I rise to support all the amendments in the name of the Labour Front Bench, and to speak to new clauses 11, 13 and 14.
I put on record my gratitude to the Minister for respecting the convention that issues around abortion are matters of conscience, and new clause 11 is about abortion because, let us be honest, nobody is praying outside the places where people go to have a hip operation. Nobody offers rosary beads or dead foetuses outside the places people go when they have an ankle injury. This is about women accessing a very specific form of healthcare.
This goes to the heart of the Bill. Whatever the Bill’s merits, it is about protest. At the point at which women are accessing an abortion, they have made a decision and they are not opening themselves up for a debate or further discussion. These women are often in a very vulnerable state, and they want to be able to access basic healthcare.
New clause 11 would not stop free speech on abortion, and it would not stop people protesting. I have regularly been subjected to protests, and new clause 11 would do nothing to stop the protests I have experienced from many of the people involved in this subject. New clause 11 simply says that people should not have a right to protest in another person’s face, and very often these protesters are right up in front of people, at a point when they have made a decision.
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For all of us who defend free speech, the simple point is that speech is not free if 50% of the conversation feels harassed, if women feel they have made a decision and they wish to move on. New clause 11 is a tightly drawn amendment, and I pay tribute to the hard work of the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) and Members on both sides of the House to make sure we have the right legislation. New clause 11 sets out a clear parameter so that both free speech and the rights of everybody in that conversation can be upheld. It is not about picking one side or the other. There are many other things that the Bill is trying to do, and it would
seem egregious to many of us if women were singled out by not having that balance upheld. New clause 11 upholds that balance. People do not have to support abortion to believe that, frankly, there is a time and a place to have that conversation, and it is not when dealing with vulnerable women.
Let me address some of the arguments people make for why this measure is not necessary. The Minister spoke about PSPOs. I am sorry that this is the first time we have had this debate, because I would love to talk to him about my experience of PSPOs. Some suggest this is a minor issue, but it is not. We know from the research that, every year, 100,000 women who try to access abortion services for various reasons, including women who have had miscarriages and therefore need an abortion, are targeted by these protesters. That is half of all women attending these clinics. This is not a minor issue, nor is it a localised one.
The protests we are talking about range from women being given plastic foetuses to women being offered to have people pray over them or for them, being filmed, being shouted at, being called “mum” or “murderer,” and being told to rethink their lifestyle. The point of these protests, as the protesters admit, is not benign. The protesters are not marking the fact that a woman has made a decision; they are trying to change that decision, at a point when a woman has already made that choice.
I pay tribute to Sister Supporter, which has worked with people on the ground to try to protect those women who have made this choice and who now wish to access the service in peace and privacy, without somebody trying to tell them they have to rethink that often very painful, personal decision. Sister Supporter has tried to make the PSPO process work, and we have so few PSPOs in this country because it is an expensive, complicated, long-winded process.
My former colleague in Colchester would say, “PSPOs require proof that women are being harassed before we act. We have to find evidence that people are being harassed. We already have to admit that this intimidation and harassment is taking place.” There is no other part of the law or healthcare where a person has to admit that they are being harassed before there is an intervention.
We recognise that access to healthcare is important. Local authorities have to spend thousands of pounds to get these PSPOs, often repeatedly defending them in the courts. As we see from the numbers, this is a national issue and, therefore, it requires a national solution. Frankly, it requires our local authorities and our local police to support them, and not to say it is acceptable for only Ealing, Bournemouth, Manchester and Twickenham to have gone through this process.