Stella Creasy MP: speeches

Speeches

• 17 Jun 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I hope that the right hon. Member has read the human rights requirements, because they are about the treatment and dignity of the woman in question and the safety of the service provided. I do not believe that Lord Steel would want women to be put at risk; indeed, I think that is why he fought for that original legislation. We have supported these human rights treaties in this place for other reasons. The new clause, as in the provisions in Northern Ireland, would use the human rights requirements as a guide—a template or a test—as to whether the safety and wellbeing of women is at the heart of what many of us believe is a healthcare rather than a criminal matter. The new clause sets out additional tests for how we would interpret those human rights provisions. It brings in the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights to constitute the rights of women to sexual and reproductive health and gender equality. Fundamentally, those human rights are about equal treatment of each other’s bodies. At the moment, the lack of a human right creates an inequality for women in my constituency and his—an inequality that women in Northern Ireland do not face. We should shape services around their wellbeing; it is an established principle. Some have argued that we should not make this change through amendments to legislation. This issue has always rightly been non-governmental, and there are people who disagree with the right to abortion, and people who support it, in every single party. That means that proposals for reform of abortion will always come from Back Benchers, or from somebody who has won the golden buzzer of a private Member’s Bill, which happens very rarely. For those who have called for consultation, the good news is that it is exactly what we got by voting for abortion to be a human right in Northern Ireland. If hon. Members’ concern about this amendment is the lack of consultation, they should know that voting for it will trigger a consultation on how to apply the human rights test to abortion provision in England and Wales, so that we can test whether our services meet the objectives that we set for women in Northern Ireland.

• 17 Jun 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I am sorry, but I cannot. I will tell him afterwards why I cannot, but I promise that it is not out of a lack of respect for his position. Some say that Northern Ireland is different, but why would we think that women in Northern Ireland are different from women in England and Wales when it comes to human rights? We are seeking not to remove our regulations, but to apply the same test to them. We simply want the Secretary of State to ask whether they are human-rights compliant. Those who celebrated bringing abortion to Northern Ireland, and who continue to promote it, did not just celebrate the provision of a service; they celebrated the liberation of women from this inequality, which we risk perpetuating for our constituents.

• 17 Jun 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I will, one more time, and then I want to make some progress.

• 17 Jun 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I am sorry, but I cannot take any interventions. New clause 20 is primarily about whether we think that abortion is a human right, and how we apply that principle to our laws here. It is also about the very present and real threat to access in our communities. Members will have seen outside this place the modern anti-abortion movement that we now have in the UK, and will have received the scaremongering emails. Of course those in that movement are reacting more strongly than ever to the idea of women having this human right protected in law, because their opposition is not about children. If it was, they would not shout at mine when they see them in the street. It is about controlling women. They do not openly advocate for an end to abortion access, but they make lurid claims, including the claim that there would be abortion at birth, so let me put that one to bed. Because new clause 20 retains the 1967 framework, it retains not just the time limit—crucially, it is different from new clause 1 in that regard—but all the provisions in the 1967 Act relating to everyone involved in an abortion.

• 17 Jun 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I respect the right hon. Gentleman’s belief, and I will always defend his right to it. I tell him this, however: the human rights of the woman carrying the baby are intricately related to the ability of the baby to survive. If we do not look after women and protect their wellbeing, there will be no babies. The human rights test allows us to ask whether it matters to us that we treat women equally when it comes to the regulation of this healthcare procedure. Practically, it also means that there is somebody to champion those regulations. In Northern Ireland, the human rights commissioner has taken the Government to court when access to the procedure has been denied. She has established buffer zones and safe access to abortion clinics as a human right. Indeed, she is now looking at telemedicine as a human right, and at how to provide it for women in a safe way.

