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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am conscious that the Bill has been given the most careful overview and pre-legislative scrutiny, and I begin by echoing the remarks made by the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, when she said that this Bill is a remarkable example of the attempt to involve the legislature in great detail in the drafting of a Bill. Although there are aspects of the Bill that I cannot pretend to like, it is a remarkable example of how the legislature should be brought in to the drafting and scrutiny of Bills to a much greater extent than is generally true. We all know that there is a great deal of ill-drafted and ill-thought-out legislation and this Bill is a remarkable counter-example of how to involve people in the deepest discussion on a matter of such complexity and importance. I was not on the Joint Committee and I have been struck by the remarks of those who were who have obviously thought very deeply about this, so I shall restrict my remarks to four particular points, the first three of which I will end by asking a direct question of the Minister, because they directly affect the Government's intentions. The first thing that I want to mention goes back to the debates that we had in this House in January 2001 at the initial stages of our discussion of embryo cell research, when two Members of this House—I believe that the other Member will speak about this as well—raised on more than one occasion the success of adult stem cell research and the indications that adult stem cells had two great advantages. They are pluripotential—as embryo cells can be—but, more importantly, they are proof against immune reaction, which is not the case with embryo cell therapy when used without very careful matching of the therapy to the patient. At that time the scientific community broadly took the view that embryo therapy was much more useful and significant and had much greater potential than adult stem cell therapy. Since then leaps and bounds have been made in the field of adult stem cell therapy, not least in the repairing of heart muscle, the possibility of transplantation of bone marrow—which is rather more long standing—and the discovery of the extreme usefulness of umbilical cord blood in repairing and helping with therapies that are, and have been shown to be, extremely successful. One reason for the superior view taken of adult stem cell therapy was due to the strongly argued case in the scientific community—this was partly fired by the sometimes ignorant opposition in some circles towards embryo cell therapy—that it was the superior way to go. So the first question I ask the noble Lord is: have we now put behind us any bias between these two different kinds of research? Exactly what financial support has been given for adult stem therapy, and with what results, in the nine years since we discussed this matter? One of the reasons I am so concerned about this is because at that time I raised the case of a researcher, Dr Abuljadayel, who was unable to get her work on adult stem cells printed in any major scientific publication in this country. That troubles me a great deal. As it turned out, she had a very important contribution to make. As I say, she could not get her work published in any major scientific journal and was able to do so only when her professor at Cambridge agreed to associate his recommendation with it. That troubles me and I would like an assurance from the Minister that we shall look with open and unbiased attitudes at the different therapies that can be useful. From those in this field whom I have spoken to my understanding is that so far embryonic cell research has not produced any remarkable therapeutic results although it has challenging possibilities in the research field. The Minister may be able to say a little more about that. The second issue that I want to address is that of cloning, which has received the resilient response from the HFEA and others that it will be controlled by the unwillingness—that is quite proper—to transplant a cloned embryo into a living female surrogate, or woman capable of carrying that embryo to term. That is fine as far as it goes, but what bothers me is that in the emphasis that we place, and have placed, on the leading role of the United Kingdom in research, we have not so far mentioned that any attempt to try to ban the cloning of human beings by refusing to allow reproductive cloning takes no notice at all of the fact that we live not only in a global scientific community but one which is intensely competitive and driven to a great extent by profound commercial interests. That means quite simply that we need to hear—this is my second question to the Minister—exactly what position the United Kingdom Government take towards the United Nations’ attempt to get some form of global banning of reproductive cloning, because without that we all know perfectly well that rogue scientists will be perfectly happy to go round the back of their own national prohibitions in order to get the chance to carry out their research elsewhere. The reason is obviously that such research could be immensely valuable commercially. There will be people, driven either by egotism or by the desire to try to ensure that they can provide designer babies to those who have the ability to pay for them, who will be only too ready to put out their shingle and respond by providing the necessary technological knowledge. That is not science fiction. If you look at the way in which the disgraceful trade in organs has grown in our society in the past few years, you will see that what I am saying is not untrue. Ethical considerations may be overleaped by the personal hunger to deal with particular therapeutic and medical conditions. I understand that—we all do; we are all human beings—but it is an extremely dangerous road to go down. Will the Minister therefore say whether Her Majesty’s Government will support the United Nations in its effort to get some form of global ban? I recognise that this will be a long and hard struggle. In particular, will he say whether they share the view of Dr Zakri, who works for the United Nations University, that the crucial path to take is: "““A legally-binding global ban on work to create a human clone, coupled with freedom for nations to permit strictly controlled therapeutic research””?" This, in his view, has the greatest possibility of being accepted by the United Nations. Thirdly, and briefly, I strongly support what the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, had to say about retaining the original 1990 reference to the need of a child for a father. I recognise—I have some friends and relatives in this position—that a pair of men or women, or for that matter a woman on her own, can be marvellous parents. That is not my main concern at the moment. My main concern is that research shows conclusively in fields such as education and educational achievement that a child who has a male model as well as a female model is likely to do considerably better than one who does not have that male model, because, as the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, so rightly said, our society is made up of men and women. They often have rather different approaches, even rather different language: women’s language is much more often associational, and men’s language is more often directly related to a particular issue. Be that as it may, I refer in this context to the very interesting research done by Professor Carol Gilligan in the United States and her book In a Different Voice. She goes at length into the ways in which little girls and little boys develop. In no sense is one more able than the other. Simply, one is rather different from the other, and a child will benefit from understanding from its babyhood what a man and a woman constitute and how they should complement each other. I have a deeper purpose, however. I believe that one of the ways forward for the family—it is no good thinking that we can go back to a traditional family structure of a very old fashioned kind—is that men and women alike have to bear a much greater part of the responsibility for raising children, for looking after elderly relatives, and for caring for those members of their family who are needy in one way or another. Traditionally, that has fallen largely to women, but it will be less true in future. Unless we give men a full sense of what it is to be a father, a member of a family, and a proud and in many ways very rich potential, we will simply find ourselves with more and more dysfunctional families, and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, rightly said, with boys who do not quite see what their place is in society and the family. I strongly recommend to this House that we think very carefully about taking a step that looks trivial but could be serious in changing the atmosphere and the attitude towards fatherhood. Finally, on abortion, I strongly support the argument that we should consider not amending this Bill but rather sending it to a bioethics committee along the lines suggested by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, as there is certainly something objectionable about using abortion as a form of contraception, and the price that we all pay in human and social terms is very grave indeed.