Women and abortion rights are being used as “bargaining chips” by ministers who are trying to get the DUP to back Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal, a Labour MP has claimed.
It comes as the EU and UK announced they had finally reached a deal in Brussels in the final hours of negotiations – but the DUP has been clear it cannot support the agreement “as it stands”.
Labour’s Stella Creasy claims a back-room deal on abortion rights in Northern Ireland is being cut between the government and the DUP, who strongly oppose terminations and any customs border in the Irish Sea – which forms part of the Brexit plan Johnson is proposing.
The numbers in the Commons are extremely tight for the prime minister, and the support of Arlene Foster’s party is crucial.
Creasy was the driving force in changes to UK law in Westminster that will extend abortion access to Northern Ireland on Tuesday unless Stormont gets back up and running.
Rights to equal marriage are also due to be rolled out in Northern Ireland for the first time.
But Northern Ireland Secretary Julian Smith tweeted a video on Wednesday evening which said he had been talking to “church leaders and community groups” in the region about abortion and was aiming for the issue to be controlled by Stormont.
The statement came just hours after DUP leader Arlene Foster and MP Nigel Dodds were at Downing Street talking to Number 10 officials.
“Church leaders, community groups and citizens also really worried that the abortion reforms that are going to be made law next Monday, could be made more tailored and more shaped for the interests of Northern Ireland,” said Smith.
“I will be working all week this week to ensure that I do everything I can to encourage political leaders to get back into an executive and ensure that they can shape the abortion laws for Northern Ireland, and take the political decisions that are needed in the best interests of all Northern Ireland citizens.”
The DUP does not support abortion, and updates to the law have repeatedly been blocked using the Northern Ireland assembly’s ‘petition of concern’ veto mechanism.
Creasy said ministers had failed to reassure her that abortion rights for women in Northern Ireland had not been put on the table.
She believes the timing and the fact that Smith made no mention of equal marriage in his statement is significant.
Tweeting that it was “shameful” that the government was “using women as bargaining chips”, she also claimed ministers were trying to “wash their hands of responsibility to regulate abortion in Northern Ireland”.
Northern Ireland remains the only place in the UK where abortion is illegal. the high court in Belfast ruled earlier this month that the ban breaches the UK’s human rights commitments.
Speaking to Newsnight on Wednesday, Creasy said: “Suddenly in the last couple of days at the same time when there’s been this new music from the DUP that they may not be supportive of what the government is trying to do [on Brexit] ministers have been running around making noises saying ‘yes yes yes’ just on abortion, not on same sex marriage so it’s clearly not about devolution, it’s very specifically about abortion which we know is the one touchstone issue for the DUP, apart from Brexit in their home communities, suddenly saying, of course, we’ll find ways that people in Northern Ireland can write the laws on abortion.
“When the secretary of state himself makes a video that he puts out on Twitter, just about all that Julian Smith yeah and about how he’s talking to the churches, and then tonight ministers had to admit they haven’t spoken to a single women’s group from Northern Ireland at all since July, but they’ve been talking to the churches about abortion.
“They’re going to let the churches write the rules on abortion in Northern Ireland and the DUP get up in parliament to confirm that if the assembly was up and running, they would then have the power to write the rules.
“Sometimes in politics if it walks like a duck talks like a duck, it’s a duck.”
HuffPost UK has contacted the Northern Ireland Office for comment.