• 17 Jun 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I am sorry; I cannot take interventions because of time. Those who worry that new clause 20 removes outdated laws should look at the limited number of prosecutions that have taken place under existing laws, and compare it to the number of investigations that have taken place. Let us deal with the claims that are being put about. First, there is a claim that repeal would mean that there would no longer be the crime that MSI has called reproductive coercion. That is what it called the offence of coercion in the Serious Crime Act 2015, which it hailed. That offence would remain, and it explicitly covers forcing someone to have an abortion, giving the same penalty as section 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861. Those who claim that coercing someone to have an abortion would be legal under new clause 20 have not paid attention to that legislation, or to the calls from the abortion providers to ensure that more healthcare providers—and, it seems, more Government lawyers—are aware of that 2015 law, and of reproductive coercion. Those who claim that the loss of the “concealment of the body” law in section 60 of the Offences Against the Person Act would facilitate live abortions should look at the existing laws on grievous bodily harm and actual bodily harm, which are used in such cases because of the difficulty of proving an offence under section 60, and indeed because of the requirements of the Infant Life Preservation Act 1929. Having given birth to a baby at 37 weeks, I want to be very clear why time limits and medical decisions matter when it comes to abortion, not just to the application of substance misuse laws. Let us be very clear that there would be criminal offences to cover the cases that the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) described, but we are also talking about removing laws that have criminalised people who have had stillbirths. These are people who need our compassion, and who need us to be able to differentiate between an outdated law that criminalises abortion and the malicious intent in the substance misuse legislation. People should recognise how seldom these offences can be proved because they make no sense. Also, in retaining the 1967 Act, we retain the good faith principle for all parties to an abortion. That would deal with the trope of sex selection; nobody can prove that abortion for sex selection reasons has happened, but that is covered in the good faith arrangements that are retained with the 1967 legislation. I return to the subject of Northern Ireland, because it was not the absence of regulation that made a difference; it was Parliament voting to make abortion a human right, and then the Government working with us to make it happen. Voting for new clause 20 would kick-start a similar process. We know that Government lawyers never really like to deal with change—who does?—but this is the proper and appropriate way to proceed, and in our Parliament, this is the only way for Back-Benchers to make changes on matters of conscience. Those of us who recognise that reproductive rights are the foundation of social justice know that now is the time to act. If we are not free to control what happens to our bodies, we cannot be free in the rest of our lives. Those who are playing politics with abortion play politics with equality. The Vice-President of the US has attacked our buffer zones. We should not tolerate his interference in any matter of human rights. Only new clause 20 would give buffer zones that human rights footing. We would not ask a woman to carry to term a baby that would die at birth, but again, there are people in this place who call our abortion laws ludicrous, and who advocate for a reduction in the time limit, putting a woman’s health second. That would not happen with a human rights framework. Those of us who care about these rights need to act tonight. Less than half of all men under 40 in this country believe that abortion should be legal in most cases, so those who feel that abortion is a settled matter that cannot be weaponised in our politics need to listen to the drumbeat already banging loudly in this country. We face a choice today. We know that these laws