My Lords, in opening this debate I first acknowledge and express my respect for the deeply held views that many noble Lords hold and will continue to hold on this subject. For my part, since becoming a Member of your Lordships’ House in 2016, I have never taken a position on the moral rights or wrongs of abortion; indeed, I have not previously voted on the issue. Therefore, rather than reopening the ethical debate about abortion, which has been discussed on previous occasions including during the passage of the 2020 framework regulations, I wish to focus on the legal obligations on the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and the Government and how these regulations will address them.
The origins of these regulations were the decision taken by both Houses of Parliament in 2019 to support an amendment to the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill brought forward by the honourable Member for Walthamstow, Stella Creasy, in the other place, in respect of access to abortion services in Northern Ireland. Noble Lords will recall that this took place during the period of nearly three years from 2017 to 2020 when Northern Ireland was without a functioning Executive or Assembly. The effect of her amendment, which subsequently became Section 9 of the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act, was to place a clear statutory duty on the Government to ensure access to services that are compliant with the report in 2018 of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women—or CEDAW for short.
I remind noble Lords that the amendment was passed by a majority of 332 to 99 in the other place, and a vote to amend that amendment in this House was rejected by 138 votes to 39. The size of these majorities indicated the clear will of Parliament to address these issues and ensure access to services in Northern Ireland in line with those available in the rest of the United Kingdom. As a result, since April 2020, access to a limited range of abortion services has been available in Northern Ireland; the latest figures I have show that between 31 March 2020 and 31 January 2022, 2,794 such abortions took place.
At end insert “but that this House regrets that the Regulations (1) disregard the statutory role of the Northern Ireland Assembly and ignore the devolution settlement, and (2) make substantial constitutional changes via secondary legislation”.
My Lords, as the Minister said, there has been and continues to be very significant opposition to the imposition of the extreme abortion regime in Northern Ireland by this Government. It was done in July 2019, in circumstances that beggared belief. It left Northern Ireland with abortion law that goes further than that which applies elsewhere in the UK and that has been, and continues to be, rejected by the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland. Notwithstanding that opposition, the Northern Ireland Government have been acting in compliance with the 2019 Act and the 2020 regulations—I will deal with this in a minute.
The process by which we in Northern Ireland are governed is provided for in the Northern Ireland Act 1998. In its third report, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee of your Lordships’ House stated that these regulations
“allow the Northern Ireland Assembly Executive Committee to be bypassed”.
The Executive Committee is provided for in Section 20 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998. Section 20(3) and (4) provide:
“The Committee shall … have the function of discussing and agreeing upon … significant or controversial matters”
and those that cut across the responsibility of more than one Northern Ireland Minister. Accordingly, the Ministerial Code requires Northern Ireland Ministers to bring such matters to the attention of the Executive Committee. Abortion is a significant, controversial matter.
On each occasion when draft regulations have been presented to Parliament following the passing of the executive formation Act, they have extended abortion provision in Northern Ireland; it happened in 2020, in 2021 and now, in 2022. Despite the fact that a duly elected and appointed Northern Ireland Minister of Health is in office and working, we see an attempt to bypass him and give the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland powers that are not available to Northern Ireland Ministers or their government departments. All of this is inconsistent with the existing statutory provisions for government in Northern Ireland and with the international obligations of the British Government under the 1998 Good Friday/Belfast agreement.
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The 2020 regulations, which allowed Westminster to introduce a completely new abortion framework to Northern Ireland after the Executive have returned in a devolved area of policy, overruled the devolution settlement. All subsequent attempts to expand this abortion regime are but a further bypassing of—indeed, an ignoring of—our constitutional arrangements, which are fundamentally vital to our peace. When both the 2020 and 2021 regulations were passed, the overwhelming majority of MPs representing Northern Ireland who take their seats in Westminster voted against them. In June 2020, in the Northern Ireland Assembly, 75 of the 90 MLAs from across the community voted to oppose the imposition of abortion legislation that discriminated against those with non-fatal disabilities, including Down syndrome, and an absolute majority specifically voted against the imposition of abortion regulations that would allow disability discrimination, yet this is what Westminster did in the 2021 regulations.
