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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 21: 21: After Clause 4, insert the following new Clause— ““Reports to the Secretary of State In section 7 of the 1990 Act (reports to the Secretary of State), after subsection (2) insert— ““(2A) A report prepared under this section shall include information on the resources used in— (a) human embryonic stem cell research; and (b) adult stem cell research within the United Kingdom.”””” The noble Lord said: In moving Amendment No. 21, I shall also speak to Amendments Nos. 22, 23 and 62. Amendment No. 21 is in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, who spoke at Second Reading and who is unavoidably absent overseas, taking part in a long-standing engagement. The amendment would require the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority to report to the Secretary of State on the respective sums of money used in human embryonic stem cell research and adult stem cell research. It seeks to ensure that, as with the local ethical review process established in the case of animal experiments under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986, an amicus curiae—in this case, someone to speak for the human embryo—would be appointed to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and would have a remit at least to challenge repetitive experimentation. Amendment No. 23 seeks to disqualify from membership of the HFEA anyone who has a direct pecuniary interest in any of the activities governed by the Act. Amendment No. 62 seeks to establish clear record-keeping by the HFEA of ovarian stimulation, oocyte retrieval and hospitalisation. Turning first to Amendment No. 21, it is ironic indeed that the moral justification, if it can be passed as such, for experiments on human embryos is the desire to keep Britain in the lead. This mistaken jingoism is a false patriotism at every level. While we have been diverted down the blind alley of embryonic stem cell research, the most breathtaking discoveries are being made by our competitors. Promises of a biotech El Dorado have proved illusionary, with vast sums of public money consumed in the process. How much better it would have been if those public resources have been used, as some of us have argued throughout, on the less ethically troubled pursuit of adult stem cell technologies. Amendment No. 21 seeks to require regular reportage of the respective sums of money allocated for the two approaches, a point eloquently made during the Second Reading debate by the noble Baroness. Amendments Nos. 22 and 23 deal with the membership and the role of Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. There are currently 18 members of the HFEA. It has an interim chair, Walter Merricks, who was a founder member of Donor Conception Network. The chair is supposed to be a lay person and I would argue that to accord this status to Mr Merricks is stretching definitions—something about which we heard earlier in another context—beyond their intended sense. Eight other current members of the authority are working as medical or scientific professionals in the field of IVF or genetics. Apart from Mr Merricks there are two other members, Messrs Brown and Dundas, who are directly involved in patients’ groups and lobbying. The other seven could generically be described as lay people, but some have publicly advocated embryonic experimentation and cloning. The academic lawyer, Emily Jackson, who has spoken out in favour of human reproductive cloning is an active participant in pro-choice abortion politics and this November delivered a speech at the London School of Economics entitled ““Rejecting the sanctity principle and rethinking the wrongness of killing””. Her perspective is contained in the title, which she argued passionately. David Archard is the token philosopher on the authority, holding entirely predictable views. The four others could be described as neutral in the absence of any information to the contrary. So, in effect, it is only possible to claim that, at the most, four of the 18 come at assisted reproduction and embryo research from a potentially neutral perspective. I have never heard any indication of any member of the committee who has expressed serious reservations about anything which vast swathes of our population consider to be controversial at best and unethical at worst. Summing up this analysis, 11 of the 18 are involved, in one way or another, with fertility treatment and research; three others are outspoken in their position on research; leaving just four others—two with a financial background, one involved in childcare work and one ex-BBC—who could possibly be described as neutral. As the Times reported only this morning, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, a point I put to my noble friend the right reverend Lord Harries of Pentregarth, is currently considering two licence applications from the Newcastle and King’s Universities for the creation of interspecies embryos, called by them cytoplasmic hybrids, involving the cloning process, adult somatic