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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

My Lords, I was a member of the pre-legislative scrutiny that was fortunate enough to have had the brilliant insights of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, which the House, too, has been able to experience today. I very much welcome the Bill. It devolves regulation, subject to the 14-day rule and the no-implantation rule, under the HFEA, which affords that blend of careful scrutiny and scientific head space which is probably the nearest in this world that we will get to being able to see around corners. I shall speak very briefly—which is why I originally put down my name in the gap on the speakers’ list—about an issue that has been widely referred to: that the Bill should continue to carry a clause or a phrase referring to the need for a father. I hold what my sons would probably tell me are conservative views about the family. I say that because I regret not some of the views, which I very much respect, but some of the language used in this debate. To suggest, as did the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York, that we need to include such a phrase in the Bill to placate Fathers 4 Justice is profoundly unwise. Families Need Fathers I respect and Fathers Direct is an admirable organisation, but Fathers 4 Justice? I think not. Should reference to the need for a father be on the face of this Bill? Let me be clear. Do I think that the welfare of a child is usually best ensured within a loving, stable family of a mother and father? Yes, I do. Do I also think that a single parent or a gay or lesbian couple can be a loving, stable family, as my noble friend Lord McIntosh said? Yes, I do. Do I think that fathers should offer emotional and financial sustained support to their children? Yes, I do. Do I value their contribution, especially in providing a role model for sons, as the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, eloquently described it? Yes, I do. Do I think that many children will want to know who their fathers are? Yes, I do. Do I therefore believe that the need for a father should be a consideration for the clinician and the phrase reinstated in this Bill? No, I do not. I emphasise that to say that the phrase should not be in the Bill is in no way to underplay or undermine the role of fathers. The matter simply belongs to a different debate—and let me say why. Either the need for a father contained in a phrase or clause in the Bill carries meaning or it does not. Currently it is in the Act and I understand that it has become meaningless, vacuous, empty rhetoric. Single women receive IVF. We have been told this by the Minister and by clinicians and the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, has emphasised the point. It is not usually salient to the decision whether to offer IVF treatment. Instead the assessment is made on whether the woman is in sound physical and emotional health—or, in more conventional parlance, not ““flaky””—and has family support. If we reinsert the phrase, we are doing so because it should be meaningful; otherwise there is no point, and why bother? It would mean that clinicians would and should question the whereabouts of the putative father. If there is no such person, what then? Will they still permit treatment, in which case the question was intrusive but irrelevant, or refuse it, which means discriminating against and denying single women and lesbian partners the right to IVF? Even if they are young and fertile enough and may have unassisted births and even though, after the most intense and rigorous scrutiny, they may have adopted a child, they may not receive IVF. Fathers do belong in children’s lives—I firmly believe that. It is just the phrase that does not belong in the Bill. Either the wording is meaningless, as it is now, in which case it should not be there; or it is meaningful but the answer ignored, in which case it is irrelevant; or it is meaningful but got around and manipulated, and we end up with doctors deciding which families are desirable and which are undesirable, with some families and some children being judged second-class but perhaps smuggled under the ropes. If it is meaningful and upheld, it is utterly discriminatory. What do we want? Do we want a question in the Bill which is meaningless but not asked, a question that is asked but the answer—whatever it may be—ignored, so it is irrelevant, or a question that is asked and is meaningful, is acted on and in consequence denies treatment in a discriminatory way? I suggest to the House that if we go down that path we will end up in an unnecessary legislative mess. However much we personally may prefer conventional families for children, these words do not belong in the Bill, and I hope that the House will not seek to insert them.