are outdated. Do we retain but limit them, or do we remove them and get ahead of what is to come? I urge colleagues who care about these matters to listen to our American counterparts, who bitterly regret not having acted under Biden and Obama to protect abortion access, and who now find medics being prosecuted and dragged across state lines. Do we learn from how Parliament has acted before? Procedurally, Members know that if new clause 1 is passed, new clause 20 cannot go to a vote, so they will not have the chance to say whether they believe that a safe and legal abortion is a fundamental human right. I want to be clear that I will support new clause 1, but with great hesitation. That is not because I dismiss those proposing it. I hope we can all agree that there are genuine and decent terms for disagreement. It is because new clause 20 brings in a lock on ministerial powers. It explicitly restricts what Ministers and the Government—not Parliament—can do on this subject in a delegated legislation Committee. It has been surprising to learn, in these debates, how few people have had the joyous experience of sitting in a delegated legislation Committee, stacked by the Whips with Government MPs, that makes major changes to the law, but in 15 years, that has happened to me a number of times. We have seen it on tuition fee rates and welfare cuts, and the previous Government tried to do it with the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023. Only new clause 20 would stop Ministers using regulatory powers to overturn abortion rights. They could use them only to bring in human rights-compliant regulations. Conversely, if new clause 1 is passed, there are no constraints on how Ministers could use the powers. The Minister might say that the new clause brings in no requirement to make regulations. That is true. New clause 1 does not require regulation, but it can and will facilitate it. As the Hansard Society points out, Ministers sometimes seek powers in a Bill to enable them to take actions that they consider appropriate. That leaves Ministers with huge powers. New clause 1 would bring abortion within the province of this legislation and give the Secretary of State enabling powers to make laws relating to abortion, as long as they would not reverse the disapplication of abortion law to a person acting in relation to their own pregnancy. The powers could be used to target medics, or the family of a person seeking an abortion. I therefore ask the Minister to explicitly give a commitment that if new clause 1 is passed, there will be no further regulation on abortion under the Bill, and no application to make new clause 1 workable or to clarify the impact of a prosecution on the anti-abortion laws that remain. If the Minister cannot do that, by definition she proves that that power will exist. By contrast, new clause 20 would restrict that. It would give power back to this place. Nobody can bind a future Parliament, but we can demand that it is not small Committees of hand-picked, select MPs making decisions on the Government’s behalf, and that each of us should be able to act on behalf of our constituents. Criminalisation does not reduce or deter abortion; it just makes it harder to carry out safely. We should be clear that criminalisation will remain if only new clause 1 is passed. If we want the decriminalisation that the sector has always advocated for—for good reason—it is only through new clause 20 that we can achieve that. I hope that colleagues in the Lords will have heard this debate, and will not let these matters rest. Regret has no place in politics. It certainly has no place in the politics that I came here to represent. When there are those who would seek to attack women in this way, I pledge to continue fighting for women’s rights. I pledge to continue fighting to make abortion a human right in this country, and I ask colleagues to consider the case for doing so in this way. But I ask people who care about this to think about this moment and whether we will ever have another one when this Parliament could act in such a positive, constructive and established way. We can get one thing over the line. Why not make it the thing that would make the biggest difference to our constituents?

