My Lords, as this debate has illustrated all too clearly, this subject provokes extremely strong emotions. I welcome these regulations from the Government but regret that they are necessary.
Contrary to many of the speeches we have heard this afternoon, there is in fact broad support in Northern Ireland and across party lines for the approach taken by the Northern Ireland Office in these regulations. Importantly, there is also a great deal of support for them from both the medical community and women’s rights organisations—points made extremely powerfully this afternoon by my noble friend Lady Barker. It is also worth noting that the regulations were adopted yesterday in the House of Commons by 431 votes to 89, a very substantial majority of 342 votes.
I pay tribute to the many dedicated healthcare professionals in Northern Ireland who have continued to support women and to provide reproductive healthcare in these most difficult of circumstances, made considerably more challenging by Covid-19.
Speaking to friends and colleagues in Northern Ireland, there is a deep sense of dismay at some of the political games being played here and much concern about some of the misinformation adding to the heat of this debate. The facts are that these regulations are concerned only with giving the Secretary of State for
Northern Ireland powers to direct local health bodies and officeholders to commission abortion services. These regulations do not amend regulations and provisions for legal abortion care, which were supported overwhelmingly in Parliament last year.
As the report published last week by the House of Lords Constitution Committee sets out clearly, we should also recall that these regulations stem from the legislation passed during the period when the Northern Ireland Executive was suspended and before it was restored in January 2020. The 2020 regulations sought to bring Northern Ireland in line with the rest of the United Kingdom in reproductive rights and to ensure that the whole United Kingdom met its international requirements through CEDAW.
Of course, it would have been hugely preferable for the Northern Ireland Executive to have fulfilled their responsibility directly, but it is now more than a year since the Executive was restored and they have failed to do so. This seems unlikely to change in the near future so, faced with stalemate in the Executive on these matters, these regulations have become necessary. The debate this afternoon is really about ensuring the implementation of a law that has been in place for over a year now; it should not be about reopening or unpicking what should be a settled matter.
Debates about devolution and constitutional wrangling, as set out in several of the fatal amendments before us today, must not be allowed to hide the facts about what is happening now in Northern Ireland as regards access to vital reproductive healthcare and the impact this is having on women’s lives. Abortion in Northern Ireland is in a precarious position. Three local health trusts have stopped providing abortion services, with the consequence that once again women are being forced to travel to England for abortion services during a global pandemic or are purchasing unsafe abortion pills online. Despite the new legal framework coming into effect over a year ago, services remain unfunded and without commissioned support from the Northern Ireland Department of Health. It is surely unacceptable that reproductive rights vary across our United Kingdom.
I would like to reassure those colleagues who expressed concern about the potential impact of these regulations on the devolution settlement in Northern Ireland that—as my colleague in Northern Ireland, Alliance MP Stephen Farry, has said—these are an exceptional set of circumstances and should not create a wider precedent. As the Northern Ireland Office Minister Robin Walker put it so powerfully during the debate in the House of Commons earlier this week, and as the Minister repeated here this afternoon:
“At the heart of this matter are the women and girls in Northern Ireland who have been, and continue to be, denied the same reproductive rights as women in the rest of the UK”.—[Official Report, Commons, Delegated Legislation Committee, 26/4/21; col. 4.]
I therefore urge noble Lords to support these regulations and to reject all fatal amendments.
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