Pro-life votes
Following the defeat of Labour at the recent Glasgow East by-election, pro-life groups were quick to point to government policy on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill as contributing to the loss.
Jim Dobbin MP, Chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Pro-Life Group, said, ‘It’s clear to me that the HFE Bill was a major factor in how Glasgow East voted. As a Labour MP I say that with regret, but it shows that the delay to the HFE Bill was a mistake that badly affected the result.
‘The HFE Bill will now be hanging over our heads until the autumn. Voters in general, and in particular from faith communities, cannot understand how a Labour government can force through such things as creating animal and human mixed embryos, saviour siblings, and GM babies.
‘In addition to all this the bill has given the opportunity to allow extreme pro-abortion MPs to further liberalise the abortion law, even though we already have the highest abortion rates ever’.
Lord Alton said, ‘Not everyone who voted for John Mason in Glasgow East did so because of the HFE Bill but, with a majority of just over 300, pro-life votes were the ones that made the difference. They were enough to get him elected.
‘He was the only one of the candidates who said he would vote against the Bill when it comes back to the Commons in the autumn; the only one who said he would stand up for the unborn child. It only takes a few hundred voters in key seats to change the political complexion of a constituency.
‘MPs and political leaders should remember that one and a half million British voters have sent in protest cards to Parliament stating that they will cast their votes at the next election for candidates who cast their votes in the defence of human life. They will be enough to determine the complexion of the next Parliament and the next Government’.
John Mason, the new SNP Member of Parliament, and victor in Glasgow East, said, ‘The HFE Bill was a key issue for some people – part of the package of today’s result’.