• 16 Jun 2025 · Windrush Day 2025 · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is making an incredibly powerful speech. Does she share not just my tribute to Amelia Gentleman for the work she did to uncover what happened with the Windrush scandal, as well as people like Colin McFarlane and the Justice 4 Windrush Generation campaign, but my horror at the evidence we have seen this week that those given compensation to date have not actually been given the same amounts as those in other comparable scandals? Does she agree that we must right that wrong from this place?

• 4 Jun 2025 · Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories · Hansard source

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  Let us be short and frank, then. For many of us in this House, this is no longer complicated. Time has run out for claiming ambiguity of action. Since 20 May, we have seen 22 more settlements. It is deliberately made dangerous for people to access aid, and the Israel Defence Forces have declared the roads to the aid distribution centres “combat zones”. The Minister says that the Government have raised concerns and have called for immediate independent investigations, but those have not happened—not just in this incident, but repeatedly. He will not tell us what he will do. This is on the consciences of us all, so we have to ask him to be clearer. Will he tell us what is not on the table? Will he rule out things? He has told us that he is talking about the future, but will he rule out immediate recognition of Palestine, which many of us have been calling for, the sanctions that many of us have been calling for, and a final resolution of the F-35 farce? If he does, at least we will get sense of where this is going.

• 4 Jun 2025 · Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Member had the luxury and benefit of being on the Public Bill Committee. I did not have the ability to ask the questions that he is asking, but I look at the evidence under the previous Administration. When there was the ability to diverge, what actually happened? The reality is that very little divergence happened, because it is not in our national interest. We can, and do, fight many things in this place —indeed, in British politics—but geography really is not one of the things that it is worth our time arguing about. Given that we do five times more trade with our European Union neighbours than with America, China and India put together, it obviously makes sense to have a regulatory regime that makes that trade as friction-free as possible, which is where this piece of legislation comes in. Indeed, under the previous Government, there were only five cases of active divergence—the sort of changes that the right hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Holden) is worried about—that might affect small businesses. That is with good reason, because if we have a sensible regulatory regime, it makes sense to be aligned. The Prime Minister has talked about that, and it is also what businesses want. The Engineering and Machinery Alliance, which represents over 1,600 firms from 11 different trade associations, puts it very simply. It says that our businesses “are trading in European markets and are part of European value chains. They have European customers and suppliers. For companies operating in highly specialised, high value markets, the UK is unlikely to provide the mass needed to develop and successfully market their products. They need to be international and that means working to international standards—the EU’s being, almost always, the most appropriate.”

• 4 Jun 2025 · Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member can take it as yes, but he will know that I am sticking very closely to the amendments, because I want to come on to how we make such decisions. First, though, we need to be clear that this legislation will affect the lives of our constituents. Let me give one example. I am a child of the 1980s; I remember the Glo Worm. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for looking surprised—I hope it is a look of surprise, but perhaps you are remembering the Glo Worm yourself. The point is that the Glo Worm turned out to be quite a dangerous toy because of the chemicals it contained. Regulations help to keep us safe, so when we are talking about sharing regulatory regimes and being able to promote markets, there is a good reason why we are seeking high standards. I hope that everyone will hold the Glo Worm as an example—it has now been reissued without those chemicals in it, thank goodness, so that children of the 2020s can enjoy those squidgy toys. What matters is how we make decisions about such regulations, and the debate on this Bill heralds a bigger conversation that we need to have in Parliament about how we can be involved in those decisions now that we are not part of the European Union. Obviously, agrifood and sanitary and phytosanitary goods are not included in the Bill, but the Government have now committed to dynamic alignment with EU rules for a very common-sense reason. As the Prime Minister has said, “we are currently aligned in our standards, but we do not get the benefit of that. We want to continue to have high standards; that is what the British public want”. —[ Official Report , 20 May 2025; Vol. 767, c. 894.] I hope that is the ethos we take in how we use the powers in this Bill. It is certainly what businesses would like us to do.

• 4 Jun 2025 · Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I will happily give way, although I promised Madam Deputy Speaker that I was about to turn to new clause 15.

• 4 Jun 2025 · Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I cannot even look you in the eye, Madam Deputy Speaker, because I know I should not be tempted into quite that level of analysis. Very practically, we are trying to deal with the fallout of Brexit. The hon. Member will have heard me say that we need a salvage operation, because of the consequences seen and the damage done as a result of the way that our leaving the European Union was conducted. I see this Bill as part of that salvage operation. We used to be part of writing such regulations with our colleagues in Europe, which we do not do any more, but we need a process to maintain them because of the reality of the supply chains, of how we do business and of where divergence has hit small businesses—and it is small businesses, in every single constituency, that have paid the price for this version of Brexit.