I have referred to the third report of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Regulation 2 of these regulations enables the Secretary of State to act in a way inconsistent with the Northern Ireland Act 1998. Is it right for your Lordships to pass regulations that do this—that drive a coach and horses through the delicate, finely balanced, democratic processes established by statute and by an international agreement? Surely not. As noted in the other place, this raises troubling questions about the delineation of power between, for example, the Minister of Health and the Secretary of State. For example, from whom do civil servants take instruction? Specifically, when can the Secretary of State countermand a direction of the Minister? Were the Secretary of State to overrule a decision made by the Northern Ireland Health Minister, what are the funding implications of such an act for the Northern Ireland budget?
Under these regulations, the Secretary of State will not be accountable for the public funds committed to implement any decision he makes. The regulations thus create ambiguity at the heart of the machinery of government and could thus lead to a serious lack of clarity and conflict between the departments of health and other ministries and departments. As I have said and as the Minister acknowledged, abortion is now available in Northern Ireland. There were 2,794 abortions up to March 2022. The claim, therefore, that these regulations are needed and wanted is not sustainable. Under our constitutional arrangements, it is for the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive to decide how to give effect to the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019 and the Abortion (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2020.
Any fundamental constitutional changes, such as the bypassing of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 and other relevant legislation, and the Good Friday/Belfast agreement, should be made only in primary legislation, where they can be scrutinised and debated fully, not via a regulation such as this. Your Lordships’ House should not approve these regulations. I beg to move.
My Lords, I give my whole-hearted support to the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, and thank her for tabling it. This is a free-vote issue, of course, and the proceedings here today are of huge interest to the people in Northern Ireland. There are not many controversial issues in Northern Ireland that can be defined as neither orange nor green and cannot be interpreted by anyone as sectarian. This is one such issue. On a lot of Northern Ireland political issues, I am sure I probably would not agree with the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, but this issue unites people across faiths and communities with different identities in Northern Ireland.
Up until 2019, as the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, has said, Northern Ireland had the right to decide its own laws on abortion. Then, some politicians here in Westminster decided that they could overrule the hard-won devolution settlement, and their campaigning was pretty tireless. But for me, this goes to the heart of whether devolution is to be meaningful. The Belfast/Good Friday agreement is meant to be the basis of all political decisions in Northern Ireland, and these regulations—and indeed the whole way the abortion debate has been handled by the Secretary of State—are, I believe, driving a coach and horses through that agreement.
I hope that Members of your Lordships’ House will actually take away the word “abortion” and not talk about abortion itself and their own personal views on the rights and wrongs of abortion, because this is much more fundamental. This is a fundamental constitutional change being proposed by regulation. The Secretary of State presented the regulations in the other place as changing the Northern Ireland Act in a limited and specific way, but that is simply not the case. These regulations set a precedent. They go right against the constitutional guarantee and give the Secretary of State power to make any decisions he sees fit, ignoring the will of the people of Northern Ireland.
My Lords, I speak in favour of the regulations before us this afternoon. As others have said, abortion is always a complex and highly emotive issue that is ultimately a matter of conscience for noble Lords. But in the debate this afternoon I think it is important to try to hold on to the facts and acknowledge why we are once again having to debate these issues. As the Minister set out in his opening remarks, we are debating these regulations because the Northern Ireland Department of Health has failed to make progress on implementing the 2020 regulations.
The 2020 regulations sought to bring Northern Ireland in line with the rest of the United Kingdom on reproductive rights for women and to ensure that the whole of the United Kingdom met its international requirements through CEDAW. I am very pleased that the Minister acknowledges the importance of adhering to our international legal obligations. In essence, we are debating two issues: the United Kingdom’s adherence to international treaty obligations, and the provision of equality of access for women in Northern Ireland to the same levels of reproductive healthcare as women can access in the rest of the United Kingdom.
For those colleagues who are concerned about the potential impact of these regulations on the devolution settlement in Northern Ireland, as a very firm believer in devolution, I believe that these are an exceptional set of circumstances that should not create a wider precedent. It would of course have been hugely preferable for the Northern Ireland Executive to have fulfilled their responsibilities directly following the adoption of the regulations in April last year. In that respect, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan. However, once again, Northern Ireland finds itself without a functioning Executive, so it is currently not possible to make progress in this regard.
The international treaty obligations in CEDAW were signed by the United Kingdom as a whole, so the Government in Westminster have a duty to ensure that the whole of the United Kingdom implements them in full. This debate is really about implementing a law that has now been in place for over two years. It should not be about reopening or unpicking what should be a settled matter. A woman’s right to choose in Northern Ireland remains in a precarious position. The reality is that women continue to be forced to travel to England for abortion services; some women, in certain parts of Northern Ireland, continue to purchase unsafe abortion pills.
