Offences Against the Person Act 1861

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Tuesday 5th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) and other hon. Members on both sides of the House who sought this debate. I would also like to mention my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson), who has campaigned on this issue for many years.

Like the Secretary of State, I will concentrate on the situation in Northern Ireland. The referendum in the Republic 10 days ago has not altered the constitutional situation anywhere in the UK, including Northern Ireland, but it has most certainly changed the conversation, and we have to take that into account. One thing I want to establish is this: yes, we can discuss the legalese of sections 58 and 59 of the 1861 Act and talk esoterically about human rights—I do not mean to trivialise those points—but in the end this is about people. It is about women such as Sarah Ewart, to whom the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson) referred. She had the most immense difficulty on discovering that the baby she was carrying would be born with no skull and could not survive the birth. Having received chronically bad support from the medical profession in Northern Ireland, she had to travel to England in the most difficult circumstances for a safe and lawful abortion. Cases such as that ought to condition the way in which we see this issue. It is about people. It is about women in distress.

Like many other Members, I have seen the joy of happy pregnancy. I have seen it in my own family: one of my daughters gave birth earlier this year. What a great moment that is. However, I have also seen the downside—the tragedy of people who know that the foetus that they conceived in hope is born to die, and the situation of women who have become pregnant as a result of rape. We must take those elements on board and recognise the humanity involved. I do not doubt the legitimacy of the arguments that anyone else presents and wishes to pursue, but I am determined to stress that there is a human being behind every one of these situations. We must remember that as we debate these matters.

The hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) mentioned the Supreme Court’s decision. That decision will make a profound difference, but my party’s position has been very clear. In our manifesto at the last election, we said that we would seek to provide, in conjunction with the Northern Ireland Assembly, a legislative framework for safe, legal abortions for women in Northern Ireland who made that choice. That is where we want to see things happen—we want to see legislation introduced in the Stormont Assembly, and nothing that my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow said contradicted that. The legislation would demand change, but the Stormont Assembly would have the opportunity to create the necessary legislative framework for the people—particularly the women—of Northern Ireland.

That is important, but there is a challenge behind it. I think I heard the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley say that members of the Democratic Unionist party would return to the Assembly without precondition. I hope that that is the case, because there is now a real challenge for all the Assembly politicians. They must go back to the Stormont Assembly if they want to be taken seriously in this debate and on other issues. We cannot see a situation in which civil servants without an electoral mandate make decisions, so it is incumbent on the Northern Ireland Assembly Members to go back to the Assembly.

[Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

The hon. Gentleman is someone whom I hold in high esteem and for whom I have the greatest respect, but, as he knows—he does not have to hope; he knows—the Democratic Unionist party would go into government tomorrow on the basis of what we agreed previously, and I understand that the Ulster Unionists, the Social Democratic and Labour party and the Alliance party would do so as well. The members of Sinn Féin do not want to do that without a precondition, but there is no doubt about our commitment to going into government, having the Assembly up and running, and debating all these issues. We no longer have a petition of concern veto in the Assembly. Those who shout loudest about wanting this issue to be resolved should get the Assembly up and running. We agree with that—they should get on with it.

[Tony Lloyd]

l am not sure whether the right hon. Gentleman has just undermined the “no precondition” point made by the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley. However, I think that in that context it would be very helpful if the Secretary of State now said to all the parties in the Assembly, “Let us get around the table and discuss abortion law reform.” If this issue matters, it must transcend some of the other issues that have caused blockage in the recent past. That, I know, is a challenge for Northern Ireland Members, in this Westminster Parliament as well as in the Assembly, but it is a challenge that politicians must take up. We must see the Assembly up and running: that is fundamental.

I mentioned the case that is before the Supreme Court, and the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West was absolutely right to ask the question that she put to the Secretary of State. I cannot anticipate how the Supreme Court will respond to the case, but it turns on the question of whether it is compatible with our obligations under the European convention on human rights for women who are bearing children as a result of rape or incest, or children with fatal foetal abnormalities or extreme malformations, not to have access to legal, safe abortion in Northern Ireland. Depending on the direction the Supreme Court takes in its decision, I think the Secretary of State and her Cabinet colleagues will have to consider very seriously how we could begin to address that at the Westminster level; it will be a Westminster issue, not a Stormont issue.

[Ian Paisley]

Does that not identify a huge flaw in this entire debate? Some 98% of all abortions carried out in the United Kingdom are carried out on pregnancies that could continue to full term. They are not inconvenient—or rather, they are not foetal abnormality cases or crisis pregnancies. They are unwanted pregnancies, and the provision that the hon. Gentleman is now saying should be introduced to Northern Ireland is not about the minority of difficult cases; it is about opening up termination of life to all. That is the fatal flaw in his argument, because that was rejected out of hand by all the parties in Northern Ireland.

[Tony Lloyd]

I am sorry, but I have to say to the hon. Gentleman that he was not listening to anything that I said. What I have said has been very clear: in the case of the Westminster Parliament having to respond to the Supreme Court, that would be in a very limited and restricted number of cases that are very clearly defined. I also said that it would be incumbent on the Stormont Assembly to legislate for the situation in Northern Ireland, and it would be up to the Assembly to decide the limitations on the law and its impact in Northern Ireland.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful speech and I agree with much of what he says. Does he agree that, especially in relation to the comment made by my hon. Friend the Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley), it is important not to forget that this is actually about the right of a woman to choose? It is not confined merely to those who have foetal abnormalities or who have been raped or in some ghastly incestuous relationship; it is about women’s rights and our right to control what we do with our bodies.

[Tony Lloyd]

I agree, and my voting record is clear on this issue.

[Karen Lee]

I thought that the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) was going to say something about abortions being “convenient.” I worked in clinics and counselled women, and I tell him that they are not done for convenience. Some of those people are utterly desperate by the time they get to clinics, and it would be very wrong to think that people treat abortions as a matter of convenience.

[Tony Lloyd]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: this is not a matter of convenience. This is a heart-rending decision; many women whom I have spoken to over the years—I have represented many of them, but many others I have known in different ways—have had to go through the agonising decision as to whether abortion is the right choice for them. The decision should nevertheless lie with them, and laws should certainly not restrict that.

I want to emphasise what the Opposition and my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow are saying. The Labour party’s position—we are the Good Friday agreement party, we believe—is that we want to see devolved government work, but politicians in Northern Ireland have got to make it work on this issue. They cannot shy away from it; if this issue matters to the people they represent, they must be in the Assembly making laws on it for the people of Northern Ireland.

Many Members want to speak, so I do not intend to continue for much longer, but I want to conclude as I began. This is not, in the end, an issue about lawyers or even about the philosophy of abortion; it is about real people. It is about real women, very often in situations of distress, who are looking for the law to allow them to pursue something that is prevented in Northern Ireland at the moment. It ought to be unconscionable that a woman is made to continue bearing a child doomed to die. It ought to be unconscionable that a woman who provided her 15-year-old daughter with the capacity to terminate a pregnancy should still be facing criminal prosecution, as we have seen in a recent case. On that basis, humanity now cries out for a change in the law.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow again on securing this important debate. It is not the concluding debate—no change in the law can be passed today—but even if we pass legislation to put the wording of the motion into law, other legal changes will still be needed both UK-wide and most definitely in Northern Ireland. This is devolution-compatible, and the politicians in Northern Ireland must now make that devolution work.

[Several hon. Members rose—]