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Department of Health

I congratulate all those who contributed to the excellent debate. I hope that it greatly improves the understanding of those who have listened to it and those who read it of a range of issues that will—I hope—come before the House and that require, as the hon. Member for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson) said, a great deal of debate, I thank the hon. Member for Norwich, North and the Committee for the excellent report. I do not have to agree with all of it to realise that it is an important piece of work. As the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis) said, it shows the work of Select Committees at their best. It does not simply hold the Government to account, which is important, but tries to enhance Parliament’s role in the discussion and shaping of policy. That is especially apt in circumstances in which the House has responsibility not only to review the law but to make decisions in future about the shape of legislation on the subject—on a free vote. The hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) mentioned the two important words ““free vote.”” Before I venture into the subject of the report, I emphasise that point. Hon. Members who were present during the passage of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 will recall that, two years before the measure was introduced, the Conservative Government said that such issues would be considered on a free vote. So they were. It is one of the Committee’s recommendations that the Government should make it clear that the passage of any legislation on this matter will be conducted on a free vote basis. That would certainly be true for the Conservatives, among whom there are different views that it is legitimate for any hon. Member to express. The hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough did a marvellous job of encapsulating many recommendations in a number of key themes. I prepared a set of notes for this debate containing all the issues that I thought we should discuss, but I have discarded them because, in the course of the debate, each of those issues has been raised. That is the mark of an excellent debate that has covered all the necessary ground extremely well. Some might think that it has covered more ground than was desirable, but I believe that we have done the subject real justice. The hon. Gentleman touched on a matter of considerable importance, namely the procedure involved in taking this subject forward. I also want to emphasise that point before the Minister responds to the debate. On the strength of the consultations that have been carried out, I believe that we have reached a point at which the Government could come forward with proposals. Bearing in mind what happened during the passage of the Human Tissue Act 2004, I believe that the Committee is right to call for pre-legislative scrutiny of any proposed legislation. I hope that the Government will therefore publish a draft Bill for that purpose. I also hope that the Minister will confirm that that process will be conducted on a free vote basis. These are obviously matters for the House as a whole, rather than solely for Front Benchers. The need for a Select Committee on bioethics merits further discussion. We have discussed a range of issues this afternoon, and there are others, such as surrogacy, that have not been mentioned. The need for discussion on other matters, including the use of gene therapies and genetic research, demonstrates the desirability of having a body of continuing expertise to be developed in the House, on which we could all rely. The Science and Technology Committee has done a marvellous job in producing this report, but we cannot ask it to be responsible for continuously updating Parliament’s views on these issues. We say that we have had no legislation on these issues since 1990, but we have returned to them from time to time. I recall that, when we debated stem cell research four or five years ago, many Members felt as though they were suddenly being asked to consider the matter without having had the opportunity to do so before. The same applies to the issue of abortion, which, as the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon said, does not get debated if we are not considering legislation on the matter. A Select Committee would offer greater opportunities to debate all these issues. The hon. Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Geraldine Smith) made a powerful case for the need for a debate on abortion. Taking a very different tack, the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) argued her case on the issue. I want to echo what the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon said on the issue. We cannot decide here and now whether there is sufficient evidence to justify the view that 24 weeks is too late a point—based on the viability of a foetus—for abortions to take place except in the most exceptional circumstances. The Committee makes a perfectly reasonable case for that subject to be examined. Although such an examination would not necessarily lead to the introduction of legislation, there are proposals about access to early terminations of pregnancy—involving a nurse carrying out the procedure, for example—that might require legislative reform. My personal view is that it would probably be unwise for that issue to be wrapped up in the reform of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990. I would not want hon. Members to have to take a view on the desirability or otherwise of a whole piece of legislation on the ground of their strongly held views on abortion, when the bulk of the legislation ought to be able to proceed without having to deal with that issue. In that respect, it would be helpful if Ministers would make it clear that those issues will be considered separately, and that, if a Committee of the House were to propose options for the reform of the law on abortion, the Government will do as a previous Government did and make parliamentary time available for the House to conclude any such discussions. My hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Ann Winterton) took us into the question of the welfare of the child, on which the Committee made a number of recommendations. The way in which the Committee did that was rather curious, because it suggested that the welfare of the child, as currently expressed in the legislation, should be abandoned, but then went on to say that it should still be considered if there were a risk of significant harm to a child, and that there should be a threshold in such circumstances. I cannot see how a legislative framework that requires third parties to intervene to bring a child into the world cannot consider the welfare of the child.