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Mr. Howard: The hon. Gentleman was reading rather too much into my remarks. As I said, I do not believe that
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any grounds arising out of this report would justify any of the cases concerned being referred to the Court of Appeal. However, I have learnt over a long period not to underestimate the ingenuity of lawyers. I said that it was open to representatives of those involved in those cases to make further representations suggesting that the cases should be referred, and that any such representations would be considered.
I do not have available a specific answer to the last part of the hon. Gentleman's question. I have no reason to suppose that the person to whom he referred was involved, but perhaps I can write to the hon. Gentleman on that matter.
Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow):
I am not complaining too stridently, but the document to which the Home Secretary referred was not available in the Vote Office shortly before he rose to make his statement; therefore, I do not know what the report says about the crucial Lockerbie evidence, about which there is considerable forensic doubt. I refer to the timing device or, more accurately, the sliver of timing device, which was the subject of considerable controversy both at the Royal Armaments Centre and in the United States, where considerable doubt has been thrown on the findings of Mr. Thurman, not least by Mr. Whitehurst, another expert. Rather than answer off the top of his head, will the Home Secretary write to me in detail about this aspect of crucial forensic evidence in the Lockerbie case? It leads to the involvement of Libyan sanctions, which, as was said in the last statement, are so damaging to British industry.
Mr. Howard:
Once the hon. Gentleman has read the report, he may find that the essential point that he raised is covered in it. I am, however, perfectly prepared to write to him to answer his question as best I can. I am not entirely confident whether I shall provide in my reply sufficient detail to satisfy the hon. Gentleman, but I shall do my best.
Mr. Chris Mullin (Sunderland, South):
Having been familiar with Professor Caddy's work over the years, I am happy to accept his conclusion that none of the forensic evidence in any of the cases has been disturbed. However, a number of cases in the not too distant past involved mistakes--or worse--by forensic scientists. Two problems have arisen: one is that an unhealthily close relationship developed between the police and some forensic scientists--in the Guildford case, for example, they were not above rewriting their evidence at the police's suggestion; and the second is that forensic facilities have often not been available to the same extent to defence lawyers, so they have been unable to test the prosecution's propositions. Is the Home Secretary satisfied that both those problems have now been resolved?
Mr. Howard:
That matter is, of course, quite beside the matters that gave rise to Professor Caddy's report, and quite beside his report. I have no reason to suppose that defence lawyers do not have adequate facilities to enable them to benefit from forensic science, but that matter is not directly raised as a result of the report.
Mr. Paul Flynn (Newport, West):
Those of us who have spent years working in laboratories will have
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Mr. Howard:
I shall resist the temptation to accept the hon. Gentleman's invitation to go into areas of technical expertise that I do not possess. I am satisfied that, when the hon. Gentleman has had the opportunity to read the report, he will find his concerns fully and more than adequately dealt with. There were serious shortcomings, as Professor Caddy reveals in his report, although I am not sure that they add up to the kind of criticism contained in the first part of the hon. Gentleman's question.
Mr. Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South):
I thank the Home Secretary for his statement and Professor Caddy for his report. Will the Home Secretary comment specifically on the case of John Kinsella, whose name was included in the review even though he was not convicted on the basis of any forensic evidence that suggested that he had been in touch with Semtex? I know that the Home Secretary has been reviewing that case in detail and, I believe, has now received the statements from Pairic MacFhloinn in prison, who has accepted responsibility for the Warrington bombings and who has said, on record and specifically, that my constituent, John Kinsella, had no knowledge of the contents of the holdall with which he was left. Can the Home Secretary add any further comments on the review that he has undertaken, specifically in relation to John Kinsella's case?
Mr. Howard:
No, I am afraid that I cannot add anything this afternoon. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that the basis on which representations have been made in that case is not connected with the presence of explosives. He is also right to say that representations have been made in that case; they are currently receiving careful attention in the Home Office.
