My Lords, I did not think I would sit and listen to more than about 10 minutes of this debate, as I expected to hear a very familiar argument about the morality and legality of abortion, on which my views were long ago established. I have always been in favour of legalising abortion. Indeed, I am quite liberal and tend to go the liberal end of a woman’s right to choose. However, I have found myself listening to a very challenging debate that is not on that subject at all; it is on the question of what should be within the scope of the powers that we have devolved to the constituent parts of the United Kingdom.
The speeches have been extremely eloquent, if I may say so humbly and without being patronising; there have been some very moving speeches. However, I am not sure that they altogether satisfy the case for opposing these regulations. We are debating what the exact scope should be of what we have devolved to the different nations of the United Kingdom.
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There is absolutely no doubt, and it is quite right that it was done, that we devolved the day-to-day administration and delivery of the National Health Service to the four constituent Governments. They enjoy considerable autonomy in that and, if I may say so, some have been more successful than others in tackling what are always, in any case, immense and challenging problems that something like the National Health Service is always going to face. The question here, however, is: when we devolved responsibility for the management and delivery of the National Health Service, did we devolve the extent—the range—of services that were going to be available to those who, for the time being, lived in that particular nation?
The present position is that if an English family moves to Northern Ireland for work or other reasons—there are English, Welsh and Scottish families in Northern Ireland—they find that abortion is not available in the part of the United Kingdom to which they have now moved, when it is available in the rest of the country. Presumably nobody thought the problem would arise at the time, although it was fairly predictable and I not sure that it is a very logical situation.
I am struck by the parallel with the debate going on in the United States of America at the moment, with the imminent decision that everybody expects from the Supreme Court. There seems every probability that America will move even more firmly in the direction
of the availability of abortion depending on which state you live in and which political party is the governing party, for the time being, of the state to which you have moved. If the politics of state in which you happen to live is currently very restrictive, large numbers of women will move to have abortions in those states that still permit it. We regard this, from outside, as one of many grave threats at the moment to the political stability of the United States of America, but we have it. We have four devolved nations, three of which have abortion on fairly liberal grounds. One does not, and women in large numbers therefore leave Northern Ireland if they are in need of an abortion and move to get the operation they require in a part of the United Kingdom where it is available.
I really do not think that is desirable. I do not think anybody anticipated it when the devolution settlement was made. It is a very important ethical and constitutional question, but I think there are certain things that are intrinsic to the fact that I am a citizen of the United Kingdom. One thing that one should be absolutely guaranteed, if one is thinking of moving about in the United Kingdom—it is not relevant to me, but it is relevant to people who get themselves into sad circumstances—is that the availability of abortion should not depend on the politics of the particular part of the United Kingdom in which one lives. I think the British Government—the UK Government—are entitled to intervene to make sure that the scope and availability of the services that people need are universal across the United Kingdom.
I suspect that no one foresaw it and it is a very difficult problem to solve now, but although there are huge practical problems to be faced, I hope we are facing up to the question of what we will do about the financial consequences of making the Northern Ireland Government pay for a new service in the health service that they do not actually want. It will be difficult in practice, but in principle, as a matter of constitution, thinking of the kind of United Kingdom that I trust we all want, it is proper for the Government to take this step and I have risen only to try to rebalance the debate. There is a serious issue, but I trust that the Government will get the majority they seek.