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Department of Health

Again, I am grateful to the hon. Lady. We all know what pressures are on Committees to reach a conclusion, and the period just before a general election is perhaps not the best time to do so. The hon. Lady has made what happened clear. The formal minutes of the meetings that cover the approval of the report are a record of the dissent. In the days that followed its publication, the nation and media were almost unanimously up in arms over issues such as animal-human hybrids, germ-line manipulation, reproductive cloning, social sex selection and other hugely controversial proposals, which form part of the report’s recommendations. Further to the validity of the recommendations—104 in all—the next point to consider is the extent to which they reflected the thrust of the evidence that the Committee received during its year’s extended consultation. For those who attended the oral evidence sessions—I am the first to admit that I did not—read the written evidence and followed the online consultation, it is impossible to accept that the Committee’s controversial recommendations relate in any way to the evidence that it received from the vast majority of participants. A trio of postgraduate students took time to analyse the material and concluded that the weight of evidence was, for the greater part, conservative in its content and in favour of maintaining the status quo, not deviating significantly from the consensus reached in 1990 on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act. The rationale behind the report was the intention to bring the Act up to date in the light of scientific advances. Technology might move fast, but that does not mean that our ethical concerns or the philosophical underpinnings of society and the law have altered radically—as the report would have us believe—if, indeed, they have altered at all. The Act needs to be reconnected not with modern science but with the interests and values of society at large. Some would even argue that those values have become more restrictive than they were at the time of the Warnock report, not least because many developments that were not anticipated at the time have been received with huge distaste by the public. Social sex selection is a classic example. While it attracts support in the maverick Science and Technology Committee report, 85 per cent. of public opinion polls register total opposition to such a proposal. Warnock is cited by the report, but defended on a cherry-picking basis. The protection for the embryo enshrined in the original Act, for example, has been completely bypassed. On what justification? It is on the opinion of five Members of Parliament. Cherry-picking is applied even more openly to ethical opinions and citations. The continued references to John Harris, Julian Savulescu, Emily Jackson and others who hold similar beliefs are nothing more than a blatant endorsement of libertarian minority opinions. The philosophical basis of the report is a selective mixture of some rights and harm principles. The rights, however, are limited to the reproductive rights of the adult, and leave little space for the rights of children, let alone the broader rights of society as a whole. The harm principle is limited exclusively to physical harms, and there is no wish to engage with broader, deeper concerns. That is to be regretted. I wish to speak about the rights and welfare of children, not least because the matter has been in the news recently, perhaps because of the publicity given to the statements made by the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris), who is now in his place, having not been present earlier in the debate. I understand that he wishes to remove from the Act part of section 13(5), which refers to the welfare of the child. I have to admit that I was one of those responsible for the inclusion in the original Act of the need of a child for a father, and I shall read that subsection to the House:"““A woman shall not be provided with treatment services unless account has been taken of the welfare of any child who may be born as a result of the treatment (including the need of that child for a father), and of any other child who may be affected by the birth.””" It was I who encouraged my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) to table a very small amendment on that issue. It was the only one that we on this side of the argument managed to get accepted by the House on that occasion. I might add that that was the only time that I have been a Teller and been on the winning side. In fact, from that point of view, the whole of my parliamentary career has been an absolute disaster. However, I was very proud of that one small amendment, because it meant a great deal. Perhaps that is why the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon is now trying to get the provision removed. He is, in effect, recommending the deliberate creation of fatherless children, whether to single or lesbian women, on the basis that"““including the need of that child for a father””" is a discriminatory phrase that should not have been included in the Act in the first place. However, it was obvious, when the Act was passed, that the wise intention of Parliament was to place the welfare of the child at the centre of our focus. The welfare of the child obviously extended to his or her right to a father. That is what the House voted on and for in those days.