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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

I am not sure where the noble Lord, Lord Alton, gets his figure of 2 million embryos, if I remember correctly what he said. For the sake of clarity and for the information of the Committee, when a research licence committee looks at a research licence application, the application has to say roughly how many embryos will be used. It may be 100, 200 or whatever. But I do not possibly see how the noble Lord gets this figure of 2 million embryos. It may also reassure the noble Lord that paragraph (b) of Amendment No. 46 already has to be considered in all research licence applications. They have to show that appropriate work on animals has been done before saying it is now an appropriate stage to move to try to do something in relation to humans. The criterion in paragraph (c), as we have said before, already has to be considered. As the noble Lord, Lord Patel, and I think the noble Lord, Lord Winston, said in relation to paragraph (d), you cannot predict exactly a research outcome. The whole point about research is that you are testing something. You may not get out what you are expecting and hoping to get out. That result might still be useful to future scientific work.