The Lord Bishop of Blackburn
My Lords, I am conscious that it is not commonplace for Prelates to comment on matters that extend to Northern Ireland only. However, what made me reluctant to speak on this matter is the same driving force that has brought me to speak—the fact that this was, and should be again, a devolved matter. My desire and aim today is not to speak around the rights and wrongs of the matter but to state my discomfort that this debate is happening in this place at all.
I believe the mandate for decision-making on this matter lies in Northern Ireland, with the newly elected Executive. I would much rather see increased efforts towards their establishment than our making decisions on their behalf. Much was said in this place, and in print and online media, about the fact that the regulations we seek to amend today came through this House and the other place when there was no sitting Executive in Northern Ireland. I was one of those frustrated at the timing, and I feel that it happened when there was no sitting Executive precisely because they would never pass such legislation. It was imposed, and these regulations continue to impose on Northern Irish people in what I believe is an unacceptable way.
The point could not be made more clearly than in the first proposed amendment in the regulations before us:
“The fact that a matter has not been brought to the attention of, or discussed and agreed by, the Executive Committee of the Northern Ireland Assembly is to be disregarded”.
I am no stranger to legal language, but this does not make good reading. On top of this, we are also asked to support amendments which place financial demands on the devolved health service to fund decisions thrust upon it.
For these reasons, I am happy to see the amendment expressing regret from the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan. I fully support it, because no word can better describe how I feel about these regulations coming to this place than “regret”. I am happy for those in Northern Ireland to disregard my comments if they are considered unhelpful or unsolicited, but for this House to put into statute that the views of the Northern Ireland Executive should be disregarded in this way seems to me wholly wrong.
My Lords, it is my firm belief that arguments about devolution are being used to disguise the fact that we are actually talking about human rights. The European Court of Human Rights has held repeatedly that access to abortion law is a human right. We do not always like it—only a week ago, some people were up in arms because the European Court of Human Rights put a spoke in the attempt to send people to Rwanda—but we have accepted it. Whether one likes it or not, there is a human right to abortion which women have been denied for a very long time in Northern Ireland. One would be more sympathetic had Northern Ireland not apparently made a mess of its health system—and of course, one recalls that not so long ago, illegitimate newborn babies were put in baby homes and taken away from their mothers. I cannot accept this excess care for the embryo when the actual live baby is then taken away from its mother.
Northern Ireland is clinging to us through the Northern Ireland protocol. It is only right that it should not have its cake and eat it. Northern Ireland must accept abortion; it is a human right. I strongly support the Motion before us, and I hope that we will not amend it.
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I take this opportunity to put on record my thanks to the medical professionals who have ensured that women and girls have had some local access to abortion services in Northern Ireland up to this point, and the organisations that have supported this work. I do not underestimate the huge efforts that have been made, and I have deeply been impressed when meeting, as I have on a number of occasions, clinicians and organisations who have helped to sustain the limited services currently in place.
Despite their best efforts, however, these services still fall far short of what is required by law, with women and girls still unable to access high-quality abortion and post-abortion care locally in Northern Ireland in the same way as women in the rest of the UK. The reasons for this are very clear. Following New Decade, New Approach and the restoration of devolved government in Northern Ireland in January 2020, it was always the Government’s expectation and preference that the Executive, with the relevant legal powers, policy and operational expertise, would take forward the commissioning of abortion services and ensure that they were embedded in the health and social care system in Northern Ireland. Yet, despite having had every opportunity to do so, and extensive engagement by the UK Government to see how best we could support delivery, the Executive have failed to act.
As a result, women and girls in Northern Ireland continue to be placed in vulnerable situations, which we cannot allow to continue. Many of them are still forced to travel to Great Britain to access services, with 371 making the journey in 2020 despite the difficulties attached to travelling during that period. Figures released just today show that 161 made the journey in 2021. I know from my discussions with clinicians in Northern Ireland that the limited services on offer are stretched to breaking point. This is clearly an unacceptable state of affairs. Despite being given the time, space and encouragement by the Government to do so, the Executive have not ensured the provision of services required by Parliament in 2019.
In the spring of 2020, the Government introduced, and Parliament approved, a framework for the Department of Health in Northern Ireland to deliver services, yet services were not commissioned. In March 2021, the Government introduced, and Parliament approved, the Abortion (Northern Ireland) Regulations. These provided the Northern Ireland Secretary with a power to direct that action be taken where it is required to implement the recommendations in paragraphs 85 and 86 of the CEDAW report. In July 2021, the Northern Ireland Secretary did indeed direct the Department of Health to commission and ensure the full provision of abortion services by no later than 31 March 2022, yet services were still not commissioned.
