Report stage in the Lords
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Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)Crossbench- Quote
- My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 422E and, additionally, do so on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, KC, who has a prior appointment in The Hague this week. He was the author of the probing amendment on this topic in Committee. At that stage, the Minister signalled some reservations about it and subsequently wrote to him with additional data, which has proved to be most helpful, so we thank her. The noble Baroness, Lady Wolf of Dulwich, has appended her name to this amendment and will speak to it, along with her other amendment. Noble Lords will be aware that Clause 208, which was inserted into this Bill in the other place at a late stage, has attracted numerous amendments. Our intention with Amendment 422E is that, where opinions are a matter of individual conscience, we should attempt to offer the House a compromise between the Commons position—Clause 208—and Amendment 424, which seeks to leave out the clause entirely. I point out that Amendments 423, 423ZA and 423A would be pre-empted if this amendment was agreed on Division. The amendment would do two things. First, it would require the personal consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions before any proceedings may be instituted against women acting in relation to their pregnancy. Secondly, it would provide that such proceedings must be commenced within 12 months of the alleged offence. The version we debated in Committee provided for the consent of the Attorney-General rather than the Director of Public Prosecutions. The Minister observed that offences where Attorney-General consent is required tend to be in the national security or international spheres, while DPP consent is required to address a wider range of concerns, including, as the Minister explained, where there is a risk that the institution of proceedings might violate convention rights or cause a defendant “irreparable harm”. There are some offences in areas other than national security or international matters where AG consent is required, as the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, argues—for example, contempt of court under the strict liability rule, pursuant to Section 7 of the Contempt of Court Act. Nevertheless, on balance, it seems proportionate and in keeping with existing practice to replace Attorney-General consent with the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions. Our amendment would, however, require that the DPP exercises the function of giving consent “personally”. That language is taken from the Bribery Act, where some offences impose a similar condition on the DPP. Without this additional requirement, we understand that the consent of the DPP to institute proceedings could be given by a Crown prosecutor by virtue of Section 1(7) of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985. So requiring the DPP to exercise that function personally provides, in our view, a better guarantee against the risk of abuse, error or overzealousness.
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Baroness Thornton (Lab)Labour- Quote
- My Lords, I should like to ask the noble Baroness—
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- Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)Crossbench
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- I do not think that we take interventions on Report, if I may refer to the Companion—but perhaps the Whip could assist us.
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Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)Labour- Quote
- I can clarify for your Lordships’ House that the noble Baroness is able to take interventions, or not, as she wishes.
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- Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)Crossbench
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- I would like to proceed and conclude my argument. I will be happy to listen to the noble Baroness once I have finished. Because the police do not know when they find a lifeless body which of the situations they are confronted with, even with decriminalisation of abortion offences for the women acting in relation to her pregnancy, she may still be investigated. If it was a case of stillbirth, for example, for that woman the investigation will inevitably be a cause of stress. She might be worried that the evidence will not support her or she will not be believed. However, what else are the police supposed to do in these cases, other than try to establish the facts? Therefore, it is not possible to remove women acting in relation to their pregnancy from any criminal process, even if you decriminalise abortion offences for them. What is possible is to introduce further guarantees, as we are attempting to do with this amendment, that would add an additional layer of personal assurance from the DPP that the facts in context of terminations are taken into account, and that after 12 months, in any event, proceedings will not be brought against the pregnant woman. It ensures that the decision to prosecute in relation to the woman is taken at the highest level—the DPP—and applies the certainty of a limitation period. No solution in this area will ever be flawless, but when the evidence before us is so limited and the broader picture so uncertain, wholesale decriminalisation would be a disproportionate response to a problem which, in any event, needs careful and thoughtful steps for resolution. This amendment offers a more balanced and workable path to the problem that we all want to resolve satisfactorily. It provides meaningful safeguards for women, ensuring that any decision to prosecute is taken at the highest level, as well as the certainty of a limitation period, while not upending the balancing of principles and values underlying the Abortion Act 1967. I hope that both those who oppose criminalisation and those who are rightly troubled by the distressing cases we have discussed will see that this approach represents a principled and proportionate compromise, and will feel able to support it.
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The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Morris of Bolton) (Con)Conservative- Quote
- As the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner of Margravine, has already pointed out, if Amendment 422E is agreed to, I am unable to call Amendments 423, 423ZA or 423A by reason of pre-emption.
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Viscount Hailsham (Con)Conservative- Quote
- My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 423 which is in my name. The purpose of my amendment is to see if it is possible to effect a compromise between strongly held opinions. If a compromise is not possible, then subject to pre-emption, I could certainly support Amendments 422E, and I could also support Amendments 424 and 425. At Second Reading of this Bill and in Committee, I expressed my views on what was Clause 191 at that stage. I do not wish to in any way reiterate the detail of what I said. Suffice it to say that I am much closer to the position of the opponents of Clause 208 than to its supporters. However, there are two general points I would like to make at this stage. First, it is very difficult to distinguish in principle between a child that is just born and a child that is about to be born. Secondly and consequently, to extinguish the life of a child that is about to be born can be justified only in the most compelling of circumstances. This is not just a matter of personal morality. It is a reflection of the value that society as a whole, and Parliament in particular, has put on human life. I hope that these two propositions will be accepted as true by your Lordships and will inform the debate we are to have. In urging a compromise, I would ask the House first to consider the provisions of the Abortion Act 1967, because that Act permits, in certain circumstances, late-term abortion. Without going into too much detail, Section 1(1)(b), (c) and (d) of the 1967 Act permit a late-term abortion in the following circumstances: when it is necessary to prevent grave, permanent injury to the physical or mental health of the mother; when the pregnancy threatens the life of the woman; and when there is a substantial risk that the child will suffer from such serious abnormalities as would result in serious handicap. The point that I make is that the existing provisions in law meet many of the concerns that have been expressed in support of Clause 208. However, I recognise that the proponents of Clause 208 do not regard the existing law as sufficient. It is therefore with that in mind that I have tabled Amendment 423 in the hope of addressing those concerns. Proposed new paragraph (a) in my amendment reflects the language of the Infanticide Act 1938. That statute was reviewed in 2006 by the Law Commission and its terms were confirmed. My amendment proposes that it would be a defence to a late-term abortion that “the balance of the woman’s mind was … disturbed by reason of her pregnancy”. The amendment provides that the burden is on the prosecution to prove the defence beyond reasonable doubt. In proposing that part of the amendment, I recognise that, in logic, if such a defence should be available in respect of the death of a child immediately after birth, it is very difficult to say that such a defence should not be available in respect of a child immediately before birth. I turn to proposed new paragraph (b) of my amendment, which seeks to meet the concerns that have been expressed in your Lordships’ House in respect of late-term abortions that result from domestic abuse. That is, I am sure, a concern to many of your Lordships. I have addressed that very precisely in paragraph (b), which I hope will reassure noble Lords who have that anxiety. The remaining part of my amendment addresses the distress that can be caused to a woman by the police investigation. First, I will make just two preliminary points. If it is necessary to create a criminal offence, one has to accept the necessity of an investigation, but one that has to be conducted with great sensitivity, which is the case of course when one is investigating allegations of rape and the victim of the rape has to be examined and talked to. It has to be done with great sensitivity. The second general point I come to is the one with which I began my remarks: is the distress caused to a woman by the investigation a sufficiently compelling reason to justify extinguishing the life of a child about to be born? In my view, the answer to that is no. However, I accept that concerns remain and my amendment seeks to address those remaining concerns. The amendment provides that no investigation can take place unless authorised by a very senior police officer of the rank of superintendent or above. The superintendent must have regard to the defences set out in my amendment and, to echo a point made by the noble Baroness in moving her amendment, the investigation must be completed within 28 days: the initial authority being for 14 days, with two subsequent extensions of seven days, but no more. To conclude—
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Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)Labour- Quote
- Can I just go back to the point the noble Viscount raised a minute or two ago? He said that such investigations must be undertaken with great sensitivity. He referred to the investigation of rape cases. I put it to him that all experience shows that the police and, indeed, prosecution authorities sometimes find it very difficult to investigate such cases with sensitivity. How is he going to guarantee that?
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- Viscount Hailsham (Con)Conservative
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- I am not sure that I accept that. It is certainly true that when I started practising at the Bar, which was a very long time ago, investigations were not conducted with great sensitivity, but the police service has advanced a long way from that. So I do not think—I hope the noble Lord will forgive me —that I accept the premise that the police are crude or insensitive in their investigation. There may be individual cases, but in general, no. I hope I will be forgiven now if I conclude. Clause 208 is a serious departure from existing law and practice. It was passed in the Commons on Report in a time-limited debate without the normal benefit of scrutiny in Committee or of pre-legislation consultation. I have tried to meet your Lordships’ anxieties with a compromise amendment. If there is no taste for that, so be it, and I will vote for the other amendments and clauses that I have identified, but I hope that your Lordships might reflect on the desirability of compromise.
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Baroness Monckton of Dallington Forest (Con)Conservative- Quote
- My Lords, my Amendment 424 seeks to remove Clause 208. As my noble friend Lord Hailsham said, this clause passed the Commons without any evidence, scrutiny, public consultation or impact assessment, although it is momentous. It is a radical proposal with implications for the mental and physical health of the woman and lethal consequences for the viable unborn child. Clause 208 would allow mothers to self-administer the abortion of their unborn child for any reason, at any stage of pregnancy right up to full term. This is not just its consequential effect; it is its intended effect. The clause states: “For the purposes of the law related to abortion … no offence is committed by a woman acting in relation to her own pregnancy”. The unborn child, in many cases more developed than those successfully looked after in premature baby units, would have no legal protection. As my honourable friend Julia Lopez said in the other place: “This is not pro or anti life. It is not extremist to want protections for viable babies, and it is not anti-women to say that coercion or dangerous self-medication should not be outside the reach of the law”.—[Official Report, Commons, 17/06/25; col. 330.] This in part was a reference to the fact that a woman may be coerced into having an illegal abortion at home. The law as it stands—
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Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Lab)Labour- Quote
- Is the noble Baroness aware that, if Clause 208 became law, abortion law would continue to apply to doctors and healthcare professionals and they would still be subject to time limits and all other aspects of the current abortion law?
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- Baroness Monckton of Dallington Forest (Con)Conservative
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- Dr Alison Wright, president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, has written to Peers protesting that women may continue to face police investigations and criminal charges solely for ending their own pregnancy unless this clause is supported. She, speaking on behalf of the college, makes no distinction whatever between the abortion of a viable child at full term and a first-trimester termination. Indeed, the infant who without the intervention of lethal drugs would be fully a living person at that stage, if born, is completely unmentioned. It is as if this is unmentionable. Dr Wright describes the women concerned as being at the most vulnerable times in their lives. That may be true, but the most vulnerable and defenceless person here is the unborn viable child. Obviously, it is deeply distressing, as we have heard, for the mother to be questioned by the police in the aftermath of an illegal abortion. This should be done with compassion and sensitivity, but the police cannot act as if nothing has happened. Clause 208 also endangers women by removing the current legal deterrent against administering an abortion away from a clinical setting right up to birth. Women may be incentivised to perform their own life-threatening abortion late in pregnancy. This is particularly the case given how easily women can obtain abortion pills through the pills by post scheme, beyond the legal limit and without a reliable gestational age check. These pills are not meant to be used after the 10th week of pregnancy for a very good reason. I encourage noble Lords to support Amendment 425 from the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, which would reinstate mandatory in-person medical consultations and abolish the pills by post scheme, which was started during Covid lockdowns and should have been rescinded after the pandemic, as was originally intended. More than 1,000 medical professionals have written to us opposing Clause 208, and I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, former president of the British Medical Association, for her support for my amendment. One letter I received pointed out that—
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Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)Green Party- Quote
- The noble Baroness refers to 1,000 doctors writing, but is she aware that the British Medical Association has sent briefings to Members in support of the Bill as it now stands and that it alone represents more than 200,000 doctors?
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- Baroness Monckton of Dallington Forest (Con)Conservative
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- The British Medical Association is a trade union, not a royal college.
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Baroness Blackstone (Lab)Labour- Quote
- My Lords—
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- Baroness Monckton of Dallington Forest (Con)Conservative
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- I am very sorry—I have to carry on or I am going to run out of time. This is Report and I am going to continue.
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- Lord Katz (Lab)Labour
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- The noble Baroness is perfectly entitled not to take any interventions. We will make better progress if people just agree to take interventions or not, and then we will be able to hear from everyone.
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- Baroness Monckton of Dallington Forest (Con)Conservative
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- One letter I received pointed out that 22 week-plus babies aborted in a medical setting are clinically euthanised prior to surgery with a lethal injection into the heart. What would happen, she asked in her letter, to babies aborted at home and born alive? Would the baby be left to die? How would the baby be disposed of? Would the mother be charged with infanticide? Clause 208, as confirmed by a legal opinion obtained by the Father of the House, Sir Edward Leigh, in the other place, would also make it legal for a woman to perform her own abortion on sex-selective grounds at any time. Data from NHS England shows that there is already an imbalance in the sex of children among certain communities that cannot be explained by pure chance. Do the proposers of this clause want to further facilitate what has been called femicide? Let me be clear about what Clause 208 does not do. It does not, despite the claims of its promoters, leave the current law intact. If the 24-week limit can no longer be defended when women induce their own abortions, and they can obtain pills through the post via a phone call, the limit set by Parliament in 1990 is rendered meaningless. The reason why it was then lowered from 28 weeks was precisely because of concerns about the termination of viable children. The most basic justification for all abortions is that the unborn child in question is unwanted. The slogan is that every child should be a wanted child, but we all know that there are so many couples who for medical reasons cannot have families themselves yet desperately want a family. When you think of the fate of a viable baby being aborted as unwanted when there are so many families yearning to provide that love and support via adoption, this clause is morally questionable, even on the purely utilitarian grounds of the greatest happiness of the greatest number. The preamble to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child states that “the child … needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth”. Removing the offence of a woman terminating her own pregnancy, even at full term, would remove the few remaining legal protections for unborn children. I am sure that the proposers of Clause 208 genuinely believe that they will thereby create a kinder and more civilised society, but I fear that the consequences, if this is passed, will be precisely the opposite.
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- Baroness Thornton (Lab)Labour
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- My Lords, it is normal to take questions and interventions as this is a debate so, before the noble Baroness sits down, can I ask her whether she believes that all 50 countries that have decriminalised abortion are wrong?
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Baroness Stroud (Con)Conservative- Quote
- My Lords, I support Amendment 424 from the noble Baroness, Lady Monckton, for the reasons that she has so clearly set out. I will not repeat them but instead seek to offer in my Amendment 425 a more judicious response than Clause 208 to the small number of prosecutions that have occurred in recent years. When we pass laws as parliamentarians, we have a responsibility to ensure that those laws are as safe as possible, while legislating with the most difficult or even most nefarious scenarios in mind. It is with that in mind that I have tabled Amendment 425. The only reason why we are having this debate today and why there has been this push for Clause 208—not from the public but from abortion providers—is that the current law around how women can access abortion is not as safe as it should be and does not protect women in difficult or nefarious situations. When the abortion pills by post scheme was introduced, I and many others warned of its risks. Sadly, those warnings have proven prescient, with one consequence being that a small number of women have faced prosecution for illegal abortions after the statutory time limit. Those prosecutions have led to the same groups who assured us back in 2020 and 2022 that pills by post was safe to lobby for the introduction of Clause 208, essentially trying to paper over the consequences of that scheme. While women might no longer be prosecuted under Clause 208, the grave risks to women will not go away. Cases of women administering their own abortions late in pregnancy will likely increase without a legal deterrent. We will then hear calls for the full decriminalisation of abortion up to birth. It would be far safer to reintroduce in-person consultations with a medical professional before women can obtain abortion pills, as was mandatory before the pandemic. Amendment 425 would do this. It is not seeking to reverse the convenience of pills by post. It is only seeking to introduce safeguards for women. The amendment is deliberately moderate. It still permits at-home abortions but requires a prior confidential face-to-face appointment with a medical professional. I draw colleagues’ attention to three reasons why this is important. First, in-person consultations allow women’s gestational age to be reliably verified. This would protect women because of the dangers associated with abortions away from the clinical context late in pregnancy. Those who argued for the Abortion Act in 1967 did so to prevent the back-street abortion. Under Clause 208, the DIY back-street abortion will be back for any woman who is more than 24 weeks pregnant. In 2023, Carla Foster was convicted of an illegal abortion after she admitted lying to the abortion provider BPAS about her gestational age, claiming to be seven weeks pregnant when her gestation was actually between 32 and 34 weeks. Carla Foster was both a perpetrator—ending the life of a baby capable of living outside the womb—and a victim. She was a victim of a scheme that meant she could obtain abortion pills with no meaningful safeguards or medical care. After calling paramedics, she described being traumatised by the face of her dead baby. An in-person gestational age check would have both saved the life of her baby and spared the trauma caused by her actions.
