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Department of Health

It is important that we are having this debate on an Estimates day. The subject is complex. The report from the Science and Technology Committee contains many chapters and much material that needs to be debated, and in the short time available today we shall not be able to do it justice. Let me say to the Minister that I hope this will be the first of many debates on the subject before we change the legislation, as we must. When we embarked on the debate, I hoped that it would not be hijacked by the abortion issue. That is not because I do not consider the issue important. The Committee deliberately avoided debating it, however, because it had been debated so often in Government time on the Floor of the House and elsewhere in the Palace of Westminster. I rather hoped that today we would concentrate on other issues, which are not aired as frequently as they should be. I regard my membership of the Select Committee as one of the most important duties that I perform in this place on behalf of my constituents. The Committee’s members believe that they have influenced Government thinking in a number of policy areas, and have also influenced organisations outside the House. A number of debates are taking place at present, of which this is only one. During my time in the Committee disagreement has been rare, but the fifth report of the 2004-05 Session was an exception. It resulted in the eighth special report of that Session, which makes it clear that five of the 11 Committee members disagreed with the publication of the fifth report. That probably reflects the divided views of Members across the House, which is why we are given free votes on most of these difficult issues. After a lengthy inquiry and prolonged discussions, the Committee met again on 14 March last year, faced with 130 further amendments to an already amended report. It was clear to me then that the report would not see the light of day, especially as we knew that Parliament was shortly to be dissolved. A great deal of effort had gone into compiling the report. It had also cost a lot of money, particularly because of visits to Stockholm and Rome—including a visit to the health ministry at the Vatican—and to clinics in various parts of this country. We collected a large amount of evidence, and the inquiry lasted for an entire year. If the report had dropped out of sight, it would have been costly for Parliament, and it would have been a shame in the context of today’s debate. Therefore, I did an unusual thing in a Select Committee: I moved a guillotine. That caused quite a rumpus. On that day, the meeting began at 3.30 in the afternoon and the guillotine was for 8.30 in the evening. Even though it upset some of my colleagues on the Committee, I do not regret taking that action, because if we had not taken it, we would not be having the debate on this important report this afternoon. Our report states:"““the evidence suggests that the scale of intrusion into the private choices of individuals seeking to have a family can no longer be justified. We do, however, accept that the research uses of the embryo of the human species remain a legitimate interest of the State.””" Other members of the Committee felt that that was too liberal a statement and they moved an amendment against the libertarian approach of certain members of the Committee, but the majority prevailed and the report was published. I accept that these issues are difficult to grasp and even more difficult to legislate for, but it is now generally accepted that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 is in need of review and I believe that our report forms an excellent platform for that review to take place. As in many other areas, advances in technology in this field are racing ahead of our ability to consider reform of existing legislation. As I have said, the Committee deliberately excluded abortion from its inquiry and it excluded surrogacy, too. I want to touch on one or two aspects in the report. On the status of the embryo, we agreed with the Warnock view that embryos should have special status. As the present Chairman of the Committee has pointed out, we took the ““gradualist approach”” that a human being is not created at the point of natural fertilisation but emerges gradually towards birth. However, we respect the 14-day rule that allows research to be carried out on an embryo during the period before the primitive streak emerges, which is the first sign that the nervous system, the spinal cord and the brain are beginning to develop. It is my personal view that no change to the law should be made in that respect, although there are arguments being advanced both to reduce that 14-day limit and to increase it to 20 days, or even beyond that. Baroness Warnock has admitted that that time scale of 14 days is ““arbitrary”” and it is based on the reasoning that I have already given. The 1990 Act defines an embryo in section 1(1) as:"““a live human embryo where fertilisation is complete””" which includes"““an egg in the process of fertilisation””." The term ““gamete”” covers live human eggs or sperm, but not eggs in the process of fertilisation. Today, that definition is inadequate because artificially created gametes can be produced and embryos can be created through the process of cell nuclear replacement, or cloning, the process used to give birth to Dolly the sheep at the Roslin institute nearly 10 years ago. Our Committee believes that attempts to define an embryo in any new Act would be counter-productive because it would lead to legal challenges, as the definition of the embryo in the present Act has led to legal challenges. On sex selection, I agree with the majority of our report’s recommendations, but not all. I spoke against sex selection for nonmedical reasons—Members have used the phrase ““for social reasons””—either by sperm sorting or by pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. However, for the avoidance of sex-related disorders, I do support sex selection. Some communities value boys more than girls; India and China are examples. I believe sex selection to be discriminatory and that it should not be sanctioned in this country. The policy of the two countries that I mentioned has serious demographic consequences. However, I recognise that there are arguments for family balancing, especially when a mother has given birth to a significant number of children of the same sex. Alan and Louise Masterton, who have four sons, lost their three-year-old daughter Nicole in 1999 in a domestic accident and campaigned for the right to rebuild their family with a daughter. If families cannot achieve what they want in this country, they will probably go abroad to achieve their ends. That applies to other areas of this debate as well as sex selection, but I have no ready answers to ““reproductive tourism””. We have to face the fact that if people cannot get what they want in this country and it is legally available in other countries, they will go there to have that treatment, possibly under less safe conditions than would apply in this country.