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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for that intervention. There is a huge amount of altruism involved in these debates, and there is also vested interest. At Second Reading, the noble Lord, Lord Winston, rightly drew our attention to some of the charlatans who operate in this area. As soon as laboratories were required to provide more justification for their requests to use animals in vivisection, repetitive duplication and the number of animals used were radically reduced. Is it so unreasonable to demand at least the same for human embryos? Can the Government truly say that it was necessary to destroy or experiment on 2 million human embryos? Even if they no longer believe that the human embryo has special status—perhaps the Minister will say whether they do—surely it should be necessary to demonstrate that no alternative exists. Amendments Nos. 44 and 46 would do that. I beg to move.