Christine McCafferty - Parliamentary Career

Parliamentary Career

McCafferty was selected to as a Labour candidate through an all-women shortlist. She was elected in the 1997 Labour landslide, replacing the Conservative Sir Donald Thompson who had held the seat since 1979. She held the seat in the 2001 and 2005 general elections despite Tory resurgence.

In Parliament, she was a member of the Procedure Committee 1997-9, and of the International Development Committee 2001-5. Since 1999, she has also been a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, chairing the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Population, Development and Reproductive Health. She was the author of the McCafferty Report, which proposed to limit the freedom of medical professionals to decline to perform controversial medical practices, such as abortion, in order to insure access to medical treatment. The initiative was ultimately defeated when, on 7 October 2010, a narrow majority of Members adopted a number of amendments that turned it into its opposite: it now re-affirms the free exercise of conscientious objection, instead of restricting it.

In 2007, McCafferty announced that she would retire at the next general election.