"What price, democracy?" The Case for Early Day Motions

I am pretty tolerant when it comes to MPs and their problems. For example, I think many MPs had a pretty raw deal when the Daily Telegraph ran its campaign on parliamentary expenses, the obvious aim being to promote the paper’s circulation and its advertising revenue. And some of the MPs for whom I had the most sympathy included those whose objectives I disliked intensely. However, more on that another time…

The reason I mention it now is because there are other aspects of MPs’ work which frankly make me almost go ballistic. One is receiving letters from MPs (or copies of letters from MPs to constituents) saying why they refuse to sign Early Day Motions: “…they are very costly and they quote figures amounting to anything from £100,000 per EDM to over a £1,000,000 for the whole year… EDMs are not debated… the system is abused and some EDMs are ludicrous...”

These replies are coming from new MPs who, in fact, often show very little understanding of the processes of Parliament and how to use them.

In forty years, I have never known of anybody asking an MP to table an EDM who imagined it would be debated. Parliament’s own website makes this clear, and explains some aspects of using them:

“EDMs are used for reasons such as publicising the views of individual MPs, drawing attention to specific events or campaigns, and demonstrating the extent of Parliamentary support for a particular cause or point of view…. although there is very little prospect of EDMs being debated, many attract a great deal of public interest and frequently receive media coverage.”

Moreover, the parliamentary website gives a clear indication of the cost of EDMs which bear no relation to the exorbitant figures quoted by MPs. Under ‘Frequently Asked Questions: Business’ it states:

What is the average cost of an Early Day Motion (EDM)?

£290 (estimated figure for 2005-06).

The unavoidable fact is that EDMs are one of the few ways in which back-benchers can openly and affectively criticise what is happening in Parliament, and ensure that it is on the public record. This, on some occasions, can be displeasing to Ministers and to the Government itself. Hence our present problems and difficulties with a number of new Conservative MPs, who have been persuaded by Whips to refuse to sign all EDMs, generally quoting the cost.

One must ask “What price democracy… £290…??”

However, the MPs invariably write very friendly letters, assuring us that they will write to the Minister on behalf of the correspondent asking him/her to explain!

Frankly, most letters to Ministers and the replies are pretty useless. They not only keep any given issue “under wraps” (away from public scrutiny), but they also keep the MPs’ views and intentions out of sight of constituents. In any case, usually the response is written by a Civil Servant whose very duty it is to defend the status quo and the Minister! Moreover, on the subject of costs – think of the tens of thousands it must cost to have civil servants writing fatuous replies to provide smoke screens!

What About Parliamentary Questions?

Shortly after the last General election, I had the idea of returning to a tactic we used some years ago to good effect.

A number of MPs, of different parties, were asked to put their names into the ballot to table Parliamentary Questions (PQs) to the Secretary of State For Health (Andrew Lansley, see right) on the policy of distributing the morning after pill to under-age girls – which has seen such an increase in Sexually Transmitted Infections among adolescents. Other MPs were prepared to be in the House when Question Time came, so that we could have a meaningful debate with relevant facts and figures recorded in Hansard.

However, we fell at the first fence – not one of our MPs had their names pulled out of the ballot!

And it is through the Ballot that most other procedures are open to back-bench MPs… Private Members’ Bills… Oral PQs… Adjournment Debates… Westminster Hall debates… Ten-Minute Rule Bills… Almost the only exceptions are Early Day Motions and Written PQs. The latter can be very useful – but  they are not open to debate, and neither do they have the impact of EDMs which can be used to educate parliamentary colleagues on any given issue, as well  as informing public discourse.

As Parliament’s own website makes clear, many EDMs attract a great deal of public interest and frequently receive media coverage. One example concerned the occasion when the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) first published his Guidelines for people involved in a friend/relative’s assisted suicide. Quite clearly, the Guidelines changed (de facto) the law. Immediately after publication, the Rt. Hon. Ann Widdecombe (then, still in Parliament – see below), tabled an EDM which resulted in front-page banner headlines supported by other leaders of the All-Party Parliamentary Pro-Life Group (APPPLG) such as Jim Dobbin (see left). It accused the DPP of seeking to undermine the sovereignty of Parliament, and launched the All-Party Group’s campaign – and that resulted in the DPP back-peddling somewhat (although not entirely). No letter of protest to a Minister, or even to the Prime Minister, would have had such a result.

