Hansard

I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests in that I hold a bank nurse contract with NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde.

As convener of the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, I am pleased to speak to our stage 1 report on the Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) (Scotland) Bill. I thank the committee’s clerks and Scottish Parliament information centre colleagues for their work on the report.

The bill aims to achieve a balance between conflicting human rights: the rights of women who access abortion services to have privacy and to feel safe and secure when doing so and those of people who wish to express their opposition to abortion outside premises where such services are provided.

With that in mind, the committee has taken a careful and considered approach to its scrutiny of the bill at stage 1. In doing so, our focus has been to determine whether the restrictions that the bill imposes on the human rights of certain individuals is proportionate to its aim, which is to protect the human rights of other individuals and to strengthen their ability to exercise those rights.

Article 8 of the European convention on human rights requires the state to ensure that an individual is protected against interference in their private life. That includes an individual’s right to access or to provide abortion services. It also includes the rights of people who live in proposed safe access zones. Under article 9, everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. Under article 10, everyone has the right to freedom of expression. Under article 11, everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly. None of those human rights is absolute; they can all be restricted to protect the rights of other people.

The committee set out to scrutinise not only the provisions of the bill but whether it is proportionate to restrict the rights of one group of people in favour of those of another.

The bill is not concerned with the legality of abortion. In this country, abortion is legal up to 24 weeks of pregnancy, and beyond that if there is a significant risk to the life of the person accessing abortion services or there is evidence of fetal abnormality. However, it would be remiss of me, in this context, not to recognise that not everyone agrees with abortion, and that is the main reason why people gather outside abortion services to express their beliefs.

During the committee’s scrutiny, we heard evidence that activity by those who are opposed to abortion has increased outside clinics in Scotland in recent years. We heard about activity occurring outside a number of premises in Scotland, and we took extensive evidence both from those who have been affected by activities outside abortion services and from those engaging in such activities. I thank everyone who assisted the committee with its scrutiny, those who responded to our call for views and those who gave evidence in person or online. In particular, I thank Back Off Scotland and the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children. Both organisations helped us to engage with individuals, both formally and informally, in order to hear their personal experiences.

Some people chose to speak to us in private and others spoke publicly on the record. In weighing up the evidence that we heard, the committee concluded that the restrictions that the bill places on human rights

“are proportionate to its aims”,

and that, as a committee, we support the general principles of the bill.

However, we are clear that we must tread very carefully in this area. For us, as a Parliament, our guiding principle must be to ensure that any restrictions on human rights should be kept to the minimum necessary to meet the bill’s policy aims. Our report highlights areas in which the committee thinks that the bill could be clarified or strengthened in that regard. One of our key recommendations is that the legislation should be

“subject to ongoing review to ensure restrictions continue to be proportionate to the legitimate aims of the Bill as circumstances change”.

We believe that provision should be made for

“regular post-legislative review to ensure”

that the bill’s implementation

“remains suitably proportionate, balanced and effective”

over time.

The bill sets out that the safe access zones should have a standard radius of 200m, and it also makes provision for the radius of individual sites to be extended to address site-specific circumstances. We have heard that a radius of 150m would be sufficient to address sites that are covered by the bill, with the exception of the Queen Elizabeth university hospital in Glasgow.

In order to align with the principle that human rights restrictions should be kept to a necessary minimum, we propose in our report that the default radius of the safe access zones in Scotland should be set at 150m. Once the bill is in force, separate provision should be made to extend the radius of the safe access zone at the Queen Elizabeth university hospital to address the specific situation at that site.

We are also of the view that processes in the bill to extend or reduce safe access zones should be subject to stronger safeguards. We believe that

“there may be justification for setting minimum and maximum requirements”

for those zones in the text of the bill. We also believe that

“decisions about reducing or increasing the size of safe access zones”

should be subject to a human rights proportionality assessment; prior consultation with service providers and other relevant stakeholders; and parliamentary scrutiny via delegated powers.

The committee agrees with the definition of “protected premises” as set out in the bill. However, we remain concerned that any future decision to widen that definition could result in the bill applying to a much larger area than is currently intended and, as a result, having a far greater impact on human rights. Again, that is an area in which care will need to be taken to ensure that the bill’s impact remains proportionate to its aims, and in which Parliament will have an on-going role to play in carefully scrutinising future decision making.

The committee spent a considerable amount of time exploring potential scenarios arising from the bill’s implementation; what would or would not constitute an offence; and how potential offences could be managed. Key areas of focus included silent prayer, displaying religious iconography and what takes place in private premises, people’s homes and religious institutions that are located in a safe access zone.

On the issue of silent prayer, as the report makes clear, there were different views among those on the committee. Some members felt that the bill should include a specific exemption for silent prayer; other members believed that including such an exemption would fundamentally undermine the bill’s purposes. We concluded that silent prayer is a matter that will need to be debated further should the bill progress to stage 2.