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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

My Lords, I propose for the consideration of the House now and in Committee the creation of a national bioethics commission in this country. The great physicist Niels Bohr said that it was dangerous to make predictions, especially about the future. He was right about his own scientific world. We are now at a stage where the speed of scientific advance is very fast indeed. It is outstripping the capacity of our people to understand what is happening. It thereby impairs our ability to set an ethical framework in which those advances should be made. That is not an acceptable state of affairs in a democracy. Science must speak and explain to us what it is doing and where it might go. We are entitled to what I would call scientific social responsibility. With it we, the people, can understand better, be more aware and therefore be able to participate in the democratic processes about life sciences which so fundamentally affect us. Regulatory control is plainly necessary in this area, but it is not enough. Control may give people confidence, but an ethical framework will give them trust. We should seek to establish a combination of the two under the bioethical reforms. We not need only confidence and trust, but some basic understanding about probability—the ““mights”” of life as against the ““woulds””, ““wills”” and ““surelys””. Very few people ever think about probability when examining the world in which they live. It is very important in this context. Do they think about risk in this context? Hardly at all. They need educating. We need educating. Therefore, it is appropriate, is it not, to consider a national bioethics commission? While I agree with much of what my noble friend Lord Winston says, I simply do not agree that we already know what most people think about these issues. We, educated people, ask for evidence about the public’s feelings on things, but without any proper understanding and awareness, how can they give us evidence? We have a state in which one almost patronises them. What of the commission? Its function was proposed over 25 years ago by Sir Ian Kennedy, certainly not on any religious basis, but entirely because of the ethical framework in which science was then moving. Such commissions exist in Australia, Denmark, Germany, France and other countries, and they work. The societies there benefit from those commissions. They do not determine or decide—they inform; they make one aware; one understands better and one plays one’s democratic part more productively. How might that apply to some of the issues arising within this Bill and without it? Human reproductive cloning must remain illegal. It was made so by a three-line clause in 2001. The clause that replaces it runs to nearly 40 lines, depends on definitions and introduces a regulation power. I am sure that the Government want to maintain the prohibition, but we need clarity; this is too much detail for such a plain point. A commission would have clarified that as part of the general debate. The Government thought one thing about interspecies cloned embryos and then another; the debate swung one way and then the other. A commission would have played its part in informing that debate instead of watching it, as we did, lurch from one view to another. What of the prospects of future embryonic testing? Humility before hubris in science is a wise approach. A professor at UCL said yesterday that there had been gross overselling about the prospects of genetic science—first, as to the range of cures, and, secondly, as to when they might occur. I suggest that we should apply rigour. Therefore, we induce into people’s thinking that certain types of research are necessary to solve these problems—rigour not promises. Lastly, the Bill does not deal with adult stem cell research in any particular way. The Joint Committee thought that it was unnecessary for it to consider it. As far as I am aware, no public body in this country is analysing the balance of benefit and cost between embryonic stem cell research as figures under this Bill and adult stem cell research. Is that appropriate? All those things would have benefited from a commission. There are two riders. Sir Liam Donaldson spoke, as the right reverend Prelate told us, of the medical ethics deficit in his profession. That means—does it not?—that the deficit must be rectified from within medicine and from without. The Joint Committee thought that this Bill was lacking in the ethics underpinning it should have, as was found in the Warnock committee approach. It said that that lack of underpinning finds no proper substitute in public consultation on individual issues. Both those riders illustrate the need. What is the present state of affairs? The HFEA is a regulator. The Human Genetics Commission gives advice which is directive; it is opinion advice, not simply informative advice. The food and agricultural committees in these areas do their best. None of them has a wide public role. My noble friend Lord Winston was relatively kind to the HFEA tonight. On past occasions he has been coruscating about what they have or have not done. The fact is that it now regulates a £500 million industry with a sub-committee on ethics. Is that really the right approach? I have spoken about the other committees; what about Nuffield and the private sector? It is not a public body and it is not independent in the sense of being accountable and transparent to the nation. It has the advantage of one cleric sitting on it—he is the only cleric on the HFEA; namely, the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth. He was there apparently to fulfil the role of theology: the designation is, ““(Church of England)””. That result means that we are left with the Government. They tell us in the report that the present system works fine. It tells us enough. ““Us””? What about us—the people—not you? What about Parliament? A Joint Committee on ethical issues is necessary. If we do not have such a body we are left with some government regulators with ethical committees, an unaccountable private body and the Government. In Great Britain in 2007—this new age of science—that is not enough. What would this body therefore do? It would be set up by statute with a wide bioethics remit; it could function at reasonable cost; it would be independent; and it would be continuous. I know of no country where the participation of different views in any way detracts from the effectiveness of these commissions on the countries in which they operate. What are the benefits for us? It closes a democratic gap; it enables science to be responsive to it and thereby responsible to us; it benefits the Government; and it benefits Parliament because it compliments rather than subtracts. The Joint Committee was reluctant to accept it. Using its phrase, I could detect ““no sound point of principle”” why it was reluctant, unless it thought that the recommendation was designed to avoid parliamentary decision making. Far from it; it is to add to it as the basic democratic requirement. When we talk about these things in a democracy, it is not just the letter of the law; it is a culture of democracy that involves us all.