Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [Lords]

I speak against the programme motion because—and I say this with no pleasure—it and the order of discussion appear to be a shabby manoeuvre by Ministers to stop the full debate of some very important matters. I appreciate that Ministers did not intend this to be a Bill about abortion. I am open to the argument that we should have another piece of legislation that would enable a full debate on most of the matters in relation to abortion that have been raised as amendments and new clauses to the Bill, but there is a special case for debating and voting on the particular new clause that I tabled to extend the 1967 Act to Northern Ireland. In Northern Ireland, abortion is a criminal justice matter. In due course, criminal justice matters will revert to the Assembly. At present, no major party in the Assembly supports a woman's right to choose. If we do not debate my new clause today, women in Northern Ireland will lose for a generation the opportunity to gain the rights that women in the rest of the United Kingdom have enjoyed for more than 40 years. The other matters in relation to abortion can come back to the House in due course, but my new clause is widely regarded by the hundreds of women who have written to me as their last chance to get justice on this matter. I have been roundly abused by male politicians from Northern Ireland for tabling the new clause, so I wanted to touch not on the substance of the new clause but on why I have tabled it. I have not tabled it out of any desire to run contrary to people's deeply held religious opinions, nor out of a desire to persuade people in Northern Ireland that abortion is a good thing—which I do not think myself. Nor did I table the new clause to override the authority of the Northern Ireland Assembly. I certainly did not table it to force a single woman in Northern Ireland to have an abortion. I tabled the new clause because, as it stands, the law on abortion in Northern Ireland is the same law that was passed in 1861. So long as this remains the Parliament of the United Kingdom and so long as women in Northern Ireland are citizens of the United Kingdom, we have a responsibility to move those women's rights into the 21st century. Women in Northern Ireland cannot have an abortion under the 1967 Act, not even as a result of rape, incest or gross foetal abnormality. If we do not have sufficient time to debate my new clause this afternoon, we may miss the opportunity to change that for a generation. Women from Northern Ireland cannot have an abortion in Northern Ireland. The lucky ones are the thousands who have the resources and the support to travel to Britain to get an abortion. How can that be right? If I go to Belfast and break a leg, I can have an operation on the national health service, but because of the manoeuvrings of politicians down the years, poor women have to find the money—at a time of enormous stress and difficulty—to come here and pay for an abortion. I do not wish to speak to the merits of my new clause, but I do wish to emphasise the urgency of this matter. The question is whether this United Kingdom Parliament is content to keep a group of women as second class citizens on this important issue of liberty and rights.