• 4 Jun 2025 · Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Member seems to believe the regulatory regimes we had were a ceiling rather than a floor. There was nothing to prevent us from having higher standards; they were about maintaining standards. He and I are on different sides of the debate about nutrient neutrality, but the concern was about the high standard when it came to protecting our rivers and seas from algae that was at risk under the previous Government. The right hon. Member is right, though, to raise the question of how we maintain standards, which is where new clause 15 comes in. It is about the concept of how we take back control—which, frankly, was at the heart of all the Brexit debates. I am sure the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim (Jim Allister) is surprised that I have become the stopped clock for him: this is one point in his political career that I may be right. There is a challenge here that we need to address, and those of us who came to the Brexit debate from different directions can all agree that it is good and healthy to have such a discussion. I also want to say, as a parliamentarian, that the Government should be directed to do something that has consequences for Parliament as well. That is where new clause 15 is coming from. It is a probing amendment to raise a more general concern about how we make good legislation. At the beginning of this Parliament, the Government decided not to re-establish the European Scrutiny Committee, which had existed since 1973, to scrutinise European documents that affected UK policy or law. In the debate, the Leader of the House said that “the principal job of the Committee—to examine the documents produced by the EU institutions that the Government would automatically take on board—is no longer required.” —[ Official Report , 30 July 2024; Vol. 752, c. 1272.] The challenge for many of us is that this Bill, and indeed the deal we now have with the European Union, means that that test is being set again. There is now a need for some form of dedicated scrutiny mechanism, with specialist expert staff to consider relevant EU laws and rules. That is not confined to the issues arising from this Bill; it is a broader point about what is happening now. The ESC worked primarily by examining proposals from the European Commission and giving an opinion on their implications and when they would affect “matters of principle, policy or law in the UK”. I recognise that since that Committee was abolished, some work on these issues has been done by other Committees, and that is welcome. However, with this Bill and the reset deal, we are moving to a volume of European law and regulation with such technical complexity that we in this place would be best served by having that specialist expertise. Let’s be honest: many of these things are beyond our individual pay grades and we will want some expert assistance. Put simply, if PRaM is passed in its current form, where the Government choose to recognise EU product regulations there will again be documents produced by EU institutions that the Government would automatically take on board. The Government’s dashboard of assimilated EU law shows that there are 155 items in the area of product safety and standards that derive from European law and could, under PRaM, be influenced by proposals of the European Commission to update EU law. Clearly, 155 documents alone would likely mean we exceed the ability of any one individual departmental Select Committee to devote sufficient time to the required level of scrutiny given their other priorities. Many of us had run-ins with the previous Member for Stone. For some reason he never quite welcomed my interest in his work, but my interest and concern in scrutiny in this place is genuine and heartfelt, because I do think that at our best we can help Ministers, although I know that some on the Front Bench—maybe on both sides of the Chamber—will be raising an eyebrow at that suggestion. Aside from the democratic merits of parliamentary scrutiny in its own right and the cry to take back control, there are a number of benefits to the Government of ensuring that regulations derived from EU laws are scrutinised closely, not least because if those regulations deriving from EU law were later the subject of judicial review, the quality of parliamentary scrutiny of the relevant secondary legislation would be factored into a court’s thinking on the adequacy of the Government’s decision making. We might also pick up things in the process that have been missed. It is indeed the question of perfection, as my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Adam Thompson) said, to argue that any Government or any individual scrutiny process through a statutory instrument could ever be perfect. I do not believe we should set that standard. As a psychologist, I believe in competing opinions and views; there is always merit in having a second pair of eyes. That is what this process is getting at—that is how we get closer to perfection, if I have understood my lessons in metrology correctly. The point also fits within the broader debate about how, as we reset our relationship with Europe, we make sure that we show the British public our homework. That is ultimately what good scrutiny does: it defeats the naysayers who claim that there is a backroom fix; it allows the disinfectant of sunlight to be poured on every single document to its dullest degree. As the Prime Minister told the House in presenting the European deal, we will be taking co-operation with Europe “further, step by step”, and alignment will be an important part of that. I welcome that because it is in the interests of the British public. We are already committed to dynamic alignment on the SPS deal, to free us from those dire border checks and all the extra paperwork that means that there are trucks stuck at Sevington, food inflation has increased and our constituents have paid the price. We are also looking at dynamic alignment on emissions trading to allow us to remove energy tariffs in key industries including steel. That means that when those deals are completed, there will be much larger volumes of EU rules that directly affect UK law and policy. That will probably be a good thing but it is right for this place to be able to debate, discuss and scrutinise how that works. I hope the Minister will recognise that every single political party in this House has supported new clause 15 because they want not to batter the Government but to engage with the Government on these issues, and that he will talk about how we can see the appropriate level of parliamentary scrutiny in this piece of legislation. I recognise that not many pieces of legislation will be affected by the PRaM proposals directly, but there is that broader point about how we take back control—how we have that conversation about the way in which we, at our best, can assist the Government to get the best out of regulations so that our businesses can keep trading, our consumers can keep buying and our Glo Worms can keep glowing.