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- Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Lab)Labour
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- My Lords—
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- Baroness Stroud (Con)Conservative
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- I am not giving way; I am sorry. Secondly, in-person consultations protect against coercion and abuse. Far from protecting victims of abuse, as is claimed, the lack of such consultations is a traffickers’ charter, allowing traffickers and abusers to cover up the effects of sexual exploitation by coercing their victims to phone up and ask for abortion pills. In-person appointments prior to an abortion in a confidential setting mean that such abuse is more likely to be detected. The disturbing case of Stuart Worby emphasises this need.
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Baroness Neate (CB)Crossbench- Quote
- My Lords—
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- Baroness Stroud (Con)Conservative
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- I am just carrying on; I am sorry. Mr Worby was jailed in December 2024 after arranging for a friend’s girlfriend to pretend to be pregnant and acquire abortion pills for him via the pills by post scheme. He then spiked a woman’s drink with those pills to induce an abortion against her knowledge. Again, he could not have obtained the pills if in-person appointments were still mandatory. Thirdly, in-person appointments allow for possible health risks to be checked to assess whether it is safe for a woman to undergo a medical, rather than a surgical, abortion. The problems with the pills by post scheme are well documented, with FoI requests suggesting that one in 17 women requires hospital treatment afterwards. These risks were strikingly drawn to our attention by a letter, which has already been mentioned, from more than 1,000 medical professionals who support Amendments 424 and 425. I am glad too for the support of Dr Caroline Johnson MP, who still practises as a paediatrician and brought forward the same amendment in the other place. The seriousness of this issue was brought home to me when I had the opportunity, in January, to meet with a woman whose sister tragically died after taking abortion pills via the pills by post scheme, leaving behind young children. The medical conditions the woman had, which meant she should have been deemed high risk, may well have been picked up in a clinical context. However, after a telephone consultation, she was sent pills in the post by BPAS and died suddenly minutes after taking the final set of pills.
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Lord Winston (Lab)Labour- Quote
- My Lords—
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- Baroness Stroud (Con)Conservative
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- I am sorry; I am going to keep going. This amendment would ensure that women are offered the best possible care at in-person appointments, where medical history can be discussed with a woman. Amendment 425 is not about whether we are pro-life or pro-choice; it is about safeguarding women. Polling last summer found that two-thirds of women support the return of in-person appointments; a mere 4% support the status quo. Abortion providers provided abortion services before the pandemic, with no major problems for access. I urge colleagues to support Amendment 425, which is a far more proportionate response to the handful of court cases that have occurred in recent years than that offered by Clause 208, which makes matters worse and removes legal protections for unborn babies up to birth. Amendment 425 would not reduce access to abortion for women, but it would ensure that their health needs are properly catered for.
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- Baroness Blackstone (Lab)Labour
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- My Lords, I declare an interest: I am the chair of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. I hope that the noble Baroness who has just spoken will accept that sometimes the expertise of people who are directly involved on a daily basis with the treatment of women seeking an abortion is really rather important. I found it distressing when the noble Baroness, Lady Monckton, refused to acknowledge that, in fact, many representatives of the medical profession strongly adhere to what lies behind Clause 208. I strongly support that clause because it seeks to ensure that women in England and Wales will no longer be subject to long investigations and criminal charges, which are very often exceedingly distressing. I also support Amendment 423A to stop ongoing investigations and Amendment 426B to grant historical pardons to women. However, I will focus my comments today on the safety of the telemedicine service for early medical abortion and, in particular, my opposition to Amendment 425, which the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, just spoke to. There have been extraordinary suggestions that the creation of the telemedicine service is the reason for the increase in criminal investigations. This is not true. There were cases of women being sent to prison before the telemedicine pathway was even created. Since the vote in the House of Commons last year, several women have been investigated, including a woman who experienced a miscarriage when she was 17 weeks pregnant. Surely that is something we should seek to avoid. I turn to a landmark study of more than 50,000 abortions in England and Wales, which concluded that telemedical abortion is effective, safe and improves access to care. Waiting times fell, the mean gestational age of treatment declined and effectiveness increased, with 98.8% of abortions successfully completed after medication. The scare stories we have just heard are exceedingly rare and we should not take them as a reason for rejecting the telemedical service that exists. Safety is not only about clinical outcomes; it is also about safeguarding. Women accessing early medical abortion through a licensed provider will speak to a doctor, a nurse or a midwife who follows established safeguarding protocols, asking an agreed list of questions to verify what the woman seeking an abortion has said. In fact, abortion providers operate within one of the most tightly regulated areas of medicine. Where concerns arise, patients are always brought face to face to receive care by that method. Indeed, about 50% have a face-to-face appointment when they seek a telemedical abortion and the drugs that are concerned. It is important to note that telemedicine has not removed face-to-face care. If a woman chooses to attend a clinic or hospital, she is able to do so. Telemedicine has simply broadened choice for women, and that is something we should also take very seriously as a huge benefit. We must consider what would happen if the option for telemedicine—
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Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)Crossbench- Quote
- Could I further clarify and ask a question? Is it not true that if any doctor or nurse is doubtful when telemedicine is happening, they will ask that person to come in to be seen?
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- Baroness Blackstone (Lab)Labour
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- That is absolutely the case. I was trying to make that point earlier, but I did not do it as clearly as the noble Baroness has just done. Of course that should happen, and it does happen. If we remove the option, we will find that women, regardless of circumstance, are forced to attend the clinic. I do not think that is sensible. We should allow women the choice to decide what the best route for them is. Some women—for example, those in abusive relationships, those living in rural areas, those with great caring responsibilities and those who cannot travel safely for some reason—may no longer be able to access safe, essential abortion care. There is widespread support from the medical establishment for the telemedicine service remaining an option for women, including from all the relevant royal colleges, not just the RCOG. It goes across the Royal College of Nursing, the Royal College of Midwives, the Royal College of General Practitioners and the Royal College of Psychiatrists—indeed, all those royal colleges that have a clear and obvious responsibility for providing good services for those women seeking an abortion. I hope that, in further discussion today, that will be recognised and we will not hear comments—as were made by the noble Baroness, Lady Monckton—that many doctors are opposed to this. That is simply not the case; they are in favour of Clause 208 and of the telemedicine service. The evidence is clear—
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- Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)Crossbench
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- Could I further clarify and ask a question—
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- Baroness Blackstone (Lab)Labour
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- Let me just finish, I am just about to complete what I was going to say. I am happy to take the question. The evidence is clear that telemedicine has reduced waiting times; enabled earlier treatment, which is a huge advantage; maintained high safety and effectiveness rates; improved privacy, which is something that most women in these circumstances really appreciate; and increased safeguarding disclosures. It expands choice and keeps women within a regulated clinical framework. That in itself is exceedingly important too. To weaken or remove telemedical abortion would not improve safety; it would instead reduce access, delay care and create barriers for the most vulnerable women. The system works. It is safe, effective and must be maintained.
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Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)Labour- Quote
- My Lords, views on both sides of the debate are sincerely held. We should all respect each other for that. We had a long debate in Committee. This is Report. Members should make their points. Repeated interventions do not help us at this stage. We need to take the temperature down. The House can make its decision known in the Division Lobbies later on.
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Baroness D’Souza (CB)Crossbench- Quote
- My Lords, I strongly support abortion on demand but, as we have heard, the danger continues to exist that an almost full-term foetus could be aborted by means of a pill ordered by telephone and delivered by post. I am struck by the extraordinary efforts that this House has gone to in order to provide safeguards for those who are terminally ill and who demand assisted dying, yet we do not afford the unborn foetus or near-term foetus any kind of safeguard at all. The amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, would introduce some kind of safeguard, which perhaps we all owe to that unborn child. The experience of other countries suggests that late-term abortions are uncommon, and an in-person consultation to determine the stage of pregnancy would ensure that they remain so. We know, too, that women who abort at later stages of pregnancy are more likely to have birthing complications. This, surely, is a further reason for some medical oversight. As I said, I strongly support abortion on demand. I think that introducing a safeguard such as this to avoid the actual death of a near-term foetus is acceptable, and I hope very much that the noble Baroness will put this to the House.
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Baroness Lawlor (Con)Conservative- Quote
- My Lords, my Amendment 423ZA would limit the application of Clause 208 to those deemed not to have capacity. I have also added my name to Amendment 426C in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf. Under the present law, it is an offence for a woman to procure an abortion to end her pregnancy after 24 weeks —the stage when the baby is deemed to be a viable child. Causing the death of the child is a crime, other than in exceptional circumstances. It is also an offence to procure drugs or devices with the intent of an abortion. Clause 208 is a bad clause. It is constitutionally wrong. It has no manifesto pledge behind it, and no prior consultation has been done on it with the people of this country. No evidence exists that people want abortion up to birth. The clause undermines the constitutional arrangement by which the Government legislate: on the basis of consent by the governed for an announced programme, given freely at the ballot box.
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- Baroness Thornton (Lab)Labour
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- My Lords, I wish to speak to Amendment 426B in my name. Before I do that, I want to ask the question that I was trying to ask the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner; it was a perfectly ordinary question. Is the noble Baroness aware that, since 2022, there has been in place national oversight within the Crown Prosecution Service for the prosecution of abortion offences and that, under this framework, multiple women have been prosecuted, despite judges in the cases calling for the CPS to reconsider? That is all I wanted to ask the noble Baroness. The amendment in my name has been signed by my noble friend Lord Hunt and the noble Baronesses, Lady Watkins and Lady Miller. It would insert a new clause that follows Clause 208 and is consequential on it. It seeks to pardon women who have had a conviction or a caution for the offence that Clause 208 applies to. It would remove their details from police systems, regardless of the outcome of their case. There are women who were convicted, and an even larger group of women who were not convicted but who were investigated. This means that they have permanently to disclose in a DBS check, because abortion offences are classed as violent crimes. When Clause 208 remains in this Bill, this is an issue that the Government will need to address, as they will need to do for the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, because both are technical matters when this clause passes into law. Can my noble friend the Minister confirm that this is indeed the case if this clause reaches the statute book? I think we all wish to resolve this matter. We have had a significant amount of discussion about this clause, and I think it is safe to say that there is some disagreement between us. I would like to summarise what I think we need to do from the point of view of those of us supporting Clause 208. To protect this clause, we will need to reject Amendment 422E, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner. We will need to oppose Amendment 423, in the name of the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham. We will need to reject Amendment 423ZA, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor. We will need to reject Amendment 426C, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf. All those amendments seek to continue the criminalisation of women in one form or another: a cruel idea, that women should be punished. The amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Monckton, seeks to strike Amendment 208 from the Bill. The House has heard arguments, however, about the 50 countries where this works perfectly well, and where it does not increase abortion or offences. As my noble friend has said, all the royal colleges support this. We can safely say that what we are doing here is seeking to bring British law up to the same standard as other countries across the world. Amendment 424 seeks to place limits on a well-functioning, safe and early abortion through telemedicine. As my noble friend has said, it works. The amendment from the noble Baroness would place young people at risk. Women who need to go to a surgery for their medicine, but who live a long way away from it may start their miscarriage on the bus going home. Surely we want to avoid that. Amendments 426C and 426D seek to restrict access and safeguarding in a way that will harm women, and young girls particularly. We must oppose those as well. I urge the House to reject all those amendments, to support Clause 208 and to support Amendments 423A and 426B.
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The Archbishop of CanterburyBishops- Quote
- My Lords, many noble Lords will know that the Church of England’s view on abortion is one of principled opposition, recognising that there can be limited conditions under which abortion may be preferable to any available alternatives. This is based on the belief of the infinite worth and value of every human life, however old or young, and including life not yet born. The infinite value of human life is a fundamental Christian principle that underpins much of our legal system and has shaped existing laws on abortion. All life is precious. We therefore need to recognise that women confronted with the very complex and difficult decision to terminate a pregnancy deserve our utmost understanding, care and practical support as they face what is often a heart-wrenching decision. However, I cannot support Clause 208. Though its intention may not be to change the 24-week abortion limit, it undoubtedly risks eroding the safeguards and enforcement of those legal limits and, inadvertently, undermining the value of human life. I support Amendment 425 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, since it is not clear how the law can function in an enforceable way without in-person consultation before accessing early medical abortion. The risks of medical complications are, as we have heard, much greater if the pills for early abortion are taken beyond the 11-week limit. Although there are benefits to telemedicine—I do not dispute that—there are also flaws, and they are key to the debate on whether Clause 208 should pass. As I have already said, this is not a debate on whether the legal abortion limit should change, but without the levers necessary to monitor and enforce the law, we are at risk of it becoming exactly that. In the same vein, I support the amendment in the name of my right reverend friend the Bishop of Leicester, as we have a particular duty of care to those under 18 to ensure that they are properly cared for and supported while making such difficult decisions. I am reminded of the call of the prophet Micah both to do justice and to love mercy. Balancing justice and mercy is the challenge that we are debating today. I do not think that women who act in relation to their own pregnancies should be prosecuted, but I also do not wish to see any increase in late-term abortions. Although Clause 208 is well intentioned, it risks making an already imperfect situation worse. Therefore, I support Amendment 424 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Monckton. Decriminalisation of abortion is a question of such legal, moral and practical complexity that it cannot be properly addressed in an amendment hastily added to another Bill. Consideration of any alteration to the abortion laws needs public consultation and robust parliamentary processes to ensure that every aspect of this debate is carefully considered and scrutinised. There are many outstanding questions, which deserve greater attention, about the tone of policing in this area, about how we can best ensure that women suffering miscarriages can access the right care when they need it, and about how those who provide abortions outside the law will continue to be held accountable for doing so. As I have said before in this place, we need a framework that supports women, not one that puts them and their unborn children in the way of greater harm. On that basis, I will support the amendments in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Monckton and Lady Stroud, and my right reverend friend the Bishop of Leicester should they push them to a vote.
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Lord Pannick (CB)Crossbench- Quote
- It was suggested by the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, that Clause 208 would undermine respect for the law. On the contrary, it will enhance respect for the law, because it will express in statutory form compassion for women who have the misfortune to suffer the loss of their baby at late term for whatever reason it occurs, and it will prevent intrusive, distressing police investigations at a most sensitive time in any woman’s life. It has been suggested that there should be a balance in the law. Clause 208 already includes the necessary balance because it protects the woman but maintains the criminal liability of anyone who assists her to have a late-term abortion, whether it be the abusive partner, the rogue doctor or whoever it may be. That is right and proper, and that is the balance that should be accorded. As a lawyer, I look for precedents. The precedent that occurs to me is the Suicide Act 1961, in which Parliament recognised that a person who had the misfortune to seek to take their own life should not be prosecuted. You cannot be prosecuted for attempting to end your own life. But the law says—I appreciate that we are currently debating the assisted dying Bill, but my speech has nothing to do with that—that if you assist a person to seek to take their own life, you can be prosecuted. That is the distinction there, and it is the distinction in Clause 208.
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Baroness O'Loan (CB)Crossbench- Quote
- There is another distinction that the House may wish to consider: under the Suicide Act, it is not a crime to take your own life, but we are talking about taking the life of an unborn baby.
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- Lord Pannick (CB)Crossbench
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- Of course, the unborn baby, until it is born, has no legal identity. That is the law of the land. The unborn baby has no legal identity, and the mother is in the prime position in relation to that baby. We have to balance the interests of all concerned. My view is that Clause 208 does contain the balance that I have suggested to the House.
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Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)Liberal Democrat- Quote
- My Lords, if we have to balance the needs and rights of all concerned, does that mean that an unborn child that is viable beyond 24 weeks has no rights and should not be considered here? Does it mean that it is only the rights of the mother that matter?
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- Lord Pannick (CB)Crossbench
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- I am not commending late-term abortions. Nobody on either side of this debate is commending late-term abortions. The question addressed by Clause 208 is whether there should be a criminal liability: whether people should be investigated by the police and potentially sent to prison in those circumstances. That seems to me, with all due respect, to be the wrong balance. I say to the House that this is a very difficult issue, but I am afraid that those who oppose Clause 208 simply fail to recognise the arguments on the other side, which need to be balanced.