Mr. Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, North):
Like many Members, I have not read the report and therefore cannot quarrel with any of its conclusions. In his statement, the Home Secretary accepted the view that there should be some degree of independent examination of the work done by the Forensic Explosives Laboratory, but specifically excluded the sending of samples to any other laboratory for testing. Those two points seem to contradict each other. When does the Home Secretary propose that an independent testing regime will be set up? After all, we have had a shocking expose from Professor Caddy of serious shortcomings in the laboratory.
Mr. Howard:
I think, with respect, that the hon. Gentleman slightly misunderstood what I said. Far from saying that I would not agree to have samples sent to other laboratories, I rejected, in part, one of Professor Caddy's
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Mr. Paul Flynn presented a Bill to make it unlawful to sell medicinal products to people under the age of sixteen: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 28 February 1997, and to be printed [Bill 63].
Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover):
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Has information about the Division last night been a subject of concern for you, in view of the fact that it seems that the Tory Government paired some of the absent Tory Members of Parliament with people on the Labour Benches and doubled them up with people on the Liberal Benches? In other words, they rigged the ballot. In all my 27 years here, I have never heard of anything like that before. It needs a serious investigation, because the Government are in trouble with their lack of a majority and they might do it again and again.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Geoffrey Lofthouse):
I have to inform the hon. Gentleman that that subject has nothing to do with the Chair.
17 Dec 1996 : Column 7764.43 pm
Mr. David Amess (Basildon): I beg to move,
- That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend section 1(1) of the Abortion Act 1967 in relation to the grounds on which a pregnancy may be terminated.
The House is familiar with the arguments deployed in support of the Abortion Act 1967 when it was originally introduced. The intentions of the Act were clear at the time. My Bill would support that Act in spirit and in practice. Those who support abortion per se explain their views by saying that a woman has a right to choose and they ask what the state does with unwanted babies. Last year, 163,621 abortions were carried out in England and Wales. Did every one of those women choose not to conceive a child? Is it really possible that so many women had abortions because the risk of injury to the physical or mental health of the mother or existing children was greater than if the pregnancies were terminated? To me, that seems beyond comprehension.
The current clinical interpretation of the Abortion Act 1967, in effect, means that any woman can have a termination if she wishes as long as gestation is under 24 weeks. That fact was highlighted in the summer when a healthy twin was aborted for purely social reasons and a senior gynaecologist admitted on BBC Radio 4:
Section 1(1)(a) of the Abortion Act 1967 provides no yardstick, thus allowing abortion on demand, sometimes quite late in a pregnancy as we saw with the twin who was killed after 16 weeks. In 1979, Sir Ian Percival, then the Solicitor-General, told a Standing Committee that was considering tightening the grounds for abortion that there was bound to be some risk in every continuing pregnancy, which makes nonsense of the law as it stands at present. He was discussing the inclusion of the word "substantially" before the phrase
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While the Bill would be only a small improvement, we are still left with the words "risk" and "injury", neither of which are quantified. Having a stitch or two in the cervix could be regarded by some doctors as an injury, but it would hardly justify the killing of the child in the womb. We therefore need to make it clear that both the risk and the injury must be serious.
Evidence is emerging of the long-term damage caused by abortion, not the least of which is the possibility of breast cancer following abortion. Current figures show a 30 per cent. increase in the incidence of breast cancer among women who have had abortions. There is also evidence from all over the world of women suffering years of trauma as a result of abortions that they imagined would be simple procedures and the answer to an immediate problem. Only this month, the British Medical Journal carried a paper on suicide after pregnancy in Finland from 1987 to 1994. The general suicide rate in Finland for that period was 11.3 per 100,000 and the rate associated with birth was significantly lower at 5.9. However, the suicide rate associated with miscarriage was 18.1 and it soared to 34.7 for induced abortion--significantly higher than in the population at large.
"There is abortion on demand . . . if a woman wants an abortion, she gets one".
Aborting any foetus is contrary to the original intentions of the Abortion Act of some 30 years ago, which was passed to allow abortions only in a restricted number of cases. Furthermore, with increasing evidence of the humanity of the foetus, those abortions raise serious moral and ethical issues.
"greater than if the pregnancy were terminated"
in order to make the test more stringent and more than merely a statistical evaluation.
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