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Department of Health

I shall not take the hon. Gentleman up on that in the debate because I must finish my speech quickly. The hon. Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) made a good point about the Government’s evidence for the removal of donor anonymity. He may know that one of the problems with that is that families who use donors choose not to tell the child because they do not want that to be discovered. That means that fewer children have access to such knowledge. There was no good evidence of harm in the current circumstances or of any benefit from following the suggested path. However, there was good evidence of the threat to gamete supply, which has been affected by donor anonymity. I feel strongly about the use of the precautionary principle, which my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough mentioned. When there is clear evidence of benefit or likely potential benefit, the rule should be that there should be good evidence of serious harm before closing down research options. As the hon. Member for Salisbury said, there is a moral imperative to do good. We should try to maximise the benefits of the treatment. There is a moral imperative to treat infertile women and couples, to conduct research using stem cells to cure disease, and to develop new technologies.