One of the Most Successful EDMs of all Time

To be truthful, Margaret Thatcher was never my favourite politician. However, whatever her failings may have been, she was far better than some of those who have followed her. For one thing, she had an enormous respect for Parliamentary Democracy. When she was Prime Minister, I know for a fact that she would bring EDMs which she thought to be important, to the attention of her Government Ministers.

In addition, she tabled what must have been one of the most successful EDMs of all time when she was Leader of the Conservatives opposing James Callaghan’s government. Her EDM simply said that the House had lost confidence in the Government, and called for it to resign. Virtually every Conservative MP, as well as some MPs of other Parties, signed the Motion. The EDM received tremendous publicity and Margaret Thatcher (confident of her support) took the next step. She tabled a Formal Motion of ‘No Confidence’ which was debated. James Callaghan lost the vote, and his Government had to resign, leading to the General Election of 1979 which Margaret Thatcher won with an overwhelming majority.

Some MPs may dislike Margaret Thatcher – but most have a respect for her. The fact that she recognised EDMs as a major plank in Parliamentary Democracy may make some of them at least think again. As has been discussed, ask MPs who quote the costs when they refuse to sign EDMs – “What price democracy?” And how much do they think it costs the nation to have civil servants writing replies to MPs letters to obscure the facts?

Below is EDM 1622 – which does not present the Department of Health or its Minister in a particularly favourable light. Bearing in mind that members of the Government or shadow Government usually do not sign EDMs, write to your MPs and urge them to give their signatures in support. Even if your MPs are Ministers or Shadow Ministers, please send them the Motion to draw their attention to the facts – which to say the least – are disreputable:

EDM 1622: CONSULTATION ON THE CARE OF WOMEN CONSIDERING INDUCED ABORTION

Date tabled: 17/03/2011

Primary sponsor: Dobbin, Jim.

Co-Sponsors: Benton, Joe; Coffey, Therese; Field, Frank; Glindon, Mary; Leigh, Edward

Total number of signatures: 24
Amess, David; Benton, Joe; Bruce, Fiona; Campbell, Ronnie; Coffey, Therese; Cunningham, Tony; Dobbin, Jim; Dodds, Nigel; Donaldson, Jeffrey; Dorries, Nadine; Durkan, Mark; Evans, Jonathan; Field, Frank; Glindon, Mary; Hamilton, Fabian; Leigh, Edward; Long, Naomi; Murphy, Paul; Pugh, John; Ritchie, Margaret; Rosindell, Andrew; Swayne, Desmond; Vickers, Martin; Walter, Robert.

“… this House notes that the Consultation Committee and Report of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) The Care of Women Requesting Induced Abortion fails in at least four criteria required by the Government Code of Practice; further notes that the Leader of the House has stated that the Government could not interfere because it was a RCOG Consultation Committee and not the responsibility of the Government (17 February 2011, Official Report, column 1145); further notes, however, that in the Answer to Lord Alton of Liverpool, Official Report, House of Lords, column WA425, the Government stated that the Department of Health commissioned and funded the review; further notes with grave concern, therefore, that the committee considering the review allowed only 21 days for consultation instead of at least 12 weeks as required by the Government's guidelines and that the membership consisted almost entirely of pro-abortion personnel including representatives from the UK's two main abortion providers, the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) and Marie Stopes International; further notes it was not until a press release from BPAS quoted the guidelines and implied that they had been finalised that it became known to a majority of interested parties that the consultation existed, by which time there were only five days for interested parties to respond; further notes that the present guidelines include a number of claims which peer-reviewed medical literature suggest are inaccurate or misconstrued; and calls on the Government to establish a further consultation with a balanced membership under the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence which will be answerable to Parliament.”

The Biggest Euthanasia Lobby in Britain – The BBC

When the news broke on Sunday (15.5.11) regarding the Swiss suicide referendum, nobody should have been surprised by the BBC response. As always, it supported assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia. 

The story broke on the 6:00pm news – there were three interviews all backing death, 4 radio clips backing death, one against, 4 local radio items all favouring death, two listener comments backing death, one Swiss comment favouring life.

