Member

We understand the concern arising from some cases of appalling investigations, which have caused enormous and unnecessary distress to some women. We discussed these at length in Committee—and they are indeed harrowing. One thing that we were keen to understand after Committee was about the data on investigations. The Minister wrote to the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, in that regard, and we are grateful, as I said, for her detailed response. However, it is difficult to discern a clear trend from the data. Under Sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, there were five investigations in 2019-20; eight in 2020-21; and 13 in 2024-25—so there appears to be an increase. The problem is that this available data on investigations does not disaggregate by the sex of the person who is being investigated—so you have a trend of increase, but you cannot tell whether the increase can be attributed to a man or a woman. We also could not tell whether the women in the data were related to women acting in relation to their own pregnancy rather than other women assisting.