!

[Martin Vickers (in the Chair)]

Well, none of us would want to deny ourselves the chance to listen to Sir John. Back to you.

[Sir John Hayes]

I wondered whether the hon. Member for North Somerset (Sadik Al-Hassan) was going to finish my speech for me, Mr Vickers, but I am not sure it would have been quite in the same vein as that in which I intend to continue.

We have talked a bit about the youth mobility scheme, or the youth movement scheme or the youth experience scheme—call it what you will. Of course, it is true that some young people want to go abroad, but many more young people from abroad will want to come here, and we spoke a little before you came, Mr Vickers, about the consequences of that.

Things have changed since we left the European Union. The principal change internationally has been the greater need for national economic resilience, epitomised in the covid pandemic and then the European war in Ukraine that followed. Never has it been clearer that Britain needs to become increasingly resilient, and that means protecting our industries to some degree. It certainly means manufacturing more of what we need and growing more of the food that we consume in this country. Shortening supply lines will have many benefits, environmental and other but, fundamentally, it is about taking a national view of our economic interests.

Of course Britain co-operates and collaborates with others; but, as I said to the hon. Member for Walthamstow when she opened the debate, there is a world of difference between co-operation and governance. In a sense, that has permeated considerations of this subject since we started them back in the late 1950s. For a long time, many of those who favoured European governance pretended that it was a matter of logistics rather than principles, of details rather than essentials and, as we heard again in this debate, of co-operation rather than governance. Fundamentally, however, it is about the difference between supranational Government and collaborative measures—treaties and so on—between sovereign nations. That is at the heart of this debate.

It is unfortunate that when we joined the European Union—as you will remember, Mr Vickers, because you were a campaigner against it even in those distant days—it was labelled the Common Market. There was no sense there that we would be giving up our sovereignty—no sense that it would have any effect on our political structure or system of Government. It was just a trading association.

How things have changed. I know the hon. Member for Walthamstow welcomes that change, because she fought the Brexit referendum result in an honourable, but none the less stubborn way, if I might say so. I wonder whether she is as stubborn now.