I thank noble Lords for being provided with the opportunity to speak in the gap. It is an honour to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy. I will focus my comments on pregnant migrant women. A lot has been said already by the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister, Lady Sugg and Lady Brinton, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester, and many others.
Like them, I am gravely concerned about the safety of pregnant women, new mothers and their babies. The legislation in its current form may result in them being detained indefinitely and being taken out of the UK. Pregnant women and new mothers are among the most vulnerable in society and we have a duty to safeguard them. We therefore need to provide them with the right nutrition, healthcare, and physical and mental health monitoring to detect problems.
Making them stay in overcrowded centres can increase the risk of infectious disease and result in poor mental health. They cannot be provided with the right care at the right time. Why cannot these small numbers of pregnant migrant women be housed in the community? I say that because, this morning, the Minister mentioned that most illegal migrants are men. What risks can these pregnant women pose in society? If I remember rightly, this morning it was mentioned that the measures in this Bill are needed to keep us safe.
The Government already have a terrible record on pregnant women who are detained. For example, women in prison have a probability of suffering stillbirth that is up to seven times higher than in the general population. Pregnant women returning from abroad during the Covid pandemic were put at risk when the Government made them stay in quarantine hotels. I remind this
House of what happened to Amna Bibi: when she returned from Pakistan, she was in a quarantine hotel and asked for help, but someone decided that she had gone to the hospital too many times and, at 34 weeks, she lost her baby, nearly bled to death and was in intensive care.
As noble Lords will be aware, maternity disparities have had a lot of publicity. I declare an interest as the CEO of Muslim Women’s Network UK and an officer of the APPG on Muslim Women. We produced a report on maternity disparities that, like many other maternity reports and the statistics on maternity care, shows one thing very clearly: minoritised women and their babies have a higher mortality rate and are more likely to have a miscarriage. Women born outside the UK are more likely to have worse maternity outcomes.
The Government pledged to address these maternity inequalities, so how can they, on the one hand, say they will reduce harm for pregnant women, while, on the other, bring in legislation that will create a system that will cause harm to pregnant women and their babies? It is cruel, heartless and inhumane—I say to the noble Lord, Lord Frost, that I am using those words again, and I do not apologise for them. The medical and maternity experts all state that the government proposals are putting pregnant women and their babies at risk of physical and mental harm. Among them are the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the Royal College of Midwives, Doctors of the World, Maternity Action and many more. Disregarding expert opinion and safeguarding is shameful.
Timely, safe and adequate maternity care can be received only if pregnant women live in the community. The noble Lord, Lord Farmer, mentioned that the UK could become a magnet for pregnant women—I respectfully and strongly disagree with that point. Therefore, I urge the Government to do the right thing and not to detain pregnant women.
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