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- Baroness Neate (CB)Crossbench
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- My Lords, as a former chief executive of Women’s Aid, I will specifically address the comments made about domestic abuse, particularly in relation to telemedicine. It is common for domestic abuse to begin in pregnancy, and it is common for all aspects of pregnancy, including conception, to be tools used by perpetrators of domestic abuse. That is why groups wishing to end violence against women and girls—domestic abuse groups, those who deal with so-called honour-based violence, those who deal with forced marriage, Rape Crisis and many others—have written to parliamentarians saying that creating clinically unnecessary barriers to abortion helps abusers, not survivors. I would really like noble Lords to take note of the fact that, in denying women discrete space for action, they are actually enabling abuse much more than they are preventing it.
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Baroness Hazarika (Lab)Labour- Quote
- My Lords, Amendment 423A in my name would ask the police to cease investigations into women since the other House passed this vote back in June. Since June, in a number of cases women and mothers have been investigated. At Christmas, a woman in her 40s thought she was in her early pregnancy. She delivered a foetus in its gestation sac. She was very distressed. It turned out that that was actually at 24 weeks; she had not realised. She called the ambulance, and it was made clear that she had safeguarding issues. She was a victim of domestic violence. She had children. Then the police came. Her house was searched, including the Christmas presents for the children. It was incredibly distressing. The children had to leave the house. Many noble Baronesses here have talked, rightly, about the effects on the unborn child, but what about the children of the mothers who are taken away for investigation? So this is a very important addition to the other amendments. I very much support the amendment that the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, has tabled. As the noble Lord, Lord Pannick said, I am sure that nobody, whatever side of this debate they sit on, thinks that anyone has a late-pregnancy abortion for the fun of it. No one is doing it to get some promotion at work or to get a late holiday—some of the excuses that we have heard suggested. This is an incredibly traumatic thing. Actually, I would say that an abortion at any time was an incredibly traumatic thing for a woman. I urge noble Lords to go, if they have not seen the Tracey Emin exhibition at the Tate; she speaks incredibly movingly but in a very harrowing way about her own lived experience of abortion. This is not something that is taken lightly. For that small number of women who end up doing this at a late stage in their pregnancy, they are not doing it for the fun of it. They are often abused and often in situations of domestic violence; they are often from very marginalised communities, such as my own community—from the Muslim community, or from other more isolated communities. Many of them are from deprived backgrounds; they are not from nice families such as ours, where you can talk about these things. Many of them are told, by the way, that they do not know what is going on with their bodies, by their abusive partners or abusive parents, because coercive control does not just come from the husband or partner —it can come from within the family structure. They are not even told about their bodies; they are not given agency about their body—and they are told that if they dare to go to anyone for help, they will end up in prison, and here is the evidence. While I understand the concerns about coercion and care and making sure that we protect vulnerable women—it is very well intended—this could further push those very isolated women into situations that are ever more dangerous. The final point that I want to make is that, whatever side of the divide we are on, we know that the police are really struggling with resources right now. We have had many conversations about how we do not think that police are investigating serious sexual assault against women and severe anti-social behaviour. Do we really want our police to be rifling through the bins of women who have just had a stillbirth? Do any of us think that that is a good use of time? Do we honestly want to see vulnerable women put in prison, when there are very few places in prison right now? Finally, you cannot solve this problem by just prosecuting vulnerable women. I have had many conversations with people on the other side, and I understand that, as the Chief Whip said on our side, these views are profoundly and genuinely held by all of us. But I have heard the argument from people who say that, when the terrible thing happens and there is a late abortion, someone has to pay the price—someone has to go to prison. I would push that back. Throwing women, vulnerable women who have often been beaten and treated violently, into prison, is not the answer. Believe you me: these women need compassion, and their kids also need a mother, so that they do not fall into the patterns that lead to bad outcomes. If anyone thinks that these women need to be punished, trust me—what they will have gone through is punishment enough, which will stay with them for the rest of their lives.
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The Lord Bishop of LeicesterBishops- Quote
- My Lords, I shall speak to the amendment in my name, Amendment 426D. I start by thanking the Minister for meeting me a couple of weeks ago to discuss this matter—and I want to be direct at the outset about what the amendment would do and would not do. The amendment is distinct from Amendment 425, which stands on its own merits, and which your Lordships will consider on its own terms. This amendment says nothing about adult women’s access to abortion, nothing about where medication is taken and nothing about the broader questions that have been part of our debate up till now. It rests entirely on one safeguarding principle—that when a child is the patient, a professional should meet her before prescribing. I believe that that is something that your Lordships can support, regardless of the views that you hold on everything else before the House today. The amendment is brought on behalf of the National Network of Designated Healthcare Professionals for Children—NHS doctors and nurses who carry statutory safeguarding responsibilities for children across every local safeguarding partnership in England. Its concern is that the needs of children, particularly looked-after children who become pregnant, are not sufficiently accounted for in this clause. Since 2022, a girl of 14 can telephone an abortion service, receive medication by post, take it at home, and no clinician will ever meet her. How does that give confidence that safeguarding risks are being properly assessed? How does the provider of medication know whether there is someone else in the room when they speak to the child on the phone? How do they know whether someone else has suggested that the child should make the phone call? Surely the only safe way to assess risk is to meet in person. The noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, says that telemedicine is safe. I fully respect her experience in this field and, in many situations, I would agree, but in the case of children, of which I note she made no mention in her speech, I believe she is wrong. Telemedicine is not safe for children.
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Baroness Gerada (CB)Crossbench- Quote
- Is the right reverend Prelate aware that coercion can also occur in the consultation room, as I have seen many times? It may actually be safer for the girl—or the child, as he is calling her—to be able to choose the place and the time where she has that consultation.
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- The Lord Bishop of LeicesterBishops
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- I am very aware that there are risks to all forms of consultation. My argument is simply that the risks are minimised by in-person consultation. The considered view of safeguarding professionals in the NNDHP is that the current guidance put in place by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health in 2022 is simply not robust enough. That guidance, I note, requires an in-person meeting for children under 13. Children under 16 are, “normally … required to complete their consultation in-person, unless there is a compelling indication to do otherwise”. Evidence, however, suggests that most providers of abortion care are arguing that the option of telemedicine itself is a compelling indication that an in-person consultation is not required. For those aged 16 or 17, the guidance says only that children—and, of course, 16 and 17-year-olds are still children under the Children Act—should “be encouraged” to attend in person. More fundamentally, guidance can currently be changed unilaterally, without parliamentary scrutiny or public consultation, at the discretion of the body that issued it. I believe, therefore, that legislation is required. What Parliament enacts, only Parliament can remove. The case for this amendment, however, does not rest on my view or the NNDHP’s alone. The Government’s own consultation found that safeguarding organisations specifically identified under-18s as the group for whom in-person assessment was most critical to reduce the risk from those who sexually exploit children, manipulate the system or force their victims to obtain abortion. Indeed, MSI Reproductive Choices has documented that face-to-face appointments are associated with a significant increase in domestic abuse disclosures compared with telemedicine. This is especially significant given that girls and young women face a higher risk of coercive or abusive relationships than those aged over 24, and are often less equipped to ask for help. The clinical risks compound this. Beyond 11 weeks’ gestation, home management is not appropriate and the risks to the patient increase significantly. As has been mentioned, accurate gestational age assessment is the foundation on which safe prescribing depends, and it cannot be done reliably by telephone. These are not theoretical risks. We have heard stories already. I would simply add that of a 16 year-old who was estimated by the clinic to be under eight weeks pregnant, but the baby she delivered was in fact 20 weeks. She later said, “If they had scanned me and I knew that I was that far gone, I would have had him”. An in-person appointment would have changed everything for that young woman. This amendment would require such an appointment. I echo the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, in her amendment. Without an in-person consultation, it is unclear how we will ensure that early medical abortions take place within the law. Indeed, challenges around vulnerability and correct gestational assessment apply to adulthood as well, which is why I fully support Amendment 425.
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Baroness Hollins (CB)Crossbench- Quote
- My Lords, I had prepared a longer speech but I will speak very briefly as most of the points that I wanted to make have been made. Of course, I do not want to see women unduly prosecuted, but I was reassured by the wise remarks in Committee of my noble friend Lord Hogan-Howe, suggesting that the adaptation of police protocols was more suitable than the change in the law proposed by Clause 208. I support Amendments 424 and 425, as indeed do many doctors, including some among the numbers mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Monckton, of obstetricians. One point, perhaps, has not been raised, which concerns the mental health of women who may be isolated. I am concerned about the possibility that home use, in relative isolation, of a self-induced later abortion may increase the emotional intensity and mental health consequences for some women, particularly if she has limited support or medical complications, which are of course much more common in later abortion. Safeguard support and informed consent become much more critical as gestation advances and care shifts away from in-person supervision. I am not convinced by this clause; it just has not had the depth of thought and preparation required to really understand the complexity of what is being proposed. I ask Members to err on the side of caution and to support the amendments that I have spoken about.
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Baroness Wolf of Dulwich (CB)Crossbench- Quote
- My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendment 426C and thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Falkner, Lady Spielman and Lady Lawlor, for their support. I will also speak in support of Amendment 422E, to which I have added my name. Before explaining why we have tabled Amendment 426C, I give a little context. Like, I am sure, all other noble Lords, I have received a great deal of correspondence on Clause 208. One thing repeatedly said by proponents is that, apart from decriminalising all instances of maternal abortion, nothing would change. The Fawcett Society, for example, says that apart from this one change, the Abortion Act 1967 would continue to operate as it always has. However, I think this is quite mistaken. We are not tidying up a small drafting error here; we are making a fundamental change to the law. When you make a fundamental change to the law, you change perceptions and behaviour, and it has knock-on effects. We have heard, for example, that there has been a marked change in the number of investigations related to abortion. We have also learned—the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, alluded to this—that the changes are a bit more complicated than we might have thought. There has been an increase in the number of investigations related to procuring illegal abortion offences, but at the same time there has been a decrease in the number of investigations for intentional destruction of a viable unborn child. For example, there were seven investigations of intentional destruction of a viable unborn child in 2025, compared with 18 in 2023. Only one person, a male, was proceeded against in the most recent year. Clearly, something is going on but, equally clearly, it seems to be a little more complicated than we might think and the Government do not really know. To repeat the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, made, it is not possible to determine how many investigations there have been that relate to women, including women acting in relation to their pregnancy. Alongside that we have had another major change, about which we have already heard a great deal this evening, in Committee and at Second Reading, and that is the arrival on the scene of abortifacient pills. They have completely changed the profile of abortion, including whether the foetus is dead before it is delivered. It is not just about telemedicine but about pills by post, which have become much more easily available, not simply within this country but increasingly across country boundaries. The noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, and others have discussed consultations by pregnant women, and we have had some discussion of whether these should or should not all be in person. Our Amendment 426C has a rather different focus. It would create a new crime of obtaining abortifacients, which for the moment are pills, by false representation. To explain why this is desirable, I will say a bit more about the case of Stuart Worby, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, referred. In 2025, Stuart Worby was found guilty of poisoning his pregnant wife by administering abortion medication without her knowledge or consent. She very much wanted the baby she was carrying and he did not. A female associate of Worby’s procured the drugs through an online consultation in which she claimed early pregnancy and was duly prescribed and sent the pills. Worby gave his wife the drugs without her knowledge. She suffered a devastating miscarriage and the government website summarising the case notes that she is left unable to bear children. The victim of Worby’s act was not investigated when she miscarried. The crime came to light only when she found messages on her husband’s phone and went to the police. In another recent case in Scotland the abortion was procured by a paramedic who injected his partner without her knowledge. Again, she was not investigated; the crime only came to light indirectly. There may be many other cases like this, but it is possible and becoming easier to obtain these pills—
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- Lord Pannick (CB)Crossbench
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- My Lords—
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- Baroness Wolf of Dulwich (CB)Crossbench
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- No, I am going to continue. I agree with the Chief Whip on this; we should just keep going.
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- Lord Pannick (CB)Crossbench
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- I took a number of interventions.
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- Baroness Wolf of Dulwich (CB)Crossbench
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- That was your choice. I am going to follow instructions. It is becoming easier to obtain these pills not least because of the balkanisation of American states on abortion issues, which has also turbocharged the use of pills in the United States. If, as seems likely, obtaining and administering an abortifacient without consent is going to increase, then we think there is a good reason to make this a clearly defined offence. Our amendment is drafted in consultation with some experienced KCs based on existing fraud law. I realise that there will be an obvious objection, which is that there is existing legislation, but as the Government Ministers themselves have made clear when introducing specific legislation to cover retail workers, the fact that there may be legislation is not necessarily a compelling argument against creating a new, clear offence. Sometimes the legislature may want to go further to inform, to highlight particular risks, and to clarify the law in new situations, which is what we are in in this case. We have drafted this amendment on the assumption that Clause 208 stands, because you have to have to make an assumption, but the fact that it was so difficult to do this, that it is so unsatisfactory and that, if we went forward, we or the Government would have to redraft in the light of what does or does not happen to Clause 208 makes it clear that we are in an unsatisfactory situation. We are making law on the hoof when what is needed is a really good look at the situation we are in and the way that the changes that we might introduce would impact on other behaviour, so that we could take a coherent, holistic view of whether abortion law needs to be rethought. In that context, I return to Amendment 422E. The first rule of good policy-making is to be clear about the problem. I do not think we are. Amendment 422E therefore proposes an alternative to the unscheduled and unexpected introduction of the sweeping changes in Clause 208. It would require the personal consent of the DPP for an investigation, with a tight time limit. It would address the distressing situations that we have heard about and it would leave us time to discuss properly what changes could usefully be made to current law. It would also ensure that any change that occurred fulfilled the objectives of those who proposed and support Clause 208. I am really concerned at this pulling something out. I have two final, quick points. Many people will say that lots of other countries have decriminalised, but that does not mean they have a situation that would be exactly like ours if we passed Clause 208. Whether you have full decriminalisation exists in a whole set of different situations, and it certainly does not mean that those countries allow abortion at full term by mothers. The second point is that it is perfectly possible to have a review. The Scots have just done so. They have had a thorough review. One may or may not like what they have done, but that is what we should be doing. Given where we are, I commend my amendment to the House and strongly commend a compromise that would give us time. I hope that the Government are listening to the degree of concern over this and considering whether they might, in the near future, do something serious on this issue.
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- Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Lab)Labour
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- My Lords, I wonder whether noble Lords are aware, in spite of what we have heard from some noble Lords, that more than 50 countries around the world, including 29 in Europe, do not criminalise women under abortion law. Going back to the noble Baroness’s comments about Northern Ireland, telemedicine was voted on as lawful by our very House.
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- Baroness O’Loan (CB)Crossbench
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- My Lords—
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- Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Lab)Labour
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- I am sorry, so many Cross-Benchers have just been speaking. I sincerely hope that I can finish my point. I have been waiting ever so patiently. I agree with my noble friend Lady Hazarika, and I wish to make my comments in the spirit, as she said, of understanding that there are people with very different views across the House. I respect those views, so I hope to be heard similarly. National and international women’s rights and health groups are proactively calling for decriminalisation in the UK and beyond. That is in addition to the other place—our elected representatives—overwhelmingly voting in support of decriminalisation. I wonder whether we believe that every one of those respected organisations is wrong, that only a section of this House is right and that the other place is wrong. I would find it difficult to ally myself with those who oppose the decriminalisation of abortion. On Amendment 423A, to which I put my name, along with the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, the noble Lord, Lord Patel, and my noble friend Lady Hazarika, I do not know whether noble Lords have read the excellent article in the Guardian today by Hannah Al-Othman. She has done some extensive research about a number of harrowing cases, one of which was referred to by my noble friend Lady Hazarika, of women being arrested in their hospital bed. Is it seriously the case that we as a House want that situation to continue? The Centre for Women’s Justice has detailed a number of cases that are truly dreadful. I also support the telemedicine provisions; they seem humane and are also lawful in Northern Ireland. I am not going to say any more. I strongly support decriminalisation and strongly oppose the amendments that other noble Lords have spoken to.
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- Baroness O’Loan (CB)Crossbench
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- Before the noble Baroness sits down, is she aware that there are no telemedicine abortifacients available in Northern Ireland? It is not lawful.
