Member

As a proud Northern Irish peer, I want to talk to the fact that Northern Ireland is often held up as the best place now, because of what happened to us in relation to the abortion legislation. Let me let me address that. This proposal would simply bring England and Wales into line with the system in Northern Ireland, because we do not have the pills by post scheme. Quite apart from the fact that decriminalisation was imposed on Northern Ireland inappropriately and quite disgracefully, without a democratic mandate and via the cynical hijacking of another unrelated Bill, what is being proposed in this Bill is not equivalent to, but actually more extreme than, the radical law we now have in Northern Ireland, the important distinction being that Northern Ireland does not have a pills by post scheme. It is the proposed combination of decriminalising women alongside the continuation of the pills by post scheme that is doubly dangerous and irresponsible. It is somewhat galling that we in Northern Ireland had that measure imposed on us on the basis that we were not being discriminated against and had the same access to abortion as the rest of the UK, and people are now claiming that women in the rest of the UK suffer discrimination because the law in Westminster is now not as extreme as that imposed in Northern Ireland.