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Department of Health

The Committee made it absolutely clear that it is important for children to be brought up in a loving environment. A significant number of children are brought up in incredibly abusive and unhappy environments. I would not wish to speculate on a child being brought up in a single household, but I agree with the hon. Gentleman in that, where possible, my personal view is that I would like there to be two parents—a male and female—within the household bringing a child up. That does not preclude other methods of rearing, which are perfectly satisfactory and which have proved to be helpful in terms of developing good human beings as far as society is concerned. I will return to that issue later. On many of the key issues, the Government agreed to consult further. The results of that exercise were published in March 2006 as a summary of the views expressed, with no accompanying explanation of lessons drawn. I am looking forward to hearing from the Minister how helpful the exercise was, although if my interpretation of the volume of the published responses—there were 535—is correct, it would be fair to say that a variety of views were expressed. It was very difficult to draw firm conclusions, but perhaps the Minister will add her comments later. Judging from the views expressed in Committee, I suggest that the extent of disagreement was never in doubt. However, disagreement should not be an excuse for inaction. Sooner or later the Government must take a view and convince Parliament and the public of the merits of their proposals. There were issues of concern to members of the Committee, and I am sure that right hon. and hon. Members will highlight their own, so I will not attempt to raise anything other than what I consider to be one or two crucial areas, for which Government proposals must be forthcoming. First is the issue of sex selection for social reasons, which is highly contentious. I am sure that hon. Members on both sides of the House will have different views about it. The Committee could find no adequate justification for prohibiting the use of sex selection for family balancing, but sensibly called for further work to establish the demographic input of such a policy. The HFEA has also consulted on the issue and advised against it. The Government invited views but announced no plans to change their position. I confess that the Government might be right on this occasion, and that such a policy might well give rise to unforeseen difficulties, so I would want to see convincing evidence of the potential impact before being convinced of the need for change. I suspect that the demand for sex selection is actually quite low—much lower than many hon. Members believe. We should not forget that it currently requires people to go through incredibly difficult and costly treatments to get a child. However, we have to plan for a time when there is a pill that destroys male sperm or ensures that a male embryo could not implant, so the Government need to be clear about how they would prevent sex selection, and they cannot dodge the issue in any draft Bill, or when they bring their conclusions from the consultation before the House. A second area of contention between the Committee and the Government surrounds the welfare of the child provision in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990. The Committee argued that the requirement for those providing fertility treatment to have regard for the welfare of the child, including the need for a father, was unjustified. It held that the provision was not only discriminatory towards the infertile and some sections of society, but that it was"““impossible to implement and…of questionable practical value in protecting the interests of children born as a result of assisted reproduction.””" Quite apart from the difficulty of interpreting what the welfare of the child means in practice, I cannot see a case for the state interfering in the reproductive decisions of parents because they happen to be infertile, when it makes no such attempt in respect of anyone else. For example, there is no welfare of the child provision for other fertility treatment such as vasectomy reversal. So, if the Government are committed to maintaining a welfare of the child provision, I hope that they are prepared to spell out exactly how it should be applied in practice. I look forward to hearing the Government’s latest thinking on what is, admittedly, a very difficult issue. A third area is the allowable use of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis—PGD—and this needs serious clarification. At present, it is the responsibility of the HFEA, but paragraph 251 of the Committee’s report describes the authority’s policies and licensing decisions on pre-implantation tissue typing as ““highly unsatisfactory””. Lord Winston, I suspect, used more graphic language. Certainly, no evidence was produced by the HFEA to support its claim that PGD would be used for ““trivial”” purposes, and the fact that the Government have agreed that it would be preferable if the parameters for PGD were more clearly set out in law is a tacit admission that the Committee was right. For many, PGD provides a welcome opportunity for parents to reduce or eliminate the risks of passing on hereditary conditions and diseases such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy, Huntington’s and cystic fibrosis. The Committee argued in line with the gradualist approach that if an embryo is to be destroyed because it may carry a serious disease, it is better to do so when it is just a few days old than at 24 weeks. However, I fully accept that those who believe that all abortion is illegal and wrong would not subscribe to that view. The crucial point to emphasise is that new technologies are developing quickly and, as a consequence, the HFEA is being required to take decisions with an ethnical dimension and with serious consequences. For example, the HFEA recently ruled that PGD could be extended to testing for certain types of cancer, and only last month we heard about a new technique developed at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ hospital in London that may enable thousands of diseases to be screened for as existing tests are improved significantly. The key change is that whereas the original PGD screening was for known diseases or hereditary conditions, the new screening is for possible development of conditions later in life, and that requires a substantially different approach from the present one.