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Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)Non-affiliated- Quote
- My Lords, I wanted to sound really definitive in saying that I oppose Amendment 424 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Monckton, which would remove Clause 208, and that I oppose Amendments 425 and 426D. However, the good thing about this place is that I listened to the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf of Dulwich—about whom I am going to say something wonderful. She made me pause and think, and that is what is really useful about this debate. I am absolutely certain on some things, but I am not quite sure about the tangle of amendments that have been proposed. I am therefore going to carry on and voice some of my concerns. To give a bit of context, abortion in the UK is a safe, normal and common procedure. It is appreciated by women because, when facing an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy, it allows them a legal choice on whether to be a mother—a decision that will alter the whole course of their life. The fact that a third of women in the UK will have a legal and safe abortion at some point in their life—the vast majority of which will happen early on—shows how careful we have to be not to allow this rather fraught, heated and emotional debate impose any unintended barriers to that success story for women’s freedom and rights. I am afraid that some of the well-meaning compromises we have heard about tonight would likely do that. I am particularly worried about undermining telemedicine and pills by post. I want to reflect on time limits. Many of us will have received a tsunami of emails and letters urging us to oppose Clause 208, stressing emotively—and factually inaccurately—that this clause will legalise abortion until birth, and that that amounts to the state-sanctioned killing of babies, as someone explained to me. We have to restate for the public that this clause does not change the limits for abortion. There is still a 24-week abortion time limit. In fact, abortion itself remains a crime, just as it has been since 1968, unless very stringent conditions are met. I stress again that any medical professional, or anyone else, who assists a woman to get an abortion beyond the legal limit of 24 weeks will be committing a serious crime and will be liable for prosecution. We have to understand the public backlash, because there is unease about the whole issue of abortion until birth, and time limits per se. As a society, or indeed as a Parliament, we may want to revisit the issue at some stage. For many, the 24-week legal time limit based on viability can feel too arbitrary, especially as surely we all want medical science to make great strides in keeping prematurely born babies alive ever earlier for those women who want their children, but that should not limit the rights of those women who do not want to proceed with their pregnancy. There are moral issues here about human life—that old chestnut of whether human life starts at conception or birth. There are those who stress that we should focus on the unborn child—we have heard a fair amount of that tonight. They say that, when we talk about more developed foetuses, we are talking about an unborn child, and that the heart that can be seen beating on an ultrasound scan at six weeks is just as much that of an unborn child as one that beats five months later. Is gestational growth a useful guide to the law? Is viability the best guide to what makes us human? Such difficult discussions should not be shied away from. When you go out and talk to the public about this subject, they talk about time limits and these kinds of issues. Certainly, at the Academy of Ideas, where we work with young people, we consider it is our duty to organise such debates regularly to ensure that new generations rightly ask questions and hear all sides of the argument. However, Clause 208 is not trying to relitigate the legal time limit debate, even though I welcome the fuller debate we have had tonight. It is important that we acknowledge why it has caused a furore. It removes the threat of criminalisation for a tiny number of women who, for whatever reason, have taken abortion pills to terminate their own pregnancy, but we have to be honest and acknowledge that it brings a risk of abuse—I know that, even though I am supporting it. The notion that decriminalisation will mean that women will gleefully go on a crime spree because it is decriminalised—suggesting that it is only the threat of prosecution that stops women from letting their pregnancies progress carelessly so they can inflict on themselves the horror of self-induced full-term termination —seems far-fetched and lacking in generosity. Legal late abortions are not harmful per se; certainly, they are not more harmful than coercing an unwilling woman to endure a full-time pregnancy and labour against her will. However, it is also true that late abortions are undoubtedly gruelling for both patient and clinician, which is why the idea that any woman would choose that as an easy or casual option is far-fetched, ludicrous and insulting. The earlier an abortion can be performed, the better it is for women, and that is the reality of the perspective we need for this debate. In 2022, the last year for which figures are available, almost a quarter of a million women in England and Wales had abortions. Almost 90% of those were under 10 weeks and only 1% were at 20 weeks or over. We are not talking about everybody having late abortions or queuing up to have them. The emergence of telemedicine has allowed access to even earlier abortion. Surely one of the few positives that emerged out of Covid, 2020 and the lockdown was that it changed the abortion regulations to allow medication in early pregnancy to be taken at home. While it is easier, early medical abortion is certainly not a free-for-all or unregulated—it is not like getting a pharmacist to okay your access to Wegovy or Ozempic. It remains regulated under the 1967 Act, which is a hyper-regulated piece of legislation that includes speaking to a doctor and so on. The limit remains at 10 weeks and nothing in Clause 208 changes that. What is positive about pills by post is that it cuts down on the dreaded waiting list times, which means that treatment can be earlier. An insistence on face-to-face appointments, as some of the amendments suggest, would tangle up early abortions in delay, which would undermine the success of 40% of abortions by telemedical methods now being performed at six weeks, versus 25% using traditional access methods. Finally, one of the arguments used against telemedicine is that it could lead to non-consensual coerced abortions, with abusive men, or even abusive parents, forcing young, vulnerable women to abort. I was glad to hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Neate, about the issue in relation to domestic abuse. Clause 208 does not change the law on this non-consensual coerced abortion. Non-consensual coerced abortion at any gestation remains illegal and is a crime. However, it is key to note that since telemedicine became legal there has been a major increase in safeguarding disclosures, especially by young women who have felt able to talk about being victims of domestic abuse or sexual violence precisely because they are doing it remotely. It has allowed abortion providers to offer invaluable pastoral intervention beyond abortion services. Telemedicine also enables those vulnerable to coercion to avoid their abusers being involved in the deliberations about their desperate plight of being pregnant. I will just finish by addressing the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester. There are many young girls—I appreciate that they are children—from traditional religious communities. Think of the young Catholic girl, the young Muslim girl and so on, as well as those at risk of honour-based violence. Those kinds of young people actually do not need to be asking their dad to drop them round at the clinic so they can get advice. They are sometimes dependent on other people. With telemedicine, they can go with privacy and talk at their own chosen time and place, without having to answer back to a parent or an abusive partner. In other words, telemedicine offers privacy and can help women stay safe.
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- Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)Non-affiliated
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- I have finished. That was it.
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- My Lords—
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- My Lords—
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Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)Democratic Unionist Party- Quote
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Baroness Berridge (Con)Conservative- Quote
- My Lords—
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- Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)Labour
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- My Lords, can we please take the temperature down and respect the Clock? There are 10 minutes for Back-Bench contributions. Of course, many people want to get in, but please take the temperature down—there is no need to constantly interrupt others. Everyone can speak. We will come to the Cross Benches first and then go to the noble Baroness opposite.
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- Baroness Gerada (CB)Crossbench
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- My Lords, I would like to pick up some of the safeguarding issues around telemedicine that have been mentioned in the House. To put things in context briefly, I have been a GP now for nearly 40 years, and over the past five years I have been conducting many remote consultations. First, you can assess safeguarding issues remotely. A paper was published in 2025—very recently—on young girls under 16. More than 600 young girls were involved in the study. It found that 100% of the safeguarding issues—some of these girls then had to be seen face to face—were identified remotely. The conclusion, which is very short, states: “Requiring in-person adolescent consultation is associated with reduced access to medication abortion without enhancing safeguarding”. We do want to work with evidence. You might think it is safer to consult face to face, but the evidence shows that it is not safer: it can actually make it more harmful.
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- Well, the evidence is there. You either believe in evidence or anecdotes. The second issue is about ultrasounds. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence does not recommend ultrasounds for judging gestational age, unless there are problems: for example, if a woman’s menstrual cycle is long or if there are other issues. Again, we have to go by the evidence: not what we think or feel, what we read in the papers or what we discuss with our friends. I will also comment on assessing competence in younger children under 16. The noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, has an amendment about mental capacity. I am sure that she is aware that the Mental Capacity Act cannot be used in relation to under-16s. Therefore, the noble Baroness’s amendment, if passed, would automatically mean that a 16 year-old would be prosecuted if she had no mental capacity, yet a 17 year-old could use that Act. So it is a nonsense amendment in that respect. I fully support Clause 208 and I urge the House—on humane reasons, on competence and capacity, and, moreover, on evidence—to support it.
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Baroness Spielman (Con)Conservative- Quote
- My Lords, I will speak in support of Amendment 424, tabled my noble friend Lady Monckton, and Amendment 426C, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf. I have put my name to both amendments. I will be brief. Despite the careful unpacking in Committee of the human and legal problems that Clause 208 will create, no amendments have been put down that address them. As we know, there have been no impact assessments and no public consultation, though third-party polling shows a very large majority opposed to abortion up to the point of birth. No effort has been made to gain insight into the extent to which the existing telemedicine scheme is abused, as its laxness means it must inevitably be to some extent. The lack of real answers to the questions asked in Committee make it all too clear that the Government intend to keep their eyes closed and ears stoppered to shut out evidence of abuses. Sadly, some, though not all, of the medical profession also find it easier not to think about the lives of unborn children, no matter how close to birth. The status quo is, therefore, profoundly unsatisfactory. If this clause is passed, it will signal to all women that there is zero risk to them personally in abusing the telemedicine scheme or procuring an illegal abortion in another way. So, of course, abuses will increase—that is how humans respond to bad incentives—and each abuse is likely to mean that a viable child is killed with impunity. I recognise that, despite the obvious risks that the clause introduces, it is tempting to support it in order to feel good about yourself and show that you are someone who really cares about women—but this requires suppressing all thoughts of children’s lives.
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- Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)Labour
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- My Lords, I say to my noble friends who will try to come in shortly that we have had a reasonably long debate on this group and we had a very long debate in Committee. I have begun to hear calls for the Front Benches. I offer the House a reminder that this is Report: the stage when we vote to make decisions. I hope that we can quickly begin to move on to hear from the Front Benches.
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- Lord Winston (Lab)Labour
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- My Lords, I am grateful that the Chief Whip will offer me the chance to speak for a couple of minutes. We have always agreed that this is an expert House, and it helps to make sure that legislation is best addressed by expertise where it can be. One of the things we might want to consider in this debate is that there are at least two Members of this House who have given at least 100 years in total to the management of people having terminations of pregnancy —so we do know quite a lot about it. There is also a large number of people who have not spoken who are fellows of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, who I think have been rather insulted by some of the things they have heard today because they do not represent the views of most members. Having said that, I just want to say two things very simply. I firmly believe in decriminalisation. There is a great deal of misapprehension, as was just shown by the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman. The fact of the matter is that you cannot induce a pregnancy close to term. In fact, I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Patel, will agree with me that it is virtually impossible to induce labour in a woman who does not have ruptured membranes at term with drugs. It just does not work. In fact, both he and I—numerous times, if I am not wrong—have been faced with caesarean sections that we did not want to do as the only way we could get a baby out of the womb when it was in danger. We could not use drugs to induce labour, because they do not work. That certainly applies to pills but even to drugs given intravenously. It is therefore important to understand that a termination of a pregnancy conducted by a woman herself will be an extremely rare event. It would be very difficult, and the idea that pills will work is nonsensical. Moreover, we have heard a lot about pills, but nobody has told us yet what pills they are talking about. That is very important. The hormones that are usually used in early pregnancy would not work in late pregnancy. The other thing I have already mentioned is that pretty well all late terminations of pregnancy are done for very serious medical conditions. One of the commonest ones is where there is an extremely deformed baby in the womb. I described this during the earlier stages of the Bill, and I will not go through it again. The indications of these late pregnancies are always very carefully and scrupulously observed. They are not done lightly. I should also add that, sadly, babies born much after 24 weeks still are very likely to be highly abnormal. Even though people often miscarry them when they do not want to, sometimes it can be the very best thing that can happen because these babies will eventually die early with very severe abnormalities. Recently, the noble Lord, Lord Patel, chaired a committee on this very issue to see how we could reduce the number of premature births. It is a big problem in medicine because of the risks to the babies when they are born after 28 weeks. I shall say no more except that I firmly believe we should really try to understand this from the woman’s point of view. No woman tries to interrupt her pregnancy except with the deepest grief and the deepest unhappiness.
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- Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)Democratic Unionist Party
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Baroness Barker (LD)Liberal Democrat- Quote
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- My Lords—
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- Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)Labour
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- We will have a short intervention, but we need to move on shortly to the Front Benches. That is what the House wants, I believe.
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- Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)Democratic Unionist Party
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- My Lords, throughout this debate Northern Ireland has been mentioned, yet not one Member from Northern Ireland has been allowed to speak until now. We have had to force the issue to be allowed to speak in this debate. When the new abortion laws, the most liberal and extreme laws in the United Kingdom, were forced on Northern Ireland, few across this House really cared. The lobby for abortion in Northern Ireland was on the basis that women there had fewer rights than in England and Wales. Now that same lobby is using the same arguments for a change in the law in England and Wales. In the previous debate, it was suggested that this would bring England and Wales into line with Northern Ireland, but that is misleading as, crucially, Northern Ireland does not have pills by post. I genuinely believe that even many of those who support abortion know in their hearts that this is not the way to go about things. This hurried parliamentary process, the rewriting of one of the most sensitive and serious areas of criminal law, is surely unworthy of our democracy. A clause passed in the other House last summer was passed after 46 minutes of Back-Bench debate. Is that what our democracy has come to? If noble Lords think that this is a good idea, why are they not prepared to allow public consultation and pre-legislative scrutiny, instead of rushing it through? Clause 208 means no justice for the death of a full-term unborn child, even in the most grotesque circumstances. I ask supporters of Clause 208: what would you do if a woman told you that she was taking abortion pills, perhaps obtained from an NHS provider via telemedicine, in the 39th week of pregnancy because she had changed her mind about having a child? What would your conscience say to you, knowing that you made that possible through the support of this legislation? We heard a great deal about unwelcome investigations, but what do supporters of Clause 208 think the police should do if they discover the dead body of a 39 week-old baby in a rubbish bin? The noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, explained in Committee that investigations would often still be required even if Clause 208 passes, as police would need to investigate the circumstances if a deceased full-term baby body is found away from a clinical setting. Is that the option that supporters of Clause 208 really believe in? To conclude, I could give many reasons why I support Amendments 425 and 426 but, because of time, I am not able to do so. Let us remember that when we are talking about the life of an unborn child, we are talking about not an it but a real, living person with the expectation of being born, being protected by a caring and loving society, and being held in loving arms. I do not think that is too much for a child to ask or expect.
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- We need to move on to the Front Benches.
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- Baroness Barker (LD)Liberal Democrat
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- My Lords, I am the first speaker from these Benches. For us, this is a matter of conscience. My noble friend Lady Smith of Newnham has not had the opportunity to speak. She disagrees with me. She is supportive of the other side. She wished for me to mention that she has been contacted by a young student called Lily, who has contacted a number of other Peers to say that they share her point of view. I hope that Lily and my noble friend will hear that we have acknowledged their sincerely held views, which are very different from mine.
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- Baroness O’Loan (CB)Crossbench
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- My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, and I have been trying to speak. The noble Baroness has an amendment down. It is not good enough that we are being silenced at a time when the House is being asked to vote to approve something that has not been properly discussed or explored, and the consequences have not been fully considered. It is not good.
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- Baroness Barker (LD)Liberal Democrat
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- My Lords, I do have an amendment, Amendment 423A, which other noble Lords have signed. It is to ask that prosecutions cease and desist. The reason for it is that we have uncovered over these past few months that different police forces are taking entirely different approaches under the current law, and that women and health professionals do not know where they stand. I refer to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, and to the speech of our noble colleague who is the chair of the College of Policing, about the fact that there needs to be a clear policy direction from Parliament in order that we can have a consistent approach throughout the medical profession and throughout policing.
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Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)Conservative- Quote
- My Lords, once again we have had a full and passionate debate on a matter of the utmost significance. It is apparent, from both deliberations in Committee and from today, that views on this matter are deeply and sincerely held across your Lordships’ House. A wide range of points have been raised by noble Lords. Let us consider a variety of them. We have heard about issues around how the police investigate cases, about the interaction of telemedicine and criminal investigation, about the potential for women to face coercion, about issues of safeguarding of younger women and about issues of domestic abuse—to name but a few mentioned tonight. A lot of ground has not yet been covered. Other noble Lords have not yet spoken or have wanted to speak but have not been able to. What this tells us is that the matter is very far from settled. Some noble Lords’ concerns have plainly not been allayed. This brings me back to the point I made in Committee. This clause has not received anything like adequate scrutiny. It is true that we have now had several hours of debate on this matter in your Lordships’ House. The point I made before, however, still stands: it is a matter of procedure, not substance. In the other place, however, this clause was considered for only 46 minutes of Back-Bench debate. No parliamentary committee has been able to seek views and take evidence, and if ever there was the need for a parliamentary committee to take evidence on a policy, this is it. We need to hear from and test the views of the police, of the CPS, of doctors, of obstetricians, of safeguarders and, if possible and most importantly, of women or their representatives and advocates. This policy was not in the Government’s election manifesto. It has not been subject to pre-legislative scrutiny, public consultation, or an impact assessment. The noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, put it very well in Committee. She said that the clause was passed “in the other place following a very brief and truncated debate, entirely incommensurate with the gravity of its impact”.—[Official Report, 2/2/26; col. 1336.] Changes to the law of abortion are and remain issues of conscience. The Opposition do not and will not take an official position on the substance of the clause. There is a multitude of views in my own party, and the issue is in the hands of your Lordships’ House as a matter of conscience. But that does not mean that we are released from our duty to undertake due diligence and rigorous interrogation of the consequences of changing the social law of this country. Whatever one thinks of the substance of the issue itself, the truth is that this clause has been tacked on to the side of a Crime and Policing Bill when it should not have been. That is no way to make law.