The Campaigners heard so far were Margo Macdonald (pro-assisted suicide), Peter Saunders (pro-life), 3 from Dignity in Dying, 1 from EXIT, 1 from the Society for Old Age Rational Suicide. All three organisations are pro-assisted dying and voluntary euthanasia.

Any suggestion the BBC is running a campaign… is of course without merit and a wicked invention by pro-lifers... or so we have been told for years and years!  Recently, however, we had thought we were at last making some impact.

Thanks to members and supporters of RTL bombarding the BBC with letters and complaints, regarding the propaganda film of Terry Pratchett accompanying a 71-year-old Motor Neurone Disease patient to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland, and showing him committing suicide, the broadcasters actually have included an editorial on their website “explaining” their decisions.

Suffering from Amnesia...?

The item is written by BBC Programmes Editor, Charlotte Moore (see right), who shows a picture of Mr Pratchett (looking so smug that he could almost float away on the brim of his hat) and tells us:

“… it's not something that we'd ever take the decision to show lightly. Not only did we have to work closely with all of our contributors' families to make sure that the issue was handled as sensitively as possible, but we worked closely with our editorial policy team to make sure that all aspects of the documentary were in line with BBC Editorial Policy guidelines”.

Either Ms Moore suffers from amnesia or else she has presumed that the rest of us do. Peter Saunders, Chief Executive of the CMF, has drawn everybody’s attention to the bias of the BBC, with the following: “… This programme will be the fifth produced by the BBC in just three years, presented by a pro-euthanasia campaigner or sympathiser, which has been specifically designed to portray taking one’s own life in a positive light.”

The other programmes included a BBC Panorama documentary, ‘I’ll Die When I Choose’ in which Margo Macdonald MSP (see left) was given the floor to explain and promote her “End of Life Assistance (Scotland) Bill” just before it was first tabled. It was shown no less than four times between December 8 - 14, 2008. Despite the BBC continuing its campaign for the next two years, Scottish MPs, thankfully, did their homework and Ms Macdonald suffered a huge defeat when her Bill was thrown out by a vote of 85 to 16. That, however, did not stop the BBC. On the day it happened (November 2010) I was listening to BBC Five Live when an almost hysterical woman interviewer pleaded: “Margo, whatever happened?”

Miss Macdonald had the nerve to complain that the MSPs had voted against her because they were worried about the next election – which took place only on May 5th… six months later.

However, long before 2008, the BBC fed the public a constant diet of pro-euthanasia programmes and news items covering the deaths of Reg Crew, Diane Pretty, John Close and others whose cases were used to promote assisted suicide. At the time of the Diane Pretty case in 2003, I telephoned the BBC to ask if they would interview Mrs Pam Vack (see right), an RTL member who (like Diane Pretty) had Motor Neurone Disease and was willing to speak on a programme. The immediate response of the BBC researcher was to snap at me:  

             

             “Is she a Catholic?”

             “She is not”, I said. “But what has that to do with it?”

Apart from taking our telephone numbers – neither Pam nor RTL heard another word.

The next BBC propaganda essay (after the Margo Macdonald programme) was ‘A Short Stay in Switzerland’ (January 2009). This was a 90 minute docudrama starring Julie Walters for whom the BBC publicity department carried out a huge campaign promoting her views on the benefits of euthanasia. The programme told the story of Bath GP Anne Turner who went with her children to commit suicide at Dignitas in January 2006. It was screened seven times between the 25th January 2009 and 27th January 2010. BBC health correspondent Fergus Walsh, who accompanied Dr Turner on her final journey, actually played himself in the film. How impartial was that!

Moreover, it was not the first programme about Dr Turner. When she originally went to Switzerland in January 2006 to commit suicide, she was accompanied by Fergus Walsh and a full BBC crew who filmed the whole event, including sipping champagne with her three children before she drank her cocktail of barbiturates. It was evidently intended to appear sophisticated and care free. However, Mick Hume (by no means a pro-life supporter) described it in the Times as “A grisly theatre of death” (27.01.2006).

Both David and Jonathan Dimbleby are well known for their anti-life views, so it came as no surprise that the BBC selected Terry Pratchett to give the 34^th Richard Dimbleby Lecture, “Shaking Hands With Death”, when he claimed the right to be provided with assisted suicide because he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. 