It is approaching nearly three years since the executive formation Act was passed. Section 9 continues to place the Government under a duty to implement the CEDAW recommendations and ensure that women and girls have access to services. We now have no alternative but to take all necessary actions to ensure that this happens.
In his Statement, therefore, on 24 March this year, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland committed to return to Parliament and make regulations after the Northern Ireland Assembly election which took place on 5 May, if no progress was made towards the delivery of services. He has now made the regulations that are before your Lordships today and they were agreed in the other place last week, in order to make sure that the will of Parliament is respected and his legal duties upheld.
In response to arguments made that these regulations ignore the devolution settlement and make constitutional changes via secondary legislation, I would remind noble Lords that the devolution settlement does not absolve us of our statutory duty to uphold the rights of women and girls in this context. I therefore hope that noble Lords will support these regulations without amendment to the approval Motion.
The Government have not taken these decisions lightly. We remain fully committed to protecting the Belfast agreement in all its dimensions and to the institutions it establishes, including devolved government. In this instance, however, as I have just said, the devolution settlement does not absolve the Government of the clear statutory duties placed upon them by Parliament. This Government’s actions up to this point reinforce that position and our desire to work with the devolved institutions. Indeed, it was only once it became clear that this deadline would not be met that on 24 March, my right honourable friend made a commitment to return to Parliament and make regulations on abortion should they be necessary. As a result, these regulations were laid before this House on 19 May.
Turning briefly to what they contain, they remove the need for the Northern Ireland Executive Committee to approve services before they can be commissioned and funded by the Department of Health in Northern Ireland. The regulations do this by providing that directions under the Abortion (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2021, which require action to be taken to implement the recommendations of the CEDAW report, must be complied with irrespective of whether the matter has been discussed or agreed by the Northern Ireland Executive Committee. Further, they confer on the Secretary of State the power to do anything that a Northern Ireland Minister or department could do for the purpose of ensuring CEDAW compliance. For the purpose of determining what a Northern Ireland Minister or department could do, any need for Executive Committee approval will be disregarded.
The effect of this is to ensure that the Department of Health will have no further barriers to commission and fund services. Even at this stage, it is our clear preference that the Department of Health should drive forward the commissioning of abortion services without further delay and that, as a devolved matter, funding remains the responsibility of the Northern Ireland Executive. To that end, we continue to engage with the Minister of Health and his department, but this requires an absolute commitment by the department to provide services, or the Northern Ireland Secretary will use his powers in these regulations to commission services himself. To ensure that we have all the information required in those circumstances, a small team has been established in the Northern Ireland Office to work alongside the Department of Health to take this forward.
I recognise that this is a sensitive and personal issue for many people, and we have heard many differing views in this House on previous occasions, as well as from Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly, in relation to abortion services. Yet this sovereign United Kingdom Parliament has also made its views crystal clear and placed a binding statutory duty on the Secretary of State to ensure access to properly commissioned services. In their absence, caused by a refusal on the part of the Executive to take this forward, women are currently forced to choose to travel or to resort to unsafe and unregulated measures.
A number of the clinicians I have met over recent months, who are struggling to provide these services without proper support, tell me of the very difficult situations into which women are being forced by a lack of safe, local, high-quality healthcare services. This is despite the fact that the law is in place to ensure that safe, properly regulated services are provided. We have a statutory duty in Section 9 of the executive formation Act to change this situation and ensure that CEDAW-compliant services are available. That is what these regulations will finally provide in Northern Ireland, and I commend them to the House.
Ignoring the expressed views of the people prior to the passing of the Abortion (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2020, Northern Ireland now has an abortion law that goes far beyond what was legally required by the formation Act 2019. Regulations provide that abortions can be carried out up to 12 weeks, permitting abortion of any baby, for any reason, including on the grounds of its sex. This provision is not consistent with the UN CEDAW report, on which the 2019 legislation was based. CEDAW has said that sex-selective abortion should not happen because it perpetuates negative stereotypes and prejudices towards women. I believe that it is not permitted in the rest of the UK.
Abortion can be carried out up to 24 weeks if one nurse or doctor certifies that
“the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk of injury to the physical or mental health of the … woman which is greater than if the pregnancy were terminated”,
taking into account her “actual or … foreseeable circumstances”, such as poverty. Again, this is much wider than in the rest of the UK.