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Baroness Levitt) (Lab)Labour- Quote
- My Lords, I will be as brief as I can. I shall start, as I did in Committee, by reiterating that the Government maintain a neutral stance on abortion in England and Wales. Many of the amendments in this group are similar or identical to those tabled in Committee. So, save in a very few cases, I shall not repeat the Government’s assessment of their workability. This means that if I do not explicitly mention an amendment, it is either because there are no workability issues or because I set them out fully in Committee. As a shorthand, I will refer to conduct that comes under Sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, and under the Infant Life (Preservation) Act, collectively as “abortion offences”. I begin with Amendment 423ZA tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor. It is unclear how this amendment is intended to work in practice—in particular, which party would bear the burden of establishing a lack of mental capacity and what the standard of proof would be. Thus, it is possible that it would create confusion for practitioners. Your Lordships may wish to note that the law already takes account of defendants’ understanding of their actions in various ways. It is unclear how this amendment is intended to interact with well-established criminal law principles. Amendment 422E, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner of Margravine, is similar to that tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, in Committee, but it contains an additional requirement that a prosecution could not be brought any later than 12 months from the date of the alleged offence. Your Lordships will be aware that, other than for summary-only offences, there is, almost without exception, no statutory time limit for prosecuting criminal offences in England and Wales. The reason for that is that evidence may emerge over several years, so a limitation period would remove the ability to prosecute in cases where evidence of guilt came to light much later on. The introduction of a limitation period could lead to differences in outcomes depending on when evidence becomes available, the complexity of the case and the resources of investigating and prosecuting authorities. Amendment 423, in the name of the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, is similar to the one he tabled in Committee, but it differs in three respects: it would broaden the scope of the specified defences; it would make provision for who must bear burden of proof in relation to those defences; and it would introduce additional provisions relating to police investigations. In relation to the workability concerns I raised in Committee, for the second and third of these differences there are some further issues. In relation to the burden of proof, the drafting is ambiguous. If the intention is that the defendant should bear the evidential burden, clarification would be needed. In relation to the proposed new provisions for police investigations, your Lordships may wish to note that decisions on whether to initiate, and the scope of such an investigation, are currently operational matters for the police. Amendment 423A, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, is also similar to one tabled in Committee. While the Government remain neutral on changing the criminal law, it is important that investigations into other offences, such as murder, manslaughter or infanticide under the Infanticide Act, are still carried out. Those offences would continue to be investigated and prosecuted by the Crown Prosecution Service if the test for prosecution is met. Your Lordships may wish to note that this amendment would be likely to trigger a review of any live investigations and prosecutions. However, we would not expect this to carry any significant resourcing implications. Amendment 426C, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf of Dulwich, is again similar to an amendment tabled in Committee. It might be helpful to remind your Lordships of the point that I made then, namely that the proposed new offence is not limited to obtaining abortifacient drugs for use in the termination of a pregnancy. Abortifacient drugs are not defined in legislation and are also used for non-abortion-related purposes. In addition, further amendments would be needed to clarify whether the offence was one that is to be triable either way, whether the maximum penalty on conviction on indictment should be the same as that on summary conviction and whether the maximum penalty in the magistrates’ court should align with its general powers, which update automatically should the limits on its sentencing powers change in the future.
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- I would be grateful for clarification as to whether the Government have considered their own current inquiries into the grooming gangs. There was evidence there that: “Victims and survivors were also critical about how easy it can be to obtain emergency contraception or abortion services without appropriate questions being asked”. This evidence has been relied on consistently in Committee and on Report, yet there are concerns. Have the Government looked at that? Secondly, in relation to the case that I mentioned in Committee, which contradicts much of what has been said, the comments of His Honour Mr Justice Cooke in Leeds Crown Court, in the case of Sarah Catt, very clearly state that this was a “cold calculated” decision that she took for her own convenience and self-interest. She took pills at 39 weeks and gave birth, and it seems she never revealed where the body was. She had a history of deceit and concealment—that is in the judgment of Leeds Crown Court. So have the Government considered, also in relation to other amendments about pardons, that this was conduct not of a victim but of a woman who perpetrated a crime? Finally—
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- It was a crime, and she was given eight years in prison for that. On the question about the offences that the judge also considered—murder, manslaughter and infanticide —I emailed the Minister about the clarification I asked for in Committee on guidance being given to emergency services that may come across a situation such as that outlined in Sarah Catt. What is their obligation to the woman and the child?
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- Baroness Levitt (Lab)Labour
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- I thank the noble Baroness for her points, which I am sure your Lordships’ House will want to take into account when deciding whether, as a matter of policy, to vote for or against the various amendments. I remind the noble Baroness that these are not government amendments—the Government are neutral—but I am sure that everyone in your Lordships’ House has heard them and will take them into account in various ways. Amendment 425 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, is identical to one tabled in Committee. I raised at that stage the Government’s concerns about workability and operational difficulties, and they remain. In short, the effect of Amendment 425 might be to reduce access to early medical abortion due to resource constraints on the ability of abortion providers to hold in-person consultations. Amendment 426D, tabled by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester, is new, but it carries similar possible operational effects to those I set out in Committee in relation to Amendment 425, about which I spoke a moment ago. The proposed new clause in Amendment 426D may have a detrimental impact on abortion provision and access for under-18s, including those who live in remote areas or who have difficulties in attending a clinic. It should also be noted that it is unclear whether this amendment would require under-18s to have all consultations face to face, including any initial contact with the service. If so, this would further increase the workability concerns, including resourcing constraints on providers and access to abortion provision for young people. Amendment 426B, in the name of my noble friend Lady Thornton, is once again very similar to an amendment tabled in Committee. The duty on the Secretary of State, as drafted, poses substantial operational and resourcing implications. There is no centrally held record of women who have been convicted of, cautioned for, arrested for or investigated on suspicion of abortion offences. Therefore, the Secretary of State would be unable to comply with the duty to direct the specified bodies to delete such details from records. If this is the will of Parliament, consideration will need to be given to how to deliver the objectives of this amendment in a way that is operationally workable.
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- My Lords, I appreciate that the hour is late and very charged emotions have been expressed, so I do not intend to delay the House with a long response. I simply point out to those Members who are not familiar with the Companion and were surprised that so many of us did not take interventions that this was not due to any lack of respect for their positions. The Companion says at 4.29 that a Member “may justifiably refuse to give way, for instance … in time-limited proceedings”. I wanted to make that clear. I have heard what the Minister has said about Amendment 422E. I will go away and consider that. This was meant to be a compromise. I know that Members want to get to other substantive amendments. I therefore do not wish to test the opinion of the House and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
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- Baroness Monckton of Dallington Forest (Con)Conservative
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- I thank all noble Lords who have participated in this debate. I have listened to opinions from across the House but am not satisfied that the mother or the unborn baby is protected. I would therefore like to test the opinion of the House.
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- Baroness Stroud (Con)Conservative
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- I beg to move.
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- Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)Labour
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- My Lords, let me assist the House by saying that we should now be moving on to Amendment 426A on assisted dying, in the name of my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer of Thoroton. I understand my noble and learned friend tabled the amendment only to get a particular response from the Government and he has no intention of dividing the House tonight. I suggest that we allow his contribution but do not have a prolonged debate on assisted dying tonight—we have had a number of days on that. Then, when we have had the Minister’s response, we can get back to the other amendments because potentially there are three more votes in this group. I think the House will want to vote on those and this is a way forward for everybody. Amendment 426A
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Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)Labour- Quote
- I am obliged. Assisted dying feels quite pacific in comparison with the debate we have just had. This is my amendment, which I do not intend to press. It is the product of discussions with the BMA. It was tabled in Committee in my name and in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff. It was withdrawn in Committee because the Isle of Man Government, who have passed a Bill to deal with assisted dying, said they did not want it to be tabled before there had been discussions with them. There have now been discussions between the BMA and the Isle of Man Government and they are content for it to be tabled. This amendment seeks to provide protections for doctors with patients who live in the Isle of Man or Jersey, where assisted dying Bills have been passed but have not yet received Royal Assent. It is common, for example, for some people resident in the Isle of Man to have doctors in the north-west of England. Those doctors may well give a diagnosis or a prognosis in writing, which might then be used in an assisted dying process in accordance with the laws in those two other jurisdictions. Amendment 426A says that if a doctor does such a thing and they are participating in a process which is strictly in accordance with the law “in Scotland or the Crown Dependencies”, And, obviously, Scotland voted against assisted dying yesterday, but the principle is that they will not be breaking the law in this country—
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Baroness Coffey (Con)Conservative- Quote
- My Lords—
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- Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)Labour
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- Can I finish my explanation, then hear from the Minister and then take it from there? I have had a very useful discussion with the Minister, who said that the Government took the view that the amendment was premature before Royal Assent in relation to the two jurisdictions, and I accept that. She said that once Royal Assent was given, the Government would consult with Jersey and the Isle of Man Governments and other relevant parties about what the Government would then do. She gave no commitment as to what the Government would do, but I am content with that approach. There will obviously be some degree of urgency, depending on how long it will take for the other jurisdictions to introduce assisted dying, but if the Minister were to confirm that that was the position, and that is what she explained to me, I would be content with that explanation.
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- Baroness Coffey (Con)Conservative
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- I did not quite hear at the start. Can I just confirm that this amendment was not tabled at the request of the Isle of Man Government?
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- Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)Labour
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- That is correct. It was tabled after discussions between the BMA, the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, and me, and it was withdrawn because the Isle of Man Government wanted more consultation.
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Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)Crossbench- Quote
- My Lords—
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- Baroness Levitt (Lab)Labour
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- With the House’s permission, it might be helpful if I set out the Government’s position, and then perhaps we can take it from there, if the noble Baroness is prepared to give way to me at this stage. The Government have some workability and drafting concerns about the noble and learned Lord’s amendment, but I will focus on the central issue so that the House knows what the Government’s position is. Although the Government remain neutral on the overall issue, we recognise that assisted dying regimes being implemented in different parts of the UK and the Crown dependencies could create practical issues for those in one jurisdiction who are involved, in some way, in the lawful assisted death of a person in another jurisdiction. However, I support what my noble and learned friend said: the Government consider it premature to legislate on this issue. We do not yet know whether assisted dying will become lawful in the various jurisdictions, what the final form of any such regimes may be, or how and when they would be implemented. Legislating now in this unique way to amend the criminal law in England and Wales without clarity about these frameworks risks unintended consequences. The Government do not rule out that, in due course, processes may be agreed between the jurisdictions—or, if necessary, future legislation placed before this House and, potentially, other Parliaments—to achieve these aims.
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- Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)Labour
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- I am grateful to the Minister for that indication. On the basis of that, I am happy to withdraw my amendment.
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- Baroness Thornton (Lab)Labour
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- My Lords, I know that the amendment is defective, because my noble friend has said that. However, this is the only opportunity we have to address the issue. Now that we have agreed, as a House, to keep the clause in the Bill, if I press my amendment it will need to be dealt with by the Government between now and Third Reading. Therefore, I wish to test the opinion of the House.
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- Baroness Wolf of Dulwich (CB)Crossbench
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- I am grateful to the Minister for her comments, and indeed to everybody who was engaged in the debate. I completely accept that an abortifacient is a drug that can be used for other things. I am not sure what that has to do with my amendment, which is to do with false representation. For all the reasons I spoke about—the fact that we are throwing a bit of a bomb into a changing world rather than a tiny little change—I think this would be helpful. I would therefore like to test the opinion of the House.
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- The Lord Bishop of LeicesterBishops
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- I realise that I am going to make myself very unpopular at this hour, but I will make a very brief comment on the couple of comments that were made regarding the amendment in the course of the debate. I remind noble Lords that this is about children who become pregnant and it is about safeguarding risks. Therefore, I was not entirely happy that it should be contrasted between evidence and anecdote. There is plenty of evidence to support the need for this from professionals in the field. Similarly, to those saying that professionals say that children will not come, I am afraid that the professionals that have advised me on this are very clear that children will come when it is necessary. I therefore invite the House to support the amendment and ask for a Division.
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Lord Clement-Jones (LD)Liberal Democrat- Quote
- My Lords, in moving this amendment I will speak to Amendments 428, 429 and 445, all of which stand in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Doocey. I return to the question of the governance of international law enforcement data-sharing agreements under Clauses 209 to 211. Can I make a radical suggestion? To save time this evening, given that this is something of a minority sport in this context, perhaps I could make a few points showing the Minister the error of his ways, then he could respond briefly and write to me afterwards. I think that would be an efficient use of our time. In Committee, the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Katz, comprehensively rejected my calls for enhanced protective measures and a privacy impact assessment. He argued that the existing data protection laws—the UK GDPR and the DPA 2018—were sufficient, rendering my amendments duplicative and unnecessary. But since the passage of the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, the statutory threshold for overseas data transfers has been lowered from “essentially equivalent” to merely “not materially lower”. The European Data Protection Board has explicitly warned that this new standard omits vital safeguards against foreign government access. The safety net that the Minister relies on has giant holes in it. These amendments seek to place vital statutory guardrails around the powers granted in Clause 209, which allow the UK to implement international law enforcement information-sharing agreements via secondary legislation. Throughout the passage of the Bill, we have returned to a fundamental principle: we cannot allow technological or administrative deployment to race ahead of the rule of law. Amendment 427 would require that when regulations under this clause involve highly sensitive personal data, including biometric, genetic or health data, they must be accompanied by enhanced protective measures. Amendment 428 would mandate a privacy impact assessment before such regulations are made. In Committee the Minister suggested that existing data protection law already provides these safeguards, but the Government are simultaneously moving to simplify and dilute those protections in the Data (Use and Access) Act. If we are to transfer the sensitive biometric identities of UK citizens to international partners, the requirement for a PIA should be not a matter of ministerial discretion but a statutory obligation in the Bill. Amendment 429 would require an annual report to be laid before Parliament on the volume and categories of information shared under these agreements. The Minister’s response in Committee was that this would be unnecessary bureaucracy. Transparency is crucial for public trust. This is a lesson that we should have learned from the Post Office Horizon scandal and the discussions surrounding live facial recognition. Without a clear yearly account of where our citizens’ data is going, Parliament is essentially signing a blank cheque for international surveillance. This is a matter of not just civil liberties but economic security. Any perception that the UK is lowering its standards for international data transfers puts our EU data adequacy status at grave risk. Transparency is not a burden but a prerequisite for our digital economy. Finally, Amendment 445 would require that all regulations made under Clause 209 be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure. Currently, the Bill relies heavily on the negative procedure. Given that these agreements could involve sharing data with jurisdictions that lack effective redress or equivalent privacy protections, the negative procedure is essentially an insult to the standard of scrutiny required. If an agreement is important enough to share the data of millions, it is important enough to be debated and approved by both Houses. On these Benches, we support the principle of effective international co-operation to stop serious crime but reject the idea that efficiency must come at the expense of accountability. These amendments provide the teeth that the current drafting lacks. They would ensure that we do not sleepwalk into a surveillance society by exporting our data without a clear statutory audit trail. I urge the Minister to accept these modest, evidence-based safeguards. I beg to move.
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- Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)Conservative
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- My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, for retabling his amendments. As we outlined in Committee, we are broadly supportive of his intentions. Data sharing, and more so international data sharing, carries a risk of accidental disclosure, and therefore the Government’s new measures must come with the safeguards that ensure the right to privacy and ensure that shared data does not contain information that is prejudicial to British citizens.