It was all great fun… as he envisaged sipping poisoned champagne at his home in the garden. However, it was not very original – rather more a “take” from the Dr Turner programme. Peter Saunders tells us that, nonetheless, “a hand-picked audience in London signalled their approval as he spoke…”

Another example of BBC pro-euthanasia bias occurred when Jonathan Dimbleby had Deborah Annett as a member of the panel on the radio programme, Any Questions (17.3.06). At the time Ms Annetts was CEO of what was then the Voluntary Euthanasia Society (now ‘Dignity In Dying’). On the programme, she regaled the audience with a lurid description of Diane Pretty’s death:

“I'm thinking now of Diane Pretty, who I knew very, very well – she had a horrendous life and horrendous death at the end, and she received really good quality hospice care. The last week that she was in hospice she screamed in pain and agony every day, they could do nothing for her... in the end the only option was to sedate her…”

There was nobody on the programme to challenge Ms Annetts.

Yet, in total contrast, the Medical Director of the Hospice where Mrs Pretty died had described her death as “peaceful and painless”.

In addition, the Motor Neurone Disease Association issued a statement also describing her death as “peaceful and painless” – adding that pain was “not an issue” with the vast majority of MND patients.

When pro-life groups protested to the BBC, we were assured by the producers of “Any Questions” that they had no intention of promoting euthanasia; they had every intention of inviting an officer of equal standing from one of the pro-life groups.

Five years later… we are all still waiting.

February 15th, 2010 saw yet another propaganda assault. On the ‘Inside Out Programme’ on East Midlands, BBC producer, Ray Gosling (see left), “confessed” to smothering, some years before, a gay lover with AIDS. “… [A]fter an exhaustive police investigation into the claim, it turned out to be pure fantasy, but not until after the BBC publicity machinery had blown it up into a massive international news story just prior to the Director of Public Prosecutions reporting on his assisted suicide prosecution criteria.”

In comparison with the five major pro-euthanasia programmes within the last three years, the BBC has made not even one giving the alternative view of end of life treatment. MPs have persistently complained about the BBC bias on any number of issues, particularly those relating to human life and the traditional family. A number of Early Day Motions have referred to specific euthanasia programmes. On one occasion, Greg Dyke, the former BBC Chairman, had the nerve to make bland statements regarding the entire BBC network and calling on us to justify our claims.  This could only have been achieved by monitoring every single programme on every BBC network!  However, the fact remains that if there were a multitude of pro-life programmes amazingly few people from the pro-life network were ever called to speak on them.

The Terry Pratchett programme was obviously planned to coincide with, and promote the publication of, the Report from the so-called Commission on Assisted Dying which Mr Pratchett helped to set up and fund.  The “Commission” which has striven to appear as though it were some kind of official body has already been thoroughly discredited. It is chaired by Lord Falconer who failed in his attempt to get a Bill legalising assisted suicide through the House of Lords.  Quite obviously he is fixedly in favour of the legalisation of assisted death – like every other member of the “Commission”. Yet, despite the known bias, they have striven to present their considerations as “unbiased”. In this they have been unsuccessful, I am thankful to say.

Nonetheless, we can be confident that the BBC euthanasia lobby will do all it can to promote their findings as the work of a learned body rather than the witless twitterings of members and supporters of Dignity in Dying (as I have said previously, formerly the Voluntary Euthanasia Society) of which Mr Pratchett is one of its most redoubtable Patrons.

However, it is not too late to complain to the BBC. You can call them to complain on 03700 100 222.  But, be warned:  it

is a recording service and you are given very little time to give your name, address and message of protest. You can also

write to BBC Complaints, PO Box 1922, Glasgow G2 3WT. You can also go to https://bbc.co.uk/complaints/forms/

In addition, you can write to the new Chairman of the Board of BBC Governors, the Rt Hon Lord Patten of Barnes (see right). He is very straightforward, and I am confident that he will consider the issues fairly. His address is:

Rt Hon Lord Patten of Barnes, Chairman, BBC Trust, Room 14, London Broadcasting House, Portland Place, W1A 1AA.

If nothing else, please make it clear that five programmes in three years blatantly promoting assisted suicide to nought against – is just not on… especially from a publicly funded network which is supposed to be neutral. And that excludes all the other programmes we have listed.

