Conscientious Objection (Medical Activities) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-03-23
Topic: Civil Rights
David Steel (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, Members will realise that Amendment 1 and the amendments associated with it in the grouping go to the heart of the argument in this Bill. I am sorry that I was not able to be here for the debate at Second Reading or I would have spoken then, but it might be helpful to the Committee if I give a brief outline of how the conscience clause arose in the first place. I say that because most noble Lords believe that the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Bill, as it then was, began under me in the House of Commons. That is not the case. That Bill was passed by this House in the mid-1960s. It went through all its stages here and was waiting for a Member to pick it up in the House of Commons In the meantime, going back as far as 1939, there had been an interdepartmental committee of inquiry, involving the Department of Health and the Home Office under the late Sir Norman Birkett KC, which argued that the abortion law should be changed. My Bill, which was passed by this House under the auspices of Lord Silkin, was in fact the sixth attempt in the House of Commons to change the law on abortion. The others had all failed not through lack of support but through lack of time. I drew the third place in the ballot, which meant that I had the time to introduce the Bill The first thing I want to say is that it is wrong that issues of this complexity and seriousness should be left to the lottery, which is what it is, of the annual ballot for Private Member’s Bills in the House of Commons; it is not the right way to proceed. Once an issue like this comes before both Houses, the Government should provide the necessary time, both Houses should of course have a free vote, and we should proceed in that way. The same thing happened with my Bill on retirement. It would never have got through the Commons had it not been for a Conservative MP who picked it up The Bill I presented and which was carried at Second Reading by a large free vote was the Bill that came from this House. However, during the Committee stage many amendments were made to the Bill, largely by myself. Most of them had nothing to do with this Bill and I shall not go into them, but the important one was the conscience clause. How did that come about? Quite simply, I had in my constituency the leading Catholic seminary known as St Andrew’s College, Drygrange. Its representatives were naturally a bit upset that their MP was introducing a Bill to which they were so strongly opposed, so they asked me to speak to them. I think that I went twice, if not three times, for discussions with them. It was they who suggested that in view of the strong opposition to the Bill, there should be a conscience clause, given that under the new legislation no person was required to undergo an abortion, so nor should any person be required to participate in an abortion. I went to meet them armed with an important document which had been published by the Board of Moral and Social Responsibility of the Church of England, entitled Abortion: An Ethical Discussion. Unfortunately it is now out of date and out of print, but perhaps I may quote two short extracts from it In referring back to the fact that Catholic tradition had changed over the centuries—from the moment of animation to the moment of conception—the report argued: "It cannot be maintained, however, that this ‘absolutist’ position has ever commanded, or commands now, general acceptance in the Christian conscience … If we were to accept the absolutist principle and declare the foetus to be in all circumstances inviolable, this pamphlet would end at this point. There would be really nothing more to be said: there could be no further discussion, in terms of Christian ethics, of the problems attending the complicated pregnancy … and a Christian committee could have nothing to say to the legislature except to advocate a total prohibition of all induced abortion. Such a determination would be, in fact, a novel departure from the Christian moral tradition" That was the argument I put to the college representatives, but I accept their argument that it was wrong, in passing the legislation, to inflict responsibility on those who strongly objected to it. I came back from those discussions to talk with other members of the committee, including the late Norman St John-Stevas, who was a leading opponent of the Bill. We worked together to introduce the conscience clause as it now stands in the law Then, a few years ago, two midwives who had reached a senior position in Glasgow objected to being involved in the administration of abortion in the hospital. The health board took them to court and argued that the conscience clause should not be extended to the extent they were arguing for. The case went up to the Supreme Court, which made it quite clear that it supported the original intention of the Act. Its judgment said: "Parliament will not have had in mind the hospital managers who decide to offer an abortion service, the administrators who decide how best that service can be organised within the hospital … the caterers who provide the patients with food, and the cleaners who provide them with a safe and hygienic environment. Yet all may be said in some way to be facilitating the carrying out of the treatment involved" That is why I believe the Bill is wrong in principle. It seeks to reverse the Supreme Court’s decision, which is upholding the law as it was passed by this Parliament. I beg to move.