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- Lord Katz (Lab)Labour
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- My Lords, I welcome the novel approach taken by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and his retabling of the amendments that we discussed in Committee. I will follow his lead and that of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Lochiel, and try to be brief. I will not regurgitate points made in Committee, although I look forward to seeing whether I take the same stance that I did in Committee of performing, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, “parliamentary jujitsu” in coming to the position that he was not entirely keen on. I want to say, very briefly—and I am happy to write to address the detail in all the amendments—that these measures are vital to provide law enforcement officers with access to new intelligence to fight crime, increase public protection and reduce the threat of societal harm posed by international criminality. The Government are committed to maintaining high data protection standards and ensuring that privacy is not compromised as we strengthen cross-border security. The proposed requirements in these amendments may duplicate established processes rather than add transparency or value. There is a significant risk posed by these amendments that such regulations become burdensome—that is what I said in Committee, and I stand by it—and resource-intensive to a degree where they become unusable in practice.
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- Lord Clement-Jones (LD)Liberal Democrat
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- My Lords, I thank the Minister. I will not take any further time, but I look forward to his letter. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
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Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)Crossbench- Quote
- My Lords, Amendment 429ZA seeks to leave out Clause 212. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, for adding their names to the amendment. Clause 212 addresses situations where a person has been convicted in their absence in a foreign court and their extradition is sought by the country in question. Under Section 20 of the Extradition Act 2003, the key question for our courts in deciding whether to grant extradition is whether the person “deliberately absented” themselves from their original trial, waived their right to be present at that trial or was properly represented in their absence by a lawyer, meaning that a retrial in the other country is unnecessary. In those circumstances, conviction in absence does not by itself prevent extradition. However, if none of those questions can be answered in the affirmative by our courts, extradition is refused unless the person has an absolute and unconditional right to a retrial after being extradited. In a case called Merticariu in 2024, the Supreme Court confirmed that these key questions on whether the person has a right to a retrial in the country in question must be decided by our courts, not foreign courts. Therefore, if our courts have decided that the person did not deliberately absent themselves or waive their right to be present at the original trial or was not properly represented, their entitlement to a retrial must not be dependent on any contingency to be resolved by the foreign court, such as reopening any of those questions. The Supreme Court said, in paragraph 54, that “the requested person is entitled to a retrial rather than entitled to apply for a retrial is consistent with the right of a criminal defendant to be present at trial guaranteed by article 6 of the Convention”. Construing Section 20 of the 2003 Act as requiring our courts to decide whether there is a right to a retrial is consistent with the UK’s obligation to avoid a flagrant denial of justice that would render the proceedings manifestly contrary to the provisions of Article 6 of the ECHR. In his letter to me and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, which arrived earlier today, the Minister states the exact opposite. He says that Clause 212 ensures that, where our courts have found that the person did not deliberately absent themselves, “extradition can proceed if the person has the right to request a retrial on return, subject to the domestic court finding they did not deliberately absent themselves, rather than requiring the requesting state to provide an unconditional right to a retrial”. So the Supreme Court expressly said it must be an unconditional right and the Minister says it can be a conditional right. That can mean only that the Home Office has concluded that the Supreme Court got it wrong on the potential for a breach of Article 6—which is, with respect, “courageous”, as Sir Humphrey would say. In fact, it is doubly courageous, since the Supreme Court also confirmed in paragraph 53 of its ruling that what is now the trade and co-operation agreement, previously the framework directive, requires a right to a retrial, not a mere opportunity to apply for a retrial. The upshot is that, under Clause 212, our courts may have decided that the person did not deliberately absent themselves, for example because they had not been informed of the proceedings, as was the case in Merticariu, and are therefore entitled to a retrial. But the foreign court could then take a different view and deny the person a retrial on their return. Similarly, Clause 212 would provide that, if the person had been legally represented in their absence, they are deemed to have been present when convicted, even if they had had no contact with the lawyer and had given them no instructions—again, as happened in Merticariu. The person would again be denied a retrial. Clause 212 does not say that “legally represented” has to mean mandated or instructed by the person facing extradition: it refers simply to being legally represented, and in Merticariu, the Romanian authorities appointed a public defender and therefore considered that he had been legally represented, even though he had had no contact with that public defender. The Home Office has said that there are other protections in the 2003 Act, such as a general human rights assessment, under Section 21, to prevent any injustice. But this argument seems to be an acceptance that Clause 212 is defective but can be remedied later, and it would leave Clause 212 on the statute book even though it is plainly incompatible with Article 6. In conclusion, Clause 212 is incompatible with our highest court’s ruling that the current law is necessary to comply with Article 6. It should be our courts having the final decision on whether a person has a right to a retrial, to avoid the “flagrant denial of justice” that the Supreme Court referred to. If our courts decide that the person was convicted in their absence through no fault of their own, they will have had no opportunity to defend themselves. In those circumstances, the foreign country must guarantee an absolute and unconditional right to a retrial. If it cannot do so, the person should not be extradited. This is what the 2003 Act currently requires, to ensure adequate protection of Article 6 rights. Clause 212 would remove that protection: therefore, the clause itself must be removed. I beg to move.
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Baroness Brinton (LD)Liberal Democrat- Quote
- My Lords, I signed this amendment, which was originally laid by my late noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness. I think that he would have been very pleased to hear the speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Carter, this evening and would have agreed with every single word. From these Benches, we support him.
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Lord Davies of Gower (Con)Conservative- Quote
- I thank the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere, and indeed the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for their contributions. I will not detain the House for long, as we have heard two very powerful—
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- Lord Davies of Gower (Con)Conservative
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- Well, we have certainly heard one very powerful elucidation of why Clause 212 should be removed from the Bill. In essence, my concern is that this clause grants a foreign court a greater say in whether a British citizen should be extradited when a person is convicted in absentia where they did not deliberately absent themselves from the trial—that is to say, they were convicted without their knowledge. Currently, the British judge at the extradition hearing has to decide whether the person would receive a retrial should they be extradited. This is absolutely right. If a person is convicted without their knowing that they have been faced with the charges in person and without the ability to defend themselves, they have not received a fair trial. The Extradition Act 2003 therefore places the decision as to whether a fair trial can take place firmly in the hands of British judges. This has been strengthened by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Merticariu and Romania, where the court ruled that the entitlement to a retrial must be a guaranteed right, not a conditional one. Essentially, the person must be entitled, rather than might be entitled, to a retrial should they be extradited. Clause 212 undoes this. It would mean that the British judge would have to order a person’s extradition on the simple assertion by the requesting country that the person could be committed to stand trial in person, regardless of whether that is true or not. This places more powers over the extradition of British citizens in the hands of foreign courts and not our own courts. It does not guarantee that British citizens will receive the right to a fair trial. In Committee, the Minister stated that the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Extradition Act as requiring a guaranteed trial is somehow problematic, because that is “something some states cannot offer. Without this fix, certain legitimate extradition requests could be blocked”.—[Official Report, 5/2/26; col. 1749.] I have to say to the Minister that, if a foreign country cannot guarantee that a British citizen will be entitled to a fair trial, we should not be extraditing them to that country. If they cannot guarantee it, the request for extradition should be denied by the court. For these reasons, I firmly support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Carter, to remove the clause from the Bill and, should he press it to a Division, we will support him.
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Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)Labour- Quote
- I am tempted to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, by saying that I hope to keep the clause in and I have signed a compatibility with the Human Rights Act agreement, but I suspect that the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere, will want me to say something more than that. I will try to answer as best I can the points raised by the three noble Lords who have spoken in the debate. I have met them and written to them. In Committee, I explained the Government’s view and I have tried to assure them that the Government’s view is compatible with the points that they have raised, but I shall repeat those points today and, if the noble Lord is not satisfied, he can make his judgment accordingly. In Committee, noble Lords raised concerns and I have had discussions since then. Clause 212 concerns what happens when a UK court has already found that the requested person did not deliberately absent themselves from trial in the requesting state. In those circumstances, the clause ensures that extradition can proceed where a person has the right to retrial subject to the domestic court finding that they did not deliberately absent themselves, rather than requiring the requesting state to provide an unconditional right of retrial in every case. I say to all three noble Lords that this will not change UK courts still requiring the requesting state to show that there are legally prescribed and non-discretionary rights to retrial available to the requested person. As in the cases that have been raised in Committee and this evening—including the case of a constituent of mine, Mr Wright, when I was a Member of Parliament—it will remain the situation that, if the requesting state has already at the time of the UK extradition proceedings determined that the appeal rights are in effect exhausted, the requested person should be discharged. I also say to the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere, that the Government take their responsibilities towards the requested person extremely seriously. UK courts have robust powers under the Extradition Act 2003 to scrutinise and refuse any request that is incompatible with the right to a fair trial. If there are concerns in a specific case that the requested person is suffering, or has suffered, a flagrant denial of justice, the UK judge will scrutinise the case in hand and consider whether extradition would be compatible with the requested person’s Article 6 convention rights. There is no question of a UK court not being able fully to consider whether a requested person is being extradited in circumstances incompatible with their Article 6 rights.
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Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)Conservative- Quote
- I appreciate the time, but we are dealing with cases in which we may be extraditing our citizens in circumstances where they may not have a fair trial abroad. I read the letter from the Minister’s department, although as I understand it, the meeting was on 4 March and the letter only came out today, so that is unfortunate. With respect, I am not sure that the Minister has answered the central point put by the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Carter. I ask the Minister to look at the relevant subsection in Clause 212, which sets out the full circumstances in which our courts will extradite somebody. Under new paragraph (a), we will extradite them if the person would be entitled to a retrial abroad. That was the issue in the Supreme Court case in which the leading judgment was given by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett of Maldon. The issue was whether “would be entitled” means “is entitled to ask for a retrial” or “is entitled to a retrial”. The Supreme Court held it to mean “entitled to a retrial”. However, new paragraph (b) says—
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- Lord Clement-Jones (LD)Liberal Democrat
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- Question!
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- Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)Conservative
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- I am asking a question. It seems that only three noble Lords are entitled to speak in this debate. New paragraph (b) says that “the person would be so entitled unless a court in the territory concerned were to decide that they deliberately absented themselves from their trial”. Is it not the case, therefore, that new paragraph (b) means that our courts could decide that the person had not deliberately absented themselves, and extradite the person? But the foreign court could then say that the person had deliberately absented themselves and deny them the retrial. In other words, I ask the Minister, is it not the case that new paragraph (b) introduces the very vice the Supreme Court was at pains to exclude in its decision?
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Lord Sandhurst (Con)Conservative- Quote
- Answer!
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- Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)Labour
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- Well, let me first relate to the question of the letter. We had a discussion in Committee and a meeting in person. I promised to write a letter and that letter has been received. There are lots of letters going around for this Bill, and there is a lot of background and lots of amendments. I am trying my best to put on record for the noble Lord the points that the Government have taken. I put on record tonight the Government’s view that the individual concerned has the protections of the ECHR and the right—
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- Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)Conservative
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- My Lords—
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- Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)Labour
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- Let me finish. I am surrounded by a phalanx of lawyers who deal with this on a daily basis. I am trying to represent, at 12.36 am, the Government’s position on this, as I have done. I hold that position. If the noble Lord does not agree with it, there will be an opportunity any moment now to divide and I suggest that he does so. I give way to my noble and learned friend, whom I still regard as a friend as we entered Parliament on the same day, a long time ago.
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Lord Garnier (Con)Conservative- Quote
- The Minister is very kind—and has a long memory. Does he remember, as I do, the debates we had in the run-up to the US-UK bilateral extradition treaty, which formed part of the Extradition Act of the same year? Does he remember that that was the subject of a great deal of reassurance from the then Labour Government, because the perceived imbalance between the rights of US citizens and those of United Kingdom citizens on the mutual extradition of our citizens was a matter of huge controversy? The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, as he is now, was very happy to assure us that everything was going to be hunky-dory and that nobody would be dissatisfied by the implementation of the treaty. I accept that this is not on all fours with this debate introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Carter, but we need to be a little careful not to be too complacent. My noble friend Lord Wolfson identified two very good reasons why we should not be complacent, so I urge the Government to think, within the context of the 2003 disaster, that they should not blindly go down the road of another disaster through Clause 212.
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- Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)Labour
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- The noble and learned Lord tempts me to remember things that happened a long time ago. We have had a lot of discussion on those matters. For the benefit of the House, I have tried to set out the Government’s position in relation to the issues the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere, has raised. I have done that face to face with Home Office lawyers present in a meeting, I have done it in a letter—which, admittedly, I accept arrived today—and I have placed the issues on the record today. I suggest that if noble Lords are not happy with the contents of the meeting, the letter and my contributions, they vote accordingly. I beg to move my amendment, and I hope the noble Lord will not push his.
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- Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)Crossbench
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- My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords who have spoken today so powerfully. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hanson, that I do not in the slightest bit resent the fact that the letter arrived so late; I appreciate that there is a lot going on at the moment. It arrived in time enough for me to digest it. It seems to be my fate that amendments that I feel strongly about come on at absurd hours of the evening—or should I say early morning? However, from the interventions that we have heard, I gather that it is not just me who feels strongly about this issue; noble and noble and learned Lords on the opposition Benches have spoken powerfully in support of what I said. This is about the possibility of British citizens not getting a fair trial in a foreign country. Clause 212 opens the door to that possibility, and for that reason I seek to test the opinion of the House.
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- Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)Labour
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- I beg to move.
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Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)Conservative- Quote
- My Lords, it is the luck of the draw: I rise again, late in the evening, moving Amendment 438 in my name and those of the noble Earl, Lord Russell, and my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough, which we have adjusted in the light of the discussion in Committee. It would tackle serious sabotage of undersea cables by giving the Secretary of State the power to regulate for a 15-year prison sentence and an unlimited fine. In a very dangerous world, we need a strong deterrent, closer to that which already exists for the power sector. As I explained in Committee, this is a long-standing issue, well articulated in a 2017 pamphlet for Policy Exchange by Admiral James Stavridis of the US Navy, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander: “While few realise it, our ability to transmit confidential information, to conduct financial transactions and to communicate internationally all depend upon a global network of physical cables lying under the sea”. The Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy released a report on the subject last year. It found: “The UK has plenty of cable routes and good repair processes for business-as-usual”. However, it found “particular vulnerabilities around the UK’s outlying islands, military cables and the financial sector”, with “a small set of high-value targets”. Onshore infrastructure was also a concern, with links to data centres “creating worrying levels of concentration”. All this infrastructure could be targeted in a crisis. In response to the report, the Government committed to increasing penalties for those who damage subsea cables where the activity cannot be clearly linked to a hostile state. I am glad to say that this can already be addressed under the National Security Act 2023. In Committee, and in a helpful letter from the noble Baroness, Lady Lloyd, at DSIT, the Government agreed to legislate in a more comprehensive way. That is welcome, but I have experienced such promises in relation to online harms legislation, which took eight years, so I remain nervous. The 1885 Act is plainly inadequate for today’s more dangerous security situation. Our amendment would leave responsibility for making changes to penalties in the hands of Ministers, requiring only a report to Parliament on the exercise of the power or, alternatively, legislation to modify the arrangements more comprehensively—and I know the latter is the direction of travel that the Government prefer. Our amendment’s strength is that it would ensure that something will actually happen in response to the Joint Committee’s worrying report. I hope the Minister can give us a more solid response this evening to avoid yet a further Division at this late hour. I beg to move.
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Lord Cromwell (CB)Crossbench- Quote
- My Lords, I support this amendment. Undersea cables are our critical infrastructure. They are the arteries in and out of the heart of the UK’s economy, its defence, our national commerce and even our ability to communicate. They are fundamental to our security, our stability and our very survival as a society. The fact that the legislation for this vital 21st-century infrastructure has not seriously been updated since the mid-19th century, with its laughable £100 fine for negligence, is a perfect illustration of how for decades we have taken for granted our security and resilience. We need to stop being complacent and wake up to the reality that we need to protect these cables as our lifeline to and from the world beyond our shores. Part of what needs to be done is embodied in this amendment, with its punitive deterrence of interference with the cables. The debate in the other place recognised the need to act, as did the government response, which stated that what is needed is “strong deterrents, such as major fines and criminal liability”. Yes, there is much else to be done to build the UK’s resilience, increase our defences and deter our adversaries, but this is part of that strategy, and I urge the Minister and the House to give it their support.