• 4 Jun 2025 · Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to follow my colleagues from Stoke, who have so powerfully advocated for their local communities. It is also an absolute pleasure to be part of a debate with my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Adam Thompson), who I genuinely believe should be knighted for his services to explaining what metrology is to all of us. At the very least, he should have some kind of BBC Four series, possibly with my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) as his sidekick. I am here because I have tabled new clause 15, which has cross-party support. It is designed to be a probing amendment—I hope the Minister is reassured about that—because these are important parliamentary matters. I agree with Opposition Members that this Bill is an important piece of legislation, although I come at it from a different perspective, because I see it as being at the sharp end of Brexit. To me, Brexit is paperwork, because there are multiple regulatory regimes. Our constituents, and particularly small businesses, must deal with the reams and reams of paperwork that have come from leaving the European Union in the way we did, and we know that has had an impact on them. We know that over 16,000 small businesses have given up exporting to the European Union because of all the extra paperwork, that one in eight small exporters had temporarily or permanently stopped selling to the EU, and that another 10% were considering doing so, because it had become more complicated.

• 4 Jun 2025 · Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for setting that out. It is incredibly helpful and reassuring to many of us to hear that in this instance just a handful of regulations would be affected. I hope that Business Ministers have heard the wider call for us to look at the issue across the piece; in fact, I am sure that the Minister will want to feed that in. What he said is very welcome and I am sure that all hon. Members who supported my new clause will be reassured accordingly.

• 2 Jun 2025 · Decriminalising Abortion · Hansard source

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  Under our current criminal legislation, there are exemptions from prosecution for abortions that take place up to 24 weeks, and in some instances further, if there is a threat of death to the mother or the child. What the hon. Member is talking about are the 3,000 abortions that happen every year after someone has had the worst news possible—when they are told after their 20-week anomaly scan that the baby they really wanted will not make it past birth. I do not think the hon. Member is a cruel man, and I do not think he wishes to advocate that women should be forced to carry children they know will die to term, but that is not affected by our current regulations. He is putting at risk women’s access in that moment by advocating a reduction in the time limit.

• 2 Jun 2025 · Decriminalising Abortion · Hansard source

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  I am sorry that my hon. Friend feels the need to ask that question. She knows full well that despite me asking repeatedly to meet her and to talk to the campaigners she has been working with, that meeting has not yet been forthcoming. I am still open to meeting people, but we need to be very clear on the record: new clause 20 has in it a lock on the activity of Ministers, deliberately so, because this is a human rights issue. It should be a matter that is subject to the entire Parliament, and it should be clear that Ministers may only ever use the powers in this legislation to make human rights-compliant legislation. If they did not, the human rights commissioner could challenge them on it and take the Secretary of State to court, just as was done in Northern Ireland. Conversely, new clause 1 would allow Ministers to have secondary legislation powers without any restrictions. Again, I ask Members who are concerned about Ministers being involved in writing legislation to look at the difference in that constitutional role. I recognise that only those who have had the repeated pleasure of serving on secondary legislation Committees will understand the powers they can have. Certainly, I encourage people to look at how George Osborne used secondary legislation powers to change the student tuition fee rates and benefit rights. The previous Government used them under the retained EU law legislation. The scope of those powers has been broadening. Many of us respect the role of Government, but obviously we recognise that, should there be a Government with a more extreme agenda in the future, they will also have those powers. New clause 20 would lock those powers down. I do not wish to detain the House any longer, because others wish to speak. What matters is that we are clear about why proper decriminalisation matters. Restricting access to abortion does not stop abortion; it stops safe abortion. Failing to protect access to abortion does not make it easier for people to have children; it simply means more pain, misery and heartache to be had. There is no right amount of abortions to happen in our society, but a basic human right is at stake here. Members of this House who are alive to the politics and the policy debates on abortion and in politics would do well to think about how they will feel in five years’ time if what we see at the moment is the start, not the end, of assaults on abortion. I urge Members who care about decriminalisation to back new clause 20 and make sure that our constituents in England and Wales have the same human right that they do in France and Northern Ireland.

