Inside The Lords: assisted dying, abortion and power grabs

Claire Fox reports on a busy week in parliament, and invites you to join her at The Academy in July.

This has been a busy week Inside The Lords - and an odd one. We filmed on the day that the Assisted Dying Bill passed, which means it will come to us in the Lords. I hoped that this wouldn’t happen, as I am completely opposed to the Bill. I’m also opposed to the way in which it’s been handled - via a private members’ bill with lots of problems for democracy in the way witnesses were called and debates were conducted. It’s also true that Kim Leadbeater has been left to front the Bill - a backbencher with little experience meaning a lot of the legislation is poor and confused. It would be worth your time to read our Substack from Mo Lovatt on the issue, which is available here. I don’t think the state should have the power to take lives - particularly those who are old or ill. Instead of celebrating and trying to prolong and improve quality of life, assisted dying is an act of nihilism.

This same week, the Commons also had a vote on the decriminalisation of abortion in the form of an amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill. This law change - that means women will no longer be jailed for having an abortion beyond the legal limit - I am in favour of. I know some of you will find this controversial, even contradictory. But that is because many commentators have wrongfully compared these two things - assisted dying and abortion - as if they are the same, but they’re not, and I will be explaining that further when we debate the issue in the Lords. However, what is comparable is the way in which this very important issue of abortion and women’s rights has been handled. Something as substantial as this shouldn’t have been tacked on to a Bill with an amendment, with little time for debate. In the face of the backlash, Tonia Antoniazzi, the Welsh Labour MP who brought the amendment (and who I am a great admirer of), was keen to assure everyone that nothing much had really changed, because the legal limits on abortion remain the same. But this is a big change - and those of us who do want to change abortion rights in favour of a pro-choice position want to have that debate. It would have been better in my opinion, to trust the public enough to have a proper discussion about this, with time to go into the political and ethical moral questions. So while this is a victory for women’s freedom, it’s also another example of legislative mishandling by the government. For further thoughts on this, do read this article in Unherd by the AoI’s Ella Whelan.

Talk about mishandling - we also discussed grooming gangs in the Lords in response to Baroness Casey’s ‘rapid audit’. Surprise surprise, the audit showed what we all knew - that the majority of men involved in the grooming gangs scandal were Pakistani, but also that there was a huge coverup to try to hide that fact. So much for the ‘far-right bandwagon’ that Keir Starmer derided mere months ago. Any time I’ve raised the issue in the Lords I’ve also been treated with derision, but usually I’m allowed to speak during a debate. This week, I was left until the very end, and was very angry because the minister, Lord Hanson of Flint, had been self congratulatory - as if the Labour Party hadn’t been dragged kicking and screaming to do the right thing. Not only that, but he refused to answer me when I asked whether the government would retract a piece of Home Office misinformation stating that grooming gangs were made up of white men. The below video shows our exchange, but what you don’t see in that video is that Lord Cryer spoke - Ann Cryer’s son. That’s Ann Cryer who was the first MP to blow the whistle on grooming gangs and was denounced by her own Labour Party for doing so. He reminded the Lords of what she’d gone through - and the minister looked a tiny bit shamefaced, at last.

The rest of my week has been spent on the Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill. This looks like a minor Bill, it’s been dumped into the Grand Committee room rather than having a big debate in the Chamber, but I can’t begin to tell you how important it is. The government is granting itself unbelievable powers to deal with fraud. I’m fine with them trying to get money back from fraudsters - but half the time DWP over-payments are down to mistakes on the confusing forms, and there is no distinction made between an honest mistake and deliberate fraud. What’s worse, they’ve granted the DWP the right to go into your house and seize property. They have quite literally given themselves police powers. That’s not the end, either - they’ve also put in the ability for the DWP to demand that banks hand over your bank statements, without telling you. The state is accruing itself a huge amount of power and attempting to hide it - I will shine a light on what’s going on, at the very least.

Here is just a few of the longer speeches I made, but you can watch all my contributions in the Lords on my YouTube channel here.

There’s a lot going on in the Lords and even more outside. The charity Ideas Matter is very busy, hosting Living Freedom - a summer school for young people - next weekend and then The Academy at the beginning of July. The Academy is for all ages, and a brilliant weekend if you want to dig deeper into some of the big political questions of our time. I’ll be there, and I hope you’ll join me. You can get your tickets here. Otherwise, see you next week.