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Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)Conservative- Quote
- My Lords, I support the excellent amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe. It is timely, given the unstable nature of our world, particularly with regard to China and Russia, and the fact that, ever since the 2022 Nord Stream pipeline bombings, the idea of hybrid warfare or asymmetrical warfare waged from one nation to another, particularly affecting the Baltic states, is much more prevalent. I will give a couple of examples of recent incidents. In December 2025 Finnish police detained the vessel “Fitburg”, travelling from Russia, for allegedly damaging a cable between Helsinki and Estonia, and in November 2024 a PRC-rigged ship carrying Russian cargo was linked to damage to two Baltic cables. The concept of dragging anchors to damage nautical infrastructure and cables is now quite widespread, and it is an issue that has been to the fore in the strategy of NATO countries. I have two final points. First, this is an important amendment because it is not just state actors that are engaged in these practices. It is plausible and likely that the prevalence of this damage of vital nautical infrastructure, which affects utilities, energy et cetera, would be subcontracted to non-state actors. On that basis, it is appropriate to amend this clause with this amendment. Secondly, in her typically positive way, my noble friend has praised the Minister for engaging on this issue in Committee. She is quite right, and—I always say this, but it is nevertheless true—this is a helpful amendment. I do not think that this is particularly a party-political issue, but the amendment gives Ministers an imperative to do something about it. The amendment says to Ministers: if you do not choose to legislate specifically, with a discrete piece of legislation, then at least explain whether you think that the existing legislation is inadequate, aged and not fit for purpose—as the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, rightly said—carry out a review of that and come forward with new legislation. If that is possible, I think that there is a degree of consensus around my noble friend’s excellent amendment. I think that the Minister should look at this issue. The hour is late, of course, but this is an incredibly vital and pressing issue on hybrid warfare, which, as I have said, will affect all our citizens over the coming years. It is better to get in early to upgrade the legislation and take advantage of this helpful, collaborative amendment to make the changes necessary.
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Earl Russell (LD)Liberal Democrat- Quote
- My Lords, I will speak very briefly. We listened carefully to what the Minister said in Committee and this is a genuine attempt to rewrite the amendment to make it less prescriptive and more flexible for the Government and Ministers. I welcome the letter that we received today. I know that the Government recognise that things need to be done. On our side, we recognise that this is a complicated space and that it needs to be properly thought out. I hope that we can find a way forward—perhaps a meeting would help.
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- Lord Davies of Gower (Con)Conservative
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- My Lords, I thank my noble friends Lady Neville-Rolfe and Lord Jackson of Peterborough for tabling this amendment and the noble Earl, Lord Russell, for adding his name to it. It addresses the need to review and update the legislation dealing with the sabotaging of our critical national infrastructure at the current time. Permitting the Secretary of State the power to increase the penalties for damaging submarine cables to 15 years reflects the heightened risk and the seriousness of the offence. The demand for submarine cables is exorbitantly more than when the Act in question was first passed over 150 years ago, so the punishment for inflicting damage to them should reflect that change. Similarly, at a time when international security is fracturing, securing our undersea cables is incredibly important. The same can be said for proposed new subsection (3) in the amendment. Updating the 1885 Act’s contents is a step, but thorough analysis should be undertaken on its adequacy in the modern day. A one-year report is a very welcome measure and we wholly support it.
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- Baroness Levitt (Lab)Labour
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- My Lords, as I said in Committee, the Government take the protection of the UK’s subsea cable network extremely seriously. I mean it genuinely when I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, for her continued and sustained attention on this important issue. I would love to be able to give her what she wants, but I am sorry to disappoint her again this evening. The Government cannot support this amendment. It is unnecessary. We have already committed to updating the Submarine Telegraph Act, on which my noble friend Lady Lloyd of Effra, the Minister for Digital Economy, will say more in the coming months. We also consider the existing penalties under the Submarine Telegraph Act to be significant. That said, as part of any update to the Act, this Government will review whether the existing penalties are fit for purpose. Significant changes of this kind must follow proper consultation, especially with our fishing and wider maritime sectors. This is a process that the statutory deadline proposed in this amendment would prevent. Creating such a narrow power to amend primary legislation through secondary legislation is highly unusual. Requiring the Government to report on future legislation through a deadline in an unrelated Act would set an unhelpful precedent. I am more than happy to meet the noble Lord, the noble Earl and the noble Baroness to see if we can find a way through that will satisfy them on the progress that we are making and reassure them that we are genuine when we say that we are doing so—it is not just another patch of that fabled long grass. For these reasons, I respectfully urge the noble Baroness not to press her amendment this evening.
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- Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)Conservative
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- I have to say that I am very grateful, again, for support across the House—even, it seems, on the government Benches. Given the late hour, I shall not detain the House further. But with the noble Earl, Lord Russell, I very much look forward to meeting the Minister and the noble Baroness, Lady Lloyd, to see how we can move this matter forward in a reasonable timescale, learning from the online harms legislation. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
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- Earl Russell (LD)Liberal Democrat
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- My Lords, I shall speak to this group of amendments on pollution—and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for supporting them. I declare my interest as a board member and director of the Water Retail Company. I listened carefully to the constructive debate and I welcomed the Minister’s response. However, the response highlighted a couple of areas that need further thought. Despite the Government’s welcome activity in this space, we still feel that there is more that could be done.
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- Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)Green Party
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- My Lords, even at 1.17 am, noble Lords will notice that I am not the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, but I shall speak on this since my noble friend signed these amendments, so ably introduced by the noble Earl, Lord Russell. The reality is that the public are sick—they are fed up and they are falling ill. The water companies were privatised, with a public asset handed over into the rapacious hands of hedge funds and fat cat bosses, and they are pumping sewage into our rivers and seas and getting away with it. Year after year, they miss their own targets and nothing really changes—no real consequences and no real accountability. These are amendments that keep pushing and saying to the Government that what they are doing is not enough. What could they do? It is pretty obvious: these services need to be run for public good, not private profit. That is the ultimate step. However, if the Government will not go that far, surely we need to see more action. Communities are seeing adults and children getting sick and their precious natural environments getting seriously damaged. They are denied access to what should be their crucial public spaces. This has to stop. The companies and bosses must not be allowed to continue to get away with this.
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- Lord Davies of Gower (Con)Conservative
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- My Lords, I will be brief in reiterating that I support the aims of the noble Earl, Lord Russell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, but we cannot support these two amendments. Water companies are already subject to thorough oversight, and Ofwat and the Environment Agency have regulatory powers over them. Additional offences will simply increase hostility and legal costs. Similarly, even if we did agree with additional measures requiring an arbitrary measurement for an arbitrary number of consecutive years, that is not the way to improve service quality. It entirely misunderstands the nature of the market and how to incentivise improvement. We therefore cannot support the measures.
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- Lord Katz (Lab)Labour
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- My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Russell, for turning to the pressing issue of pollution in our waterways, on which I think we all agree. I endorse the comments of not just the noble Earl but the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and the noble Lord, Lord Davies, that we need change in the water sector. I understand the motivations behind these amendments, as I said in Committee, but I repeat what I said then: they would duplicate existing powers and cut across the Government’s work to create a unified and coherent system of incentives and penalties to turn around the water and wastewater sector. I absolutely agree that fining after the event is all well and good, but we want to create a system of proper incentives and deterrents to make sure that behaviour is altered and pollution does not happen in the first place. I take issue with the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, saying that we are not doing anything—far from it. The Government’s recent water White Paper set out our long-term, sector-wide reset, which will be delivered through forthcoming legislation. One of the chief things we are doing is creating a single powerful new regulator which will ensure that any future criminal sanctions or escalations are applied within a coherent and unified enforcement system, rather than via overlapping offences and split accountability. There are quite a few different regulators regulating various aspects of the water sector, and this will bring it all together under one roof and stop water companies marking their own homework. This builds on the measures introduced in the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025, which expanded sentencing powers—including the toughest sentencing powers against law-breaking water executives in history—increased the range and scale of financial penalties, and enabled Ofwat to ban executive bonuses where standards are not met. Indeed, it has banned bonuses in, I think, six out of the nine water companies. This is action we are taking against water companies’ executives, so to say that nothing is happening is a little unfair, to say the least. The measures in that Act complement existing financial penalties for not meeting performance commitments, with more than £700 million returned to customers over the past five years. As I said, I understand the concerns expressed by the noble Lords, and I do not think there is much disagreement between us all on the need for action, but it is right that the package of reforms for the water sector be looked at holistically rather than piecemeal. The noble Earl, Lord Russell, will know that there will be ample opportunities to scrutinise the Government’s water White Paper in due course, and, with that, I ask him to withdraw the amendment.
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- Earl Russell (LD)Liberal Democrat
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- My Lords, I thank the Minister for his detailed reply. I recognise that, as he says, things are happening in this space, but more needs to happen. He regarded as a mark of success the fact that six companies have had their bonuses suspended; actually, I see it more as a mark of failure. That we are still having to place these impositions on the water companies and are still not getting full compliance shows the limit of what we are able to achieve. As the Minister said, we can return to this at a later date, and I do not mean to do that now. I just say to the Official Opposition that mine are not arbitrary targets; they are taken from Ofwat and the regulations. But with that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
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Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)Labour- Quote
- My Lords, at this hour I should be sleeping or dancing; I am at least barely standing. At 10 years, the age of criminal responsibility in England, Wales and Northern Ireland is the lowest in Europe. It is two years below Scotland and four years below the age advocated by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. It is contrary to everything we understand about brain development, and in facilitating criminalisation rather than the proper care, protection, and education of children, it is out of step with progressive values. I thank all those across the House who supported an amendment in Committee to raise the age to 14. None the less, in the spirit of compromise, I now propose 12 years old, in line with the law north of the border—where the heavens did not fall. In so doing, I pay tribute to the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, and many other penal reformers in this House who, for decades, have pursued this and similar humanist causes. I urge noble Lords—I look at my noble friends in particular—to dig deep into their values, search their souls and ask what this says about us. I beg to move.
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Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)Crossbench- Quote
- My Lords, I put my name to this amendment, as did the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett of Maldon. Not surprisingly, given the time, he has had to leave the House, but he asked me to say that he remains very supportive of this amendment, and noble Lords will perhaps realise that we are talking about a former Lord Chief Justice, the head of the criminal courts of this country. This is the third time that I have tried to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 12. I tried it with a Labour Government under Tony Blair, I tried it with the Conservative and Lib Dem Government of David Cameron, and I am trying it now again with a Labour Government. It is very sad that, in all those years, absolutely nothing has been done. As the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, has reminded the House, there is now a considerable body of medical evidence about the extent to which, and how slowly, the brains of children mature. We are talking about 10 year-olds. That evidence was not there when I asked the Government in 2006 but it is there now in 2026, yet there has still been no movement. Those who are very young at 10 will almost certainly know the difference between right and wrong, but what they will not know, which really does not come to us until we are older, is the extent of the consequences of the actions that they take. Again and again, those of us who are mothers, grandmothers, grandfathers and fathers will know perfectly well what I am talking about. That is true of criminal responsibility as well as the ordinary life that parents and grandparents have with their children. I said in Committee, and I must say again, that the four children’s commissioners of the United Kingdom said in a report that the UK is the most punitive of all the European countries. That is quite astonishing, but, unfortunately, it has not been picked up by any Government. As the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, has reminded the House, Scotland has moved from the age of eight to 12 without any serious consequences. I cannot understand why a Government cannot move to some extent. It makes me think, and I say this with sadness, that every Government are scared of press headlines. I cannot see any other reason why they will not move. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett of Maldon, said this to me, and I say it to the Government: will they at least take this issue away and look at it? Will they just start to think that we are talking about 10 year-olds, and possibly move at some point? Speaking as a Cross-Bencher, I would have thought that a Labour Government, of all Governments, would understand this. I am truly sad that nothing so far has been done.
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- Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)Green Party
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- My Lords, I speak briefly and humbly in such distinguished legal company as both speakers to this group and the signatories who are not with us. It is a great pity that we are debating this at 1.30 am, given, as the noble and learned Baroness has just said, it is such an important issue that people have been working on for so many years. The noble and learned Baroness asked why this is not happening. It is obvious that we need courage in our politics. The public are looking to see that courage being shown in the face of what is often very loud and strident opposition—and that opposition does not mean that we should not do the right thing anyway.
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- Baroness Brinton (LD)Liberal Democrat
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- My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, for bringing this amendment back and for her speech, and to the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, for their detailed exposition. I may be marginally longer than I was in my previous speech, because I particularly want to thank my noble friend Lord Dholakia for championing this issue in the decades that he has been in your Lordships’ House. It would be wonderful if we could make further progress on this. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, for the compromise. Despite the fact that I am a former trustee of UNICEF UK and would advocate that 14 is a good age, as it does, there is some merit in having the same age of criminal responsibility as in Scotland. We can learn from how Scotland has implemented it—everything is there, ready for us to learn from. The most important thing is that, instead of criminalising children between the ages of 10 and 12, we prioritise safeguarding and care for them, because, as others have said, they are the most vulnerable children in our society.
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- Lord Davies of Gower (Con)Conservative
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- My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, for tabling Amendment 441, which would raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 12. This issue was debated at some length in Committee. As I set out then, the question before the House is not whether children should be protected but whether raising the age of criminal responsibility would deliver better outcomes for children and the wider public. We on these Benches remain unconvinced that that would be the case. The current framework under the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 does not exist to criminalise children unnecessarily. It exists to ensure that, in those rare but serious cases where harm is caused, the state retains the ability to intervene early and proportionately. Crucially, that intervention takes place within a youth justice system that is distinct from the adult system, with rehabilitation at its core. As has been previously noted, the evidence shows that this power is used sparingly, with the vast majority of children diverted away from formal proceedings. Raising the age risks removing an important safeguard in those exceptional cases where serious offending does occur, and would create a gap in our ability to respond effectively to harmful behaviour, including serious violence and exploitation, among 10 to 12 year-olds. There is wider concern that setting the threshold too high may have unintended consequences, including the potential for older offenders to exploit younger children who fall below the age of responsibility. For those reasons, while I recognise the intent behind the amendment, it does not strike the right balance between protecting children and protecting the public. We therefore cannot support it.
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- Baroness Levitt (Lab)Labour
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- My Lords, I both thank and admire my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, for their long-lasting and ongoing commitment to the cause of ensuring that children are not inappropriately criminalised. As the noble Lord, Lord Davies, has just said, we debated in Committee at some length the issues associated with the change proposed by my noble friend, who, at that stage, proposed that the age of criminal responsibility should be 14, now reduced to 12 in the present amendment. The Government’s position remains, as I said then, that setting the age of criminal responsibility at 10 provides critical flexibility to respond appropriately to children who engage in criminal activity. This includes diverting them away from formal criminal justice procedures when appropriate. I do not intend to rehearse those arguments today, but I must repeat that this is a complex and sensitive issue. Any policy change would need to be informed by in-depth engagement with legal, youth justice, child development and welfare experts, as well as victims and the wider public. My right honourable friend the Deputy Prime Minister, together with the Minister for Courts, recently met the Bar Council, which has set up a working group to consider the need to increase the age of criminal responsibility in England and Wales. We welcome this scrutiny on the matter and look forward to considering the findings in due course. In the meantime, I invite my noble friend not to press her amendment tonight.
