Ms Stella Creasy

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. This is an important debate for the many of us who have been campaigning on this issue for many years, because we feel passionately that the equal ability to control what happens to our bodies is the foundation of equality within society. I thank Gemma for her petition and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) for setting out the law so well. I want us to be honest with the British public about what we are talking about and, therefore, what we need to see happen if we want decriminalisation. I was the architect of the Northern Ireland legislation, and I want to be clear about what we did there and about the difference between the two proposals that will come before Parliament in the coming weeks. In Northern Ireland, we did not do what new clause 1 to the Crime and Policing Bill seeks to do. The new clause would not decriminalise abortion; it would disapply the law on abortion for some people, but would retain the abortion legislation. Those of us who support decriminalisation need to be clear that decriminalisation must mean repeal. We did that in Northern Ireland, and that is why we have been able to protect women who previously had no access to any abortion provision.