---

Department of Health

I will try to bring the debate back to the mainstream of the subject. We should remember the context in which we start. On the whole, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 and the system of regulation have served us well for the past 15 or 16 years. But time moves on, the science has moved on at a great pace, and the time has naturally come to start reviewing the situation. The Government had already decided that it was an apt time to do that, and so had we, especially as several controversial decisions were coming up. It was a natural time to look into the matter. We need to continue our history over the past 16 years of having a framework that provides good clinical services for those who need infertility treatment, and a good research environment that is well regulated so that researchers know clearly what they can and cannot do. For that reason—the fact that we have a working environment that is safe and well controlled—more than any other, we lead the world in matters such as embryology research and embryological stem cell research. In other countries there is not necessarily such an environment. There have been plenty of examples of that. Where have the threats to clone human beings been coming from? They have come not from our own regulated environment, but from countries where, for whatever reason, the Government have not been able to get to grips with the issues. Those issues seem to come back to questions of religion and ethics. That was apparent when the Committee went to Scandinavia and then to the Vatican. The Scandinavian attitude was pragmatic. Basically, it boiled down to this: if there is no demonstrable harm to the child, it must by okay and things should be left alone. However, the Vatican had a very different attitude. In his refreshingly sane contribution, the hon. Member for Salisbury (Robert Key) described the theological progress on this issue. The Vatican position is that human life starts at the moment of fertilisation, and that even the zygote has the full rights of a human being. That creates a great cultural limitation on what can be done, and for a long time Italy was totally unregulated and had no legislation on in vitro fertilisation. The consequence of that was some awful practice. One man was threatening to perform human cloning, and finally Italy legislated, but its legislation in this area, which it introduced just a few months before we did, was very imperfect. For instance, it demanded that all embryos should be immediately implanted once they were produced, and that they could not be stored frozen. That meant that there was a much greater risk of harm, both to the child and the mother, because it was not possible to screen out unhealthy embryos, to do pre-implantation genetic diagnosis—PGD—or to eliminate the possibility of implanting an embryo that was very genetically defective. The net result is a higher incidence of multiple births and birth defects, and greater harm, because the legislation is not sensible and has not grasped the nettles that needed to be grasped. We in this country have grasped them in the past, and we need to continue to do so. Let us look at a few examples of the problems that arise, which mean that we must carefully re-examine the legislation. One problem is the PGD issue. At present, that is strictly limited to serious life-terminating genetic diseases, but the science has moved on so dramatically that a vast range of diseases can now be diagnosed in the embryo—and to a far greater extent than it is currently licensable to use that technique. We must take stock and ask, ““Is it reasonable to avoid using the embryo that would produce a type 1 juvenile diabetic, for instance, and to use the one that would not?”” There are many such diseases, which are survivable but clearly undesirable. That matter must be discussed sanely and rationally. Such borders need constantly to be revisited. Let me give another example. In the context of tissue typing, there was the Hashmi case: the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority licensed an application to produce a baby who could be a tissue donor for its sibling, who already existed but had thalassemia and did not have much of a life expectancy. Tissue typing was essential; otherwise the stem cells would have been rejected. That case has led to a succession of legal challenges, because the HFEA was working right at the policy limits of the legislation. Effectively, it was almost making law. Was it within its statutory limits or not? The High Court said no, but the Appeal Court overturned that judgment, and the case went to the House of Lords; I do not know what its decision was. We should not determine such issues through the courts. We need to make sure that the regulations and laws that we set down in this place are clear enough to keep lawyers out of this area, so that it can be left to doctors and would-be parents. I have given two examples, but there are others. I am thinking now of mitochondrial diseases. At present, cell nuclear replacement can be used only for research purposes, but the time will come when it will be technically possible to use it therapeutically. That is not currently legal, but why should it be illegal? As for cloning, we as a society are totally opposed to human reproductive cloning, and our report—contrary to what some people might suggest—does not suggest for one moment that we should do anything more. Therapeutic cloning is a totally different issue; that is absolutely essential if we are to pursue the production of new embryonic stem cell lines. But in 20 or 30 years, if techniques of reproductive cloning have become demonstrably safe, it is perfectly possible that Parliament and the public might want a different outcome. That is certainly not true at present, but the question needs to be revisited from time to time. This House should play a central role in determining these issues. It should not be left to the HFEA to make policy in these difficult areas. It has enough of a job to do with its licensing and regulatory functions. I strongly subscribe to our recommendation that there should be a House bioethics Committee that should keep this area under constant review, make annual reports to Parliament, recommend amendments to legislation when it feels them to be appropriate, and conduct pre-legislative scrutiny of draft legislation as it emerges. Such a body should be the key actor in the future, but the whole of Parliament should have a vote on its recommendations. That way, we will take full responsibility for them.