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Department of Health

I quake a little when somebody says that we should have these debates in Parliament, because we will need about six weeks to go through the many issues that reflect our consciences and beliefs. It was not easy chairing the Committee—delightful bunch of people as they are; men and women united, just for a minute. I assure the House that I would much rather take penalties in the last minute than have to chair a Committee that was so severely divided. My attitude was, ““Let’s just stay here all night””, and without my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon) moving a guillotine motion—nasty man—we could have debated the issues for hours and hours. That reflects the problems. We have come a long way in science from the days when we believed that only one parent was responsible for the creation of an individual. One was either an ovist or a spermist—there are pictures of sperm with young people within them—and that was how it all happened. It is not so long ago that we believed that. It is not so long ago, too, that we did not believe in genes and DNA—in fact, science in the Soviet Union was based on that for many years. In this area, knowledge moves on and beliefs change, and they do so pretty fast. We as a Parliament need to regulate and legislate in respect of many of the processes that we have been discussing. However, we have to do more than that: we have to think about why we are regulating or legislating. In industry, there is continuous debate about whether legislation inhibits productivity, industrial growth, and so on. Sometimes we do nothing and sometimes we overreact, but I think that we in this country do nothing rather well. We do not get caught up in regulation, yet the world does not crumble about us. The same is true in the field that we are debating now, and that was the spirit in our Committee: we wanted to examine what was happening and make sure that we got legislation where it is needed. We were told at the beginning of our inquiry that nothing needed to happen—that we should leave the subject alone. Well, 104 recommendations suggest that something needs to change. One has to ask whether the purpose of regulation should be to provide legal protection for the embryo, or to provide some regulation of assisted reproduction, or both. In fact, a regulator is not needed to protect the embryo. If the law says that a person cannot clone an embryo and someone does, one just calls 999 and gets the police in. Regulating IVF treatment is different, of course. IVF treatment is increasing and will continue to do so. Endocrine disruptors, which we have heard about, and many other factors are lowering sperm counts and otherwise making people infertile, but the desire to have a baby is an innate human characteristic, so there will be more pressure on IVF provision. The hon. Member for Congleton (Ann Winterton) will remember that when IVF was first introduced, people said that it was a pariah that would destroy the world and that it must not happen, but now it is a standard technique, even though there is not enough of it in the health service, and it is improving all the time. Should the regulator regulate only for technical standards, or do we want it to enforce directions on how treatment is administered, or so on? The spirit of our recommendations was not dogmatic: we were trying to help the new science to develop. The HFEA was an extremely important addition under the 1990 Act. Regulation was extremely important to building public confidence in that legislation. However, events have moved on. We are not all old Labour—despite what some believe, we know that changes have to happen. We have to move on and the HFEA and its functions need to be examined seriously. For example, does it have the right people on it? It would not worry me at all if pro-life people had places on the authority, which they have been denied. We should get them in, have those arguments and not restrict them, because that diminishes the authority and makes people suspicious. Is the HFEA rigorous enough about licensing and inspection? The HFEA has a triple role—regulator, policy maker and Government adviser—but it is not possible to fulfil all three functions. That is why the Committee said that we should try to separate them and why we said that Parliament’s role was extremely important. There is a plethora of knowledgeable, concerned people present in the Chamber and many more outside. I believe that the public would welcome involvement in the debate. The HFEA is to merge with the Human Tissue Authority. We wonder whether that is a political move. The virtues of such a merger have to be explained, because—of course—the British Medical Association is none too happy at the prospect. We could think about merging the HFEA and the Human Genetics Commission—Baroness Kennedy’s group, which examines many issues, such as the new genetic science and its effect on disabled people. The bodies could all work together in harmony much better than they do. We have heard about the problems of reproductive tourism. I think that it will be hard to stop both that and reproductive cloning, which someone will carry out successfully some day. I remember when people said that we could not clone a sheep or cat, but we have done that, so humans will be in the wings. We thus need to think about the regulation that we will need for inspecting that. Do we need a national bioethics committee? The public now want a consideration of morality and their views to be put in the relevant arena. Everyone else seems to have such a committee, but we do not. Is that because such committees are perceived as expensive talking shops? Could we establish a body that was really meaningful? Will Parliament really be the best place to make the big decisions? Should we stop giving such issues to quangos? Judgments are also made by local ethical committees. Are the decisions that are made at local level tough enough, or is it the case that just the great and the good—the local vicar and so on—are appointed to those committees and that they have a nice afternoon cup of tea and a biscuit and then go home? The question of how we achieve localism in such decisions is serious. Things will never stand still in this area because new, unforeseen possibilities will arise and be combined with market forces and new dilemmas that emerge. As many hon. Members have said, regulation must keep up with that without inhibiting research—even if one thinks that that could be stopped. I accept that scientists can be arrogant and think that they can rule the world, but that is why they must engage with the political process and be brought into that arena. If they are kept out, they will have that opinion. We should not really start from where we are now, but think about starting all over again, given all the new developments that have taken place. It is lovely if there is a mum, dad and child. It is lovely when a man meets a girl and they fall in love, before there is the question of having children, and they then live happily ever after and everything is perfect in God’s perfect land, as Neil Young would say. However, sadly, it does not always work like that for some people, and there are other types of relationships. The world has moved on to accept such people and be disciplined about them. We must incorporate that in our thinking. The problem is not major, but we must take it seriously. Nothing is really sacred, not even the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990—but gosh, to hear some people talk, one would think that it had to be protected at all costs.