Introduction...

My name is Phyllis Bowman, and in 1966 I became one of the founder members of the Pro-Life movement in the United Kingdom.

David Steel's Abortion Bill had already received its Second Reading with a huge majority – and the media then (as now) were backing it.

I was a Fleet-Street journalist and had many friends among the Medical Correspondents of the day.  Many of them came to a press conference I organised (11.1.’67) at my club (‘The Wig & Pen’) where I had three professors of obstetrics and gynaecology who were backing our "No" campaign.

They were Ian Donald, Professor of Obstetrics & Gynaecology at the Queen Mother Hospital Glasgow (see picture right). He became a world name through developing ultrasound and pioneering its use in medicine; Professor James Scott, who held the Chair in Obstetrics & Gynaecology at Leeds University and John McClure Browne, Professor of Obstetrics & Gynaecology at Hammersmith Hospital, London.

In addition we had Aleck Bourne FRCOG, who was almost a household name: some years before he had aborted a fourteen-year-old girl who had been raped by four Guards soldiers. When he had the girl admitted to Queen Charlotte’s Hospital (where he was a consultant) for the abortion, the police heard of it and went to the hospital to stop him.  (He told me that he was always convinced it was pro-abortion activists wanting to force a ‘cause célèbre’ who had deliberately “shopped” him.)

Aleck Bourne (who was only about two-saucepans high) was a man of great courage and integrity, whether one might agree with his action or not. When he heard that the police were at the hospital he rushed the girl into the operating theatre and carried out the abortion. He then went down to the police, waiting in reception, and gave himself up.

He was sent for trial and was ultimately acquitted as a result of the judge extending the law which allowed termination only in the case of a woman dying to assert that a patient who had been raped could well commit suicide. Many lawyers have always regarded this as quite a wrongful interpretation.

Be that as it may, the case was used as the basis for “case law”. A thriving business flourished in which any woman who had the money could get an abortion in a private clinic. David Steel, a Liberal MP, presented himself as a champion for the under-privileged. He claimed that he was fighting against “one law for the rich and another for the poor”. His campaign in demanding a complete change in the law, referred constantly to “the martyrdom of poor Aleck Bourne”.

Aleck Bourne, however, had become more and more horrified by the monster his case had unleashed. At our press conference he urged that the law needed tightening, making it unlawful for doctors and psychiatrists to receive private fees for recommending or carrying out an abortion; that would stop one law for the rich and another for the poor – thus preventing the practice of abortion on demand.

Not surprisingly, David Steel (who very evidently wanted to introduce abortion on demand) was horrified by his intervention and, of course, vehemently opposed his ideas. All references to Aleck Bourne as a martyr were dropped. Instead, we were attacked for dragging “such a frail old man” to speak at a press conference – the implication being that he was verging on senility!

Nonetheless, the press conference with Aleck Bourne won major headlines in the national and major regional newspapers. The journalists could see for themselves that he certainly was not senile. The prediction that the Steel Bill would be little more than a “license to print money for the shady end of the medical profession” was also highlighted throughout the country – and so began our fight back.

However, major figures in the Labour Government ensured that the Bill reached the Statute Book (to the point that some Labour MPs were virtually blackmailed into not standing against it, even though they might not vote for it).

Labour was not alone: leading Tories, such as Margaret Thatcher, also backed the Bill – although in fairness she ultimately admitted that she had made a dreadful mistake referring to the manner in which the law had been extended and now seemed to cover the whole of human life.

Since then I have fought unceasingly against the anti-life movement – which very soon showed that the majority of its leaders supported the legalisation of euthanasia and ultimately extended their aims to cover embryo research, including inter-species fertilisation. Today, we are fighting on all fronts… against abortion… euthanasia… embryo experimentation… family rights, including distorted sex education (which, when dire, causes more abortions to take place).

In 1999, a group of us founded Right To Life – because we felt a “lean machine” was needed which could react quickly on the political front.

I am starting the blog because we desperately need to shine a light on the issues of the day covering the right to life and the family. The Pro-Life movement in the UK was the first in the world – and we made many mistakes. However, we were learning as we went along. Today, I want to use my knowledge and over forty years’ experience (so far!) in avoiding mistakes and developing the movement on forceful and properly informed lines.

We need your help…