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- Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)Labour
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- I am grateful to all noble Lords, particularly at this witching hour—or beyond. We are in the wrong place at the moment. I am not going to rehearse the arguments, but I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for not slamming the door or locking it, and for engaging with the Bar Council’s review. Future generations will not look kindly on us for suggesting that 10 year-olds should be criminalised. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
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Lord Mendelsohn (Lab)Labour- Quote
- My Lords, I am grateful to everyone who is here at this time, especially to all the Front-Benchers on this marathon stretch. I will speak to Amendment 441C, which stands in my name and is supported by the noble Lord, Lord Polak, and my noble friend Lady Ramsey of Wall Heath. The amendment would require the Director of Public Prosecutions to establish a unit within the Crown Prosecution Service to support the prosecution of offences motivated by antisemitism and to ensure that those cases are properly tracked and understood. Members of this House will be acutely aware of the frequency with which problems of antisemitism are raised and of the many cases where prosecution has not gone through or not been carried through particularly well. Figures produced by the Home Office for the year to 2025 starkly illustrate how outcomes differ, particularly in relation to antisemitism. In two communities that have each faced a significant rise in incidents, there is a clear illustration of the impact. For Muslim victims, there are 12 religious hate crime offences per 10,000 of the population; for Jewish victims there are 106. The prosecution rate for Muslim victims is 6.7% and for Jewish victims it is 3.8%. I am not remotely suggesting that either figure is any way acceptable, and there need to be improvements, but the weakness in the case when it comes to antisemitism is self-evident. The measure that the amendment suggests is the establishment of a unit that specialises in the prosecution of offences motivated by antisemitism to try to increase the prosecution rate. It is not an uncommon practice for the CPS to create units to effectively manage complex, high-profile or sensitive cases or where a focus on a significant area of specialisation is required. The counterterrorism division was established in the light of the 11 September attack on the United States and the London bombings of 5 July 2005. In 2011, as part of a new national structure, this division became part of the special crime and counterterrorism division. That division has the nominal remit to address this range of issues, but the current performance across the piece makes the case for further specialisation. We have seen how that has worked more effectively with the example of the violence against women and girls unit, which was established in 2008 and further established the rape and serious sexual offences unit. The defined purpose of these units is to improve the quality of the casework, increase successful prosecutions, and enhance the support and services provided to victims. These units have allowed the CPS to adapt and even ensure significant transformations in the method and strategies employed. I do not want to suggest that this provides an absolute solution in any way as we have seen difficulties with cases in those areas as well, but it certainly provides the CPS with a more effective base to do that. It is important to say here that it has become a much more widely accepted view that these measures are not being dealt with as adequately as they should. On many occasions, when looking at these issues, we have noted that there is a wide array of existing laws that are not being applied. Measures are of course being introduced through this Bill that will help with the situation—indeed, a review being undertaken by the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, will address some of the other issues—but the core operation of the CPS requires this unit. The case was well made by the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, Jonathan Hall, in a recent speech. I will use two of his great illustrations, which helped make the point as to why this specialisation clearly seems to be lacking at the moment. First, he said: “The truth is that hatred of nationality fits onto hatred of race like a glove. And importantly, our law recognizes this. The Public Order Act 1986 prohibits stirring up racial hatred”. He then quoted Section 17 of the 1986 Act, which defines racial hatred: “In this Part ‘racial hatred’ means hatred against a group of persons defined by reference to colour, race, nationality (including citizenship) or ethnic or national origins”. He made the very strong observation that he had “lost count of the times that hatred against Israelis has been stirred up on British streets” in a way that should fall firmly within that definition. Secondly, he made a point about the precautionary principle. He said: “The precautionary principle was described by our own Supreme Court last year as preventative—about deciding to act, rather than waiting until directly harmful … activities have taken place”. He noted that it is “provisional”, not determinative, and “capable of responding to evidence”. He said that the many sectarian calls to violence and criminal damage have become normalised because the precautionary principle has not been applied, used or introduced effectively by the CPS. I suspect that, at this late hour, my noble friend the Minister, who is impressive and unflappable, would accept this amendment only in error. But I hope that the Government will reflect on this and be willing to consider what can be done, even if that means just extending the scope of the review by the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, to encompass the issues behind the amendment. I beg to move.
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Lord Polak (Con)Conservative- Quote
- My Lords, at its heart, this amendment is about confidence: confidence that when antisemitism occurs, it is recognised; confidence that when it crosses the criminal threshold, it will be prosecuted; and confidence that Jewish communities in this country are properly protected. Earlier today I spoke at the Holocaust Survivors’ Centre in Golders Green to 40 or 50 Holocaust survivors. I asked them a question: having been through what they went through, are they shocked and surprised about the extent of antisemitism in the United Kingdom today? It was shocking to hear what these people, given what they have been through, said to me. That proves it: the confidence that I referred to is being tested. Too often, cases are not progressing as they should. Too often, victims come forward and see no meaningful outcome. Too often, the antisemitic nature of an offence is not fully reflected in how it is handled. When that happens repeatedly, confidence begins to erode. The amendment is necessary for a very straightforward reason: at present, antisemitism is not properly prosecuted. That is the reality. We are seeing cases where clear antisemitic conduct is not being charged, or where cases are being dropped. At the same time, antisemitism itself is rising sharply and visibly. That combination is deeply concerning. Part of the difficulty is that modern antisemitism is multifaceted. It includes long-standing forms of hatred, but it also appears online through extremist propaganda designed to normalise hostility towards Jewish people. Recent events have shown the devastating consequences of this hatred, both in the UK and abroad. It is often expressed through language and slogans that require context to understand. Phrases such as “globalise the intifada” or “Zionists off our streets” are not always interpreted consistently. The CPS is not equipped to deal with that complexity at present, and a dedicated unit would help to address it.
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- Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Lab)Labour
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- My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 441C, tabled by my noble friend Lord Mendelsohn, and in the name also of the noble Lord, Lord Polak. As to the hour, I echo the comments of my noble friend and fear I shall be the most unpopular Peer in the room. I have cut what I was going to say by at least half, so I hope noble Lords will bear with me. This amendment seeks to create a dedicated antisemitism unit within the CPS that would ensure that antisemitism receives the focused attention and expertise that it requires. Prosecutors will be better equipped to recognise the way in which modern antisemitism presents itself, to understand the context between particular language and behaviour, and to ensure that cases are handled consistently and effectively. This is especially important at a time when antisemitism is not only rising but becoming more visible, and in many cases normalised, in parts of our public life and discourse. For Jewish communities across this country, the sense of security that should accompany ordinary life has been profoundly shaken. I feel a particular responsibility, as a non-Jewish member of the House, to say this, and not to leave it only to Jewish Members of the House to say. I am not suggesting that the House does that, but I merely remark on why I have stood after the two previous noble Lords. The terrorist attack at Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester on Yom Kippur, and the attack targeting Jewish people at Bondi Beach in Australia during Hanukkah, underscore the very real and growing threat facing Jewish communities, and these are not isolated incidents. In the past fortnight alone, a synagogue in Michigan was attacked, an armed man entered a synagogue in Norway, and there was an arson attack on a synagogue in Rotterdam. Explosions have been reported at synagogues in Liège in Belgium, and in Amsterdam. Together, these incidents illustrate the scale and persistence of the danger confronting Jewish communities today. Here in the United Kingdom the scale of the problem is deeply troubling. In six months alone last year, over 1,500 antisemitic incidents were reported. These are not abstract figures. They reflect real fear, intimidation and harm experienced by Jewish communities across the country. As stated by the noble Lord, Lord Polak, antisemitism has always been a uniquely persistent form of hatred, but today it often manifests itself in ways that are not always immediately recognised. It appears through coded language, through slogan and conspiracy narratives, and through hostility that targets Jewish identity indirectly, while claiming to be about something else entirely. People must know that when antisemitism occurs it will not be dismissed, misunderstood or minimised. They must know that the institution of justice is capable of recognising the harm that has been done and of responding with clarity and resolve. This amendment represents a practical step in helping to ensure that antisemitism is properly understood, properly addressed and properly prosecuted. If we are serious about confronting antisemitism in our society, we must ensure that our justice system is equipped to meet that challenge. This amendment would help us to do precisely that.
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- Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)Conservative
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- My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, for bringing forward this amendment and for highlighting the real, continuing and concerning issue of antisemitism, particularly at present—a point just made by the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsey. I also thank my noble friend Lord Polak for his powerful speech in support of the amendment. We on these Benches recognise that tackling antisemitism in all its forms is of the utmost, pressing importance. We all agree that it is a pernicious form of hatred that has no place in our society, and that it is essential that the criminal justice system responds robustly and effectively when such offences occur. While I fully agree with and support the objective behind this amendment, I have some reservations about the approach it proposes. The creation of a dedicated unit within the CPS, focused on a single form of hate crime, runs the risk of fragmenting what must remain a coherent and consistent approach to the prosecution of all hate offences. It is notable that CPS already has established mechanisms for dealing with hate crime that bring together expertise across a range of protected characteristics. It has a framework that allows for consistency in decision-making, the sharing of best practice and a co-ordinated response to different, but often overlapping, forms of hostility. Creating a unit dedicated to one specific group, however well-intentioned, raises questions about parity across the system. There will be other communities facing serious and sustained forms of hatred that may reasonably ask why similar structures are not being created for them. For those reasons, while I strongly support the continued efforts to combat antisemitism, I remain to be persuaded that this amendment represents the right way to achieve that.
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- Lord Katz (Lab)Labour
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- I thank my noble friend Lord Mendelsohn for tabling this amendment, which he also tabled in Committee, and I thank all who spoke for their contributions, in particular my noble friend Lady Ramsey of Wall Heath and the noble Lords, Lord Polak and Lord Cameron of Lochiel. I am going to start by finding common cause—somewhat usually, but it is nice to do it, even at this late hour—with the noble Lord, Lord Cameron. As I said in Committee, it would be inappropriate for Parliament to prescribe the internal organisation of the Crown Prosecution Service. The CPS is rightly operationally independent of government, and it is up to the Director of Public Prosecutions to deploy the resources at its disposal to bring prosecutions forward. Having said that, I reassure my noble friend that the CPS and the Government take the issue of antisemitism extremely seriously. The CPS has trained prosecutors in place to prosecute all hate crime offences, including antisemitism. I note the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, on parity of esteem and regard when it comes to other minority hate crimes. We need to have care towards that. However, the CPS already maintains an internal network of specialist hate crime co-ordinators across each of its regional teams, led by a chief crown prosecutor national lead, to ensure a consistent and robust approach to tackling hate crimes. With regard to antisemitism specifically, the organisation has gone a step further, enrolling all senior civil servants, including chief crown prosecutors and deputy chief crown prosecutors, in mandatory training on antisemitism to improve awareness across the CPS. The CPS’s conduct of hate crime cases is subject to considerable independent external scrutiny. This includes a series of hate crime inspections that are scheduled to be carried out by His Majesty’s Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate this year. This includes an inspection of racially and religiously aggravated hate crime that will include consideration of cases involving antisemitism. These inspections will examine the CPS’s handling of these cases and its service to victims. The CPS is an active member of the cross-government Antisemitism Working Group and the National Police Chiefs’ Council gold group on community tensions. It works collaboratively with criminal justice partners and stakeholders to ensure a joined-up approach. I hope that goes some way to reassure my noble friend and your Lordships’ House about the efforts being made within the CPS to raise awareness and understanding of antisemitism, and to ensure that it receives the priority that it deserves. The CPS will hear this debate—by that I mean it will read or watch this debate and the debate we had in Committee. It will be aware that there are concerns in the community, and that will be at the forefront of its mind. The noble Lord, Lord Polak, talked about issues of confidence, as did, in a similar way, my noble friend Lord Mendelsohn. On the reaction to the question that the noble Lord, Lord Polak, posed to Holocaust survivors—yesterday, now—from my experience, I am saddened but not surprised by that reaction. I want to provide a wider confidence that the Government are cognisant of this issue and doing all they can to tackle and understand antisemitism, including how it finds its way on to the streets and the underlying causes. Briefly, there are measures in the Bill around public order policing, including conditions around the cumulative impact of protests and protesting around places of worship—which, in turn were direct reactions to the fatal terrorist incident at Heaton Park synagogue last autumn. As we heard, there is a wider review of public order policing, being undertaken by the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven. There are reviews of antisemitism in both the NHS and schools, which are being undertaken by my noble friend Lord Mann and Sir David Bell respectively. Just last week, we heard from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government about the new social cohesion strategy, Protecting What Matters. Take it from me, the Community Security Trust’s reaction to this was very positive. It pointed out that the announcements in the plan “root Jews within British society and rightly treat antisemitism as a matter of national importance”. It called out the predominant threat of Islamism and the far right, not only to Jews but to national cohesion. I hope that will give your Lordships some confidence that the importance of tackling antisemitism—for the impact it has on the Jewish community and on our national life and character, and what it says about the kind of society that we want to live in—is something that the Government treat and will continue to treat very seriously. With that in mind, and given the late hour, I ask my noble friend to withdraw his amendment.
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- 01:45
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- Speaker
- Lord Mendelsohn (Lab)Labour
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- My Lords, I will not detain the House at all with this. I hear the reassurance. The Minister talked about the many groups that the CPS is involved with. It would be useful for him to reflect more carefully on the operation of those. I did not invent the idea that this was a problem deep in the CPS; there are others in the system who have reflected that view through contributions made in this House. I urge the Minister to consider that the disparity in the core numbers requires a little more than saying that things are covered adequately as it stands. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
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- 01:45
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- Speaker
- Lord Davies of Gower (Con)Conservative
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- My Lords, Amendment 441E, standing in my name, was brought about after the recent case of Mark Hehir. Mr Hehir was the bus driver who courageously took it upon himself to assist one of his passengers who was the victim of theft. He chased down the offender and apprehended him. In an attempt to protect his passengers and members of the public, Mr Hehir placed himself at real risk. His actions should be applauded, yet Mr Hehir was fired for his actions. The public agree, and a petition in support of Mr Hehir now has 147,000 signatories, demonstrating the widespread view that those who protect others should be commended and supported, not left vulnerable to professional or personal consequences. Amendment 441E would go some way to addressing the divergence between what should have happened to Mr Hehir and the unfortunate reality. It seeks to amend the Employment Rights Act 1996 so that employers may not act against their employees where those employees have acted in instances to prevent crime or bring about the lawful arrest of offenders. Should the Minister choose to reject this amendment, what steps will the Government take to rectify Mr Hehir’s regrettable situation specifically? What proposals are they minded to take to ensure that no similar instances arise again?
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- 01:45
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- Speaker
- Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)Labour
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- I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower. I declare an interest as a member of the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers for 55 years. In the interests of time, I should say that assaulting a retail worker is an offence in the Bill. Shop theft is something that the Government do not tolerate. In the Bill we are changing the law on recognition of shop theft. When someone witnesses or is subject to a crime, they should contact the police as soon as possible. I pay tribute to those workforce members who attempt to prevent shop theft through their actions. However, Section 24A of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 does provide for a power of citizen’s arrest, which permits individuals to arrest someone who is committing, or whom they reasonably suspect to be committing, an indictable offence. Furthermore, Section 3 of the Criminal Law Act 1967 provides that: “A person may use such force as is reasonable … in the prevention of crime, or in … assisting in the … arrest of offenders or suspected offenders”. It is right for a court to decide what constitutes reasonable force, which will depend on an individual case. The noble Lord has placed on record his concern about supermarkets, retailers and other companies adopting non-confrontational policies when dealing with suspected shop thieves. It is for companies to set their own policies to ensure that they keep their staff safe. Companies still have a duty of care over staff. But the balance to that is that if a company dismisses an employee, such as in the case that the noble Lord mentioned, such a dismissal will be considered fair only if it is seen to be fair to dismiss the employee in all the circumstances of the action that they took and if a fair process has been followed. I want to balance the right of employment with the right for a company to set a safeguarding principle against potential actions that staff may take in response to shop theft or other committed criminality. Whether an act of physical violence could be relied upon as an act of gross misconduct allowing for dismissal without notice, or as a matter of ordinary misconduct, will depend on the specific circumstances of the case. It is important for employers to retain the freedom within current employment law to set reasonable conduct and disciplinary procedures within their organisation and to ensure workplace safety and workplace standards for which appropriate business operations are in place. I share the noble Lord’s concerns about the level of violence and abuse faced by staff. The union of which I am a member has campaigned on that for many years. The level of shop theft that we are seeing is unacceptable. However, in the light of the legal position I have set out, and the lateness of the hour, I hope the noble Lord is content to withdraw his amendment. Given the lateness of the hour, I have just remembered that I have been a member of USDAW not for 55 years but for 46 years—since 1979. I have lost track of the time. I am not even sure what time it is now, this late at night. I have worked it back to 1979 and, with that declaration of interest, I hope the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.
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- 02:00
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- Speaker
- Lord Davies of Gower (Con)Conservative
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- My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response. I hear what he says about shopkeepers, but this amendment is about a simple principle: those who act in good faith to prevent crime or assist in the lawful apprehension of an offender should not be penalised for doing so. The law already recognises, through Section 3 of the Criminal Law Act 1967, that reasonable force may be used in such circumstances. This amendment seeks to ensure that employment protections properly reflect that long-standing principle. We on these Benches believe that this amendment is both measured and tightly drawn. It applies only where an individual has acted in accordance with the law around the use of force in preventing crime. We should also be clear about the signal we send: when individuals step forward to protect others, often in fast-moving and uncertain situations, they should not have to weigh, in that moment, whether doing the right thing might cost them their livelihood. That cannot be the message we wish to send as a society. I therefore repeat the questions I posed to the Minister: what remedy is there for cases such as this, and what steps will the Government perhaps take in the future to ensure that individuals are not placed in such a position again? Unless and until there is a clear and satisfactory answer to those questions, I remain of the view that this amendment provides a necessary and proportionate safeguard. I would like to think that the Government could support these steps but, in view of what the Minister said, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
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- 02:00
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