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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to speak in this debate. I suspect that none of us will be able to do justice to it on Second Reading but I should like to highlight a few issues on which I feel strongly and on which my party has a position. Before I do so, however, I want to pay tribute to the work done by the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, and her committee which led up to the 1990 Act. Every time I pass the noble Baroness's office, which is next to mine in 2 Millbank, it reminds me what a privilege it is to be in this place rubbing shoulders with people such as Mary Warnock. The 1990 Act was a masterpiece of legislation and has made this country the envy of medical scientists all over the world. Our regulatory system and liberal approach to embryology research have put the UK in a lead position in this field. However, advances in the field make it imperative for the 1990 Act to be reviewed. Here I also congratulate the researchers in the field in the UK on their restraint, especially, recently, the team lead by Professor Steven Mingh at King's College and the team at Newcastle led by Dr Lyle Armstrong. They both wish to use stem cells to grow cell lines in an attempt to treat conditions such as Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, diabetes and spinal injury—very common conditions that will affect many noble Lords. They are waiting for the passage of this Bill and I commend them on their patience. This research could transform the lives of huge numbers of people if successful. All of this research is so exciting. Reading up over the weekend on the latest discoveries on mitochondria—those little specks in the cytoplasm of human cells—I realised that we were very close to finding out how life emerged from the chemical soup that was on this planet millions of years ago. It is the biological equivalent of looking up at the night sky, as one does, and thinking about what lies beyond the Milky Way, and beyond that, and beyond that, until the mind boggles. This is on the same level and it is thrilling. The Government must also be congratulated on the wide consultation on the Bill and on the fine work of the committee that scrutinised the draft Bill. My noble friend Lady Neuberger was a member of that committee. I wish all legislation could be dealt with in this way in this House. The main field under consideration in the Bill that interests me is the creation of cytoplasmic hybrid embryos or cell lines—I wish we could call them cell lines, not embryos. It is done by using the nucleus of a human somatic cell and implanting it into an animal cell from which the nucleus has been removed, so using the energy from those magical bodies called mitochondria to do the work. Precious human eggs have been used for this. They have to be harvested from women's ovaries in an invasive and occasionally dangerous procedure, so using animal cells would be much better. Other interspecies embryos, or cell lines, covered by the Bill are true hybrids. I have to commend to noble Lords the Enchanted Forest at Groombridge, to which I am dragged by my family every Halloween. There is a Zeedonk there, which is a hybrid of a donkey and a zebra. It is worth going just to see the expression on the animal’s face. He stands there looking as if he is thinking, ““I feel a little silly””. He is worth seeing, and it is worth being reminded of what can happen with true hybrids. The Bill also considers chimera and human transgenic embryos. I understand the horror that some people feel when talking about these things, bombarded as we are through our televisions and cinema screens with monsters of all shapes and sizes. Probably the most important provisions of the Bill, which cannot be emphasised enough, are that any embryo must not be kept or used after 14 days or when the primitive streak first appears, which is at around 14 days, and that no interspecies embryo—human embryo or interspecies embryo: the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, made a very fine point—must be implanted in a woman's uterus. It must not happen. That is one line of research, but there are others. At the weekend, Professor Wilmut, who created Dolly the sheep, was said to be working on turning somatic cells directly into stem cells. That is another very interesting line of research, but we need all avenues of research if we are going to conquer the diseases that persecute the human race. We must encourage, and we must regulate while we encourage. The objectors will say human life is sacred, full stop. The difficulty is to define exactly what is human life. The sufferers of the diseases I mentioned are certainly human, and their lives could be transformed if this work is successful. Do we want to deny them that? What about all the eggs from my ovaries and the embryos of less than 14 days that I might have lost in the course of over 40 years of happy marriage? Was that human life? We get into very difficult areas when talking in these terms. People worry about the transmission of infection via mitochondria but, if that is a possibility, the only way we can develop ways to combat it is to allow the research to go ahead to find out what happens. What of rogue scientists acting outside the law and creating monsters? There have always been rogue scientists, which is why the law and regulations must be in place to ensure that they are caught and stopped. I shall not get carried away at this stage. Suffice it to say that my party supports this research, but we will have a free vote when the time comes. I shall touch on other issues very briefly. Clause 14(2)(b) removes the reference in the 1990 Act to the child's need for a father. I say to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, that of course every child needs a biological father—thank goodness—but children can be brought up well without either parent in some circumstances. Two of my grandchildren have been brought up without a mother for the past three and a half years, but they have been surrounded by a loving family and a social network, the requirement for which is also mentioned in the 1990 Act and remains in the Bill. That network of support for any future child is more important than either parent; there must be a social network and an extended family. Our party has never discriminated against gay people, which is what this debate is really about, and we will therefore support the removal of those words. There will also be a prolonged debate on the child’s right to information about parentage and the effect that this may have on the availability of donors. I have a lot to say on that subject, but I will leave those arguments for the Committee stage. I confess to sometimes feeling a little anxious about the treatment of infertility, having spent the past 10 years studying the effects on world resources, food supply and climate change of the population explosion all over the planet. At the same time, we are helping desperate, childless people to have babies. We must spend much more on making contraception available to those people who cannot stop having babies. That is not the last that I shall say on this subject. Finally, we do not think it appropriate for us in this House to put forward amendments to the Abortion Act. That must be the prerogative of the House of Commons, Members of which are the elected representatives of the people of this country. However, if there are noble Lords here who are distressed at the number of abortions in this country—who is not?—I hope that they will support my party in our call for good statutory sex and relationship education in all of our schools and for a halt to the closure of family planning clinics nationwide, as the primary care trusts balance their books and use what they see as the easy option for cuts. This is an exciting and fascinating Bill and there will be great debates. I look forward to the Committee stage, where I suspect that I will probably learn much more than I contribute.