Member

The requirement in Amendment 456 for the explicit consent of the Attorney-General would, I believe, discourage expending police resources on cases unlikely to pass that threshold and so restrict disproportionate investigations. That would address the concerns of campaigners, but without upending the consensus that we reached as a society when the Abortion Act was first passed, after enormous amounts of national discussion and debate. I would suggest that this would restore the situation that seems to have characterised the early decades of the current legislative settlement. It could be complemented by the statutory defence that my noble friend Lord Hailsham proposed in Amendment 456C.