• 2 Jun 2025 · Decriminalising Abortion · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. This is an important debate for the many of us who have been campaigning on this issue for many years, because we feel passionately that the equal ability to control what happens to our bodies is the foundation of equality within society. I thank Gemma for her petition and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) for setting out the law so well. I want us to be honest with the British public about what we are talking about and, therefore, what we need to see happen if we want decriminalisation. I was the architect of the Northern Ireland legislation, and I want to be clear about what we did there and about the difference between the two proposals that will come before Parliament in the coming weeks. In Northern Ireland, we did not do what new clause 1 to the Crime and Policing Bill seeks to do. The new clause would not decriminalise abortion; it would disapply the law on abortion for some people, but would retain the abortion legislation. Those of us who support decriminalisation need to be clear that decriminalisation must mean repeal. We did that in Northern Ireland, and that is why we have been able to protect women who previously had no access to any abortion provision.

• 2 Jun 2025 · Decriminalising Abortion · Hansard source

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  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.

• 2 Jun 2025 · Decriminalising Abortion · Hansard source

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  I am sorry that the hon. Lady feels like that. I hope she heard my words to her colleague, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). I have always—it is on the record—defended the right of people who disagree with abortion to make their argument. I have always— [ Interruption. ] The hon. Lady is chuntering from a sedentary position. I have always defended the right of people to disagree. What I do not do is defend the right of people who disagree to harass. Let me talk about another example of where abortion access is under threat. We fought tooth and nail in the previous Parliament to put safe access zones to abortion clinics in place. We absolutely uphold people’s religious liberties, but no one has a religious right to pray anywhere they like that trumps the human right of privacy that a woman has when she has made the choice to have an abortion to go to a clinic. My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes) set out the consequences of that. Nothing in new clause 1 would protect buffer zones. New clause 20 would explicitly protect buffer zones, because the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission has intervened to protect buffer zones as part of human rights legislation. Some may argue, “Don’t worry: because she made that ruling and fought that case for us in Northern Ireland, we can apply it to England and Wales.” New clause 20 would put that beyond doubt. It is therefore not some untried and untested mechanism for defending abortion; it is about recognising that, if we want to protect abortion access, we have to repeal the relevant legislation and then say what happens next.

• 2 Jun 2025 · Decriminalising Abortion · Hansard source

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  I hope the hon. Member knows that, although I disagree with him on this matter, I have always done so respectfully, and fought for his right to be heard. However, I want to challenge him on the idea that we can have only an opinion on what actual decriminalisation and the human rights framework would look like. We have seen what it looks like in Northern Ireland since 2019, and we now have a body of work by a commissioner at the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, including court cases in which she has intervened to uphold that human right, to see the implications of decriminalisation. We may differ on whether the impact is one we would like to see in this society, but we cannot deny that there is now a body of evidence about what a human rights framework and approach to abortion access would look like.

• 2 Jun 2025 · Decriminalising Abortion · Hansard source

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  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—

• 2 Jun 2025 · Decriminalising Abortion · Hansard source

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  New clause 20 would introduce in England and Wales what we have done in Northern Ireland, and I know from the Minister’s previous comments on the record that she has been very supportive of that legal and moral duty to act. For the avoidance of doubt, can she clarify whether her officials have met the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission to understand how this operates in practice in Northern Ireland?

• 2 Jun 2025 · Decriminalising Abortion · Hansard source

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  I will of course give way—the hon. Gentleman gave way to me.

• 2 Jun 2025 · Decriminalising Abortion · Hansard source

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  It is also worth noting that the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission has explicitly called for telemedicine to be made available to women in Northern Ireland. Given that we have a human rights framework in Northern Ireland, the Government have to respond to that or risk being taken to court again by the chief commissioner for failing to uphold the human rights of women in Northern Ireland to access a safe and legal abortion. We have no such protections here in England and Wales as yet. Is that not the case?