Debate contribution: Deaths, Still-Births and Baby Loss Bill: Consideration Stage

Debate contribution by Mr Paul Frew on 4 November 2025.

MLA

Mr Paul Frew

Party at the time

Democratic Unionist Party

Date

4 November 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Executive Committee Business

Heading

Deaths, Still-Births and Baby Loss Bill: Consideration Stage

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5216459

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I acknowledge the Minister's comment about dealing with legislation as opposed to motions. You can see a marked difference in the way that legislation and regulations are debated, rather than debating motion after motion, some of which are pointless. We should leave populism outside the door when talking about regulations and legislation. I acknowledge the sentiment that the Minister expressed. I do not think that it was crass; I think that it was meant in the right way. I am always mindful that we should be careful in how we proceed when dealing with legislation. It is great that we have got to the Consideration Stage of the Bill. I place on record my thanks and appreciation for the work of the Committee. I have now left that Committee, but, on it, I saw teamwork on this serious issue. I acknowledge the work of and support given by the Department — the Minister and departmental staff — in listening to the Committee from the very start. To begin with, the Bill was designed to put temporary legislation on a permanent footing. That is all that it was meant to do. I pushed and pushed to get it to this stage sooner, but I acknowledge that the Department and the Minister listened to the Committee. It has been a goal of the DUP to have baby loss certificates in place. We have been fighting for that for so many years, because we recognise that a vacuum exists for those who are in the position, which is so pressurised, of having lost a baby, especially before 24 weeks. That is why it is so important that the Department and Minister listened. By adding that to the Bill, they have completely changed it for the better. That must be acknowledged in the House. When I first saw that the Minister had set out, in clause 11, that the Department of Finance "may" make regulations, I thought, "No, we can go further than that. We can put it in". I asked staff in the Assembly Bill Office whether we could copy and paste the legislation from England. Due to my ignorance, I had not realised that there was no legislation in England and that it has purely policy. There was no legislation to copy and paste from England from which we could start. I give credit where credit is due: the Department and the Minister are putting it in legislation. It should be acknowledged that we will, I think, be the first place in the British Isles to legislate formally for baby loss certificates. That means something, and it should mean something. When we castigate Ministers and Departments for how bad they can be, and when we say how bad this place is or how bad debate in the Chamber can be, we should also acknowledge our successes. This is one of them, and we should all applaud it and unite behind it. I will get into the detail of the Bill and amendments. I point first to the repeal of temporary provisions, which are:

"Section 18(3) of, and Part 3 of Schedule 13 to, the Coronavirus Act 2020 (registration of deaths and still-births: Northern Ireland)".

Those provisions are being repealed. That is worthy of celebration. It is important, because the Minister could simply have let the six-month extension lapse, but he is obliterating it from legislation, historical or otherwise, and needs to be applauded for that. I was delighted to see that clause in the Bill. There are only two aspects of the entire Coronavirus Act that I see as having been fit for purpose, not causing harm and being good and positive. That is one of them. The provision was brought in because there might have been a massive wave of death registrations. That did not materialise, of course, but it made it so much easier for bereaved families, undertakers and everyone who was involved in that process. It made the process of registering deaths and stillbirths easier for them. We applaud the fact that the Bill puts that on a permanent footing, as it should have been months and years ago. In fact, I argue that we should have done it before the pandemic, but, of course, the pandemic was the necessitating factor. The other aspect is the live links in courts, which we will discuss later today. However, when it comes to everything else in the Coronavirus Act and the way in which the Assembly, where we are now debating law, became a zombie Assembly, we should never go back to that place. It is good that we can be here and have the power to debate and vote on legislation and that the decision is not left to one person, no matter who that person is. It has taken months to go through the Bill. It has not been a case of a Minister dreaming up a harmful policy, reading it out to the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) in the morning, enacting it in the afternoon and enforcing it before midnight. That is no way to do legislation. This is the proper way.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I will get back to the Bill. I will move on to the other clauses and the amendments. I was the first person in the Chamber to raise concerns about the schedule to the Bill substituting the word "father" with "other parent". I raised that as a concern. I applaud the Minister for getting back to me in a very timely way about my concerns after the Second Reading and for sharing that information with the Committee. That is a good example of how a Department, a Minister and a Committee should work together. The process has worked tremendously well. The Minister has assuaged most, if not all, of the concerns that I had at Second Reading. Since the Second Reading, I have learned that the harm and damage to which I was trying to allude is not in the schedule of the Bill. The issue predates the Bill in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008, which is established UK law and means that a child will have only two parents. In some cases, that will be the mother and the father, and, in others, it will be the mother and a second female parent. In the circumstances in which a child has a second female parent, under the 2008 Act, the biological father is not recognised as a parent. That is the law as it stands, and it is not changed by the Bill. My grievance is with the fact that the father has been completely removed from that scenario, but the Bill does not do that. Regulation 13 in the Civil Registration Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2012, as amended by the Bill, will state that, where both the mother of a child and the father or second female parent of that child:

"attend a Register Office separately, they shall attend at the same Register Office, before the expiration of a period of 42 days from the date of birth."

At the end of that regulation, the Bill inserts the following:

"references to the 'other parent' of a child are to the child’s father or second female parent".

Therefore, the Bill does not so much remove the father as add the other parent. Due to that clarification, we are content with clause 8 and the schedule. I turn to the other amendments that have been tabled by Timothy Gaston. We agree that the issue of termination is covered by clause 11(2), which says:

"The regulations may provide for the recognition of any loss which is not a still-birth within the meaning of the 1976 Order."

We accept that, but the Member has talked about his concerns and his sentiment in tabling amendment No 5. I honestly do not see how it would do any harm to have that it in the Bill. There is a valid point about putting the cart before the horse — I get the argument — but you could make that argument in respect of clause 11(3) in its entirety. The Department may have just left it whereby it would make regulations, but it has added stipulation 6, through which it wants to build a framework of regulations. I do not see any harm in adding to that framework, even if it gets into specifics.

I take that point from the Member, but just because the regulations "must" provide for that does not mean that you must impose a certificate or any action on anyone. The applicant should have the choice, on request, of whether they want one or not. I get where the Member's concerns are coming from. I do not think that it would limit secondary legislation and the regulations; it would add to and enforce rather than limit or take away from the regulations. You could argue that we are doing the same in our amendment No 3. I will now speak on amendment No 3. We recognised what the Department was saying about having the agility to charge a fee if it needed to in the future. We accepted that. We do not want to see a fee. We hope that there will never be a fee for any aspect of it, but we understand that the Department should have that flexibility. I go back to the point that I made earlier: this is the only place where baby loss certificates will be in legislation, not just in policy. You have to afford the Department agility around fee structures if it thinks that fees might be required in the future. At least the Department would then have the flexibility to add to that. The point remains that it would still have to come to the Assembly to be passed. It would be in the Assembly's gift whether or not to agree to the fee structure. I suspect that, because it is a draft affirmative procedure, we would be able to amend the fee structure or even take fees out completely. Amendment No 3 adds flexibility. It adds compromise to the positions of Eóin Tennyson and the Minister. We hope that that amendment will be supported by the Minister and the Department. If the Minister makes it known that that is his intention, it is debatable whether we will move amendment No 3. We will wait for the Minister's comments.

1,736 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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