Abortion can be carried out in Northern Ireland up to birth, if it is
“immediately necessary … to prevent grave permanent injury to the physical or mental health, of the pregnant woman”,
if two doctors or two nurses certify that the termination is necessary to prevent such injury and if there is a
“substantial risk that … the child … would suffer from such physical or mental impairment as to be seriously disabled.”
This would include babies with Down syndrome or cleft palates. Again, this is much wider than in the rest of the UK.
As the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, said in 2020, speaking of babies with disabilities, this
“promotes and perpetuates disability discrimination.”—[Official Report, 15/6/20; col. 1981.]
So in Northern Ireland we have babies’ lives being terminated because of their sex or their disabilities, among other reasons.
In 2021, the Abortion (Northern Ireland) Regulations gave expansive powers to the Secretary of State, allowing him, for the purposes of implementing the recommendations in paragraphs 85 and 86 of the CEDAW report, to direct that action must be taken by Northern Ireland Ministers, departments, the Regional Health and Social Care Board and the Regional Agency for Public Health and Social Well-being. However, it is a discretion, not a duty. It says he “may” act. He does not have to act, and if he does not act, there will be no successful challenge.
Now we have the 2022 regulations. First, they disregard the statutory role of the Northern Ireland Assembly and ignore the devolution settlement. Secondly, they make substantial constitutional changes by way of secondary legislation. It is not the case that the Northern Ireland Assembly is in breach of its legal obligations to implement CEDAW. It is work in progress. Many changes have occurred. Abortion has been decriminalised in most situations, as required. Abortion is now available in Northern Ireland. The Minister has access to figures, which I could not find when I checked again this morning, and he has told us that there were 2,794 abortions in Northern Ireland in the last year and that in the previous year there were 1,345. These figures represent a 60% increase on the number of those who went to England and Wales for abortions in 2019.
The exclusion zones mentioned in the CEDAW report have now been provided for in law, in a Bill that was passed by the Northern Ireland Assembly and is currently, I believe, subject to legal challenge. As I have said previously, the Secretary of State is not in breach of his obligation. He has a discretion, not a duty, and this is work in progress.
I now address the first issue: that the regulations disregard the statutory role of the Northern Ireland Assembly and ignore the devolution settlement. The democratically elected Northern Ireland Assembly, acting in accordance with its constitutional processes, did not choose to legislate further or to commission directly abortion services that are otherwise provided. Abortion is available; 2,794 abortions in our small area is evidence of that. The Northern Ireland Assembly could have done so but it chose not to.
Your Lordships know that the history of Northern Ireland is tragic. After decades of war, the Good Friday/Belfast agreement of 1998 provided for the process of government within Northern Ireland. The arrangements that we have protect the rights of citizens by providing for the Assembly and the Executive, comprised of the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister, who are joint chairs, and eight other Ministers. Their job, as the Government’s website says, is to exercise executive authority on behalf of the Northern Ireland Assembly and to take decisions on significant matters and issues. Health is, as I have said, one of the matters that have been devolved to Northern Ireland. The Government’s website says:
“This means that local politicians, instead of MPs in Westminster, make key decisions on how Northern Ireland is governed.”
It is most regrettable that after our last election in May, there is as yet no sitting Assembly and no Executive. However, in the absence of the Assembly, Ministers in office before the election continue to hold office and have decision-making powers. There is a working Minister of Health, Mr Robin Swann MLA of the Ulster Unionist Party. He has massive responsibilities. Our health service has been described as “broken” by the director of the Royal College of Nursing and as “extremely broken” by a leading ED consultant and many others. We are short of some 7,000 medical and nursing staff.
There were 2,794 abortions last year. In April 2021, more than 300,000 people, almost 20% of our population, were waiting for a first consultant appointment. On 31 March 2022, 156,270 patients were waiting, having seen a consultant, for a diagnostic test and 50.7% of patients were waiting more than nine weeks for a diagnostic test to find out whether they have conditions which may be very serious or even life threatening. Some 29.6% of patients have been waiting more than 26 weeks for a diagnostic test. Only 43% of all cancer patients start treatment within 16 days of an urgent GP referral for suspected cancer.
We have amazing cataract waiting times. I declare an interest because I have cataracts and am awaiting surgery, but the waiting time is four to five years. However, you are not allowed to go on the waiting list until your eyesight is so bad that you cannot drive. You wait, with deteriorating sight, until you cannot drive, and then you wait another five years.
Just yesterday, Minister Swann published an action plan setting out a programme of reform for the delivery of stroke and orthopaedic services. Northern Ireland has 25,526 people waiting for orthopaedic treatment. I declare an interest as I am on the list. They can expect to wait four or five years for surgery that will give them mobility, without which their physical and mental health will in all probability decline further.
Abortion has been made available within the law. As Minister Swann has stated:
“My Department does not dispute that women in Northern Ireland are legally entitled to abortion services. The legal advice that was received by my Department states that the Abortion (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2020 do not require my Department to commission the relevant services. Registered medical professionals can now terminate pregnancies lawfully.”
There is, as the Minister said, nothing in the legislation thus far that requires the independent commissioning of abortion services. Rather, they are made available through normal procedures.
Abortion is a costly business and profitable for those who provide the services. UK health reports that it costs £500 for the abortion pills you can take up to nine weeks of gestation, rising to about £800 for an abortion up to 18 weeks and about £2,000 after that. The Minister and his department are working hard to try to resolve the massive problems faced by our health system across the board.
If passed, these regulations would fundamentally alter the principles of the Good Friday/Belfast agreement, which created a sophisticated process for decision-making. As I state in this amendment, they
“make substantial constitutional changes via secondary legislation”.
They would allow the Secretary of State to bypass the Northern Ireland Assembly and the Executive Committee entirely. They are not in any way limited. However, the Northern Ireland Ministerial Code makes clear that the Northern Ireland Act ensures that significant and controversial issues are for the Executive to decide.
The regulations give broad, sweeping powers to the Secretary of State effectively to act as a Northern Ireland Minister without having been appointed as a Minister in accordance with the provisions of the Good Friday agreement and the Northern Ireland Act 1998 and without any accountability to the people of Northern Ireland. Effectively, they would allow the Secretary of State to take command away from the duly elected and appointed Minister of Health in the areas of abortion services and all the other areas mentioned in paragraphs 85 and 86 of the CEDAW report, from the Minister for Justice and, in education, the Minister of Education. The regulations would give the Secretary of State all the powers of those Ministers to allocate resources and do anything a Minister or department could do, and to provide financial assistance for the purposes of ensuring that the CEDAW recommendations, which we brought into domestic law, are implemented.
If these regulations were passed, the Secretary of State would be able to take these decisions in isolation, having no regard to the impact of his decisions on the allocation of resources for neurology patients, cancer patients, orthopaedic patients, patients with cataracts and other eye problems, and patients in all other areas of medicine. The Minister of Health is in office and working to try to manage the impact of Covid on our broken health service. Undoubtedly, brave decisions need to be made to secure greater efficiencies and allow more people to be treated more quickly; however, there is no need for the drastic, unaccountable powers over elements of government that would be given to the Secretary of State were these regulations to be approved.
Back in 2018, the Secretary of State said:
“it would not be appropriate for Westminster to seek to impose its will, or to be the arbiter of an issue that has long been devolved to the people of Northern Ireland.”—[Official Report, Commons, 5/6/18; col. 220.]
What happened? Why has he changed his mind? He has done a complete U-turn, and perhaps the reason is that he was being held prisoner by so many women actively campaigning on this issue. Now he wants to be the Minister of Health in Northern Ireland, or perhaps the Permanent Secretary of the Department of Health.
I genuinely think that the way this whole issue has been handled is shameful, and even more shameful when there are so many other crucial issues in Northern Ireland that the Government have chosen not to push forward. When it suits Her Majesty’s Government, they want devolution and they believe in devolution. When it does not suit them, they take away devolution, and that is what this is about today. Forget the issue of abortion: this is about the constitutional sabotage of devolution and the 1998 Act.
Whatever one’s personal view on abortion, surely this is an unacceptable position. There is an urgent need to see consistency of services and rights to reproductive health across Northern Ireland. For this to be possible, it is important that the commissioning process be concluded as soon as possible, to ensure that services are fully accessible to all who need them. Can the Minister reassure us that the necessary funding will be made available, and give an indicative timetable for this to be concluded?
In summary, these regulations are about ensuring that every part of the United Kingdom adheres to our international treaty obligations, so that every woman in Northern Ireland will finally be entitled to the same level of reproductive healthcare as women in the rest of the United Kingdom. I therefore urge noble Lords to support these regulations and to reject the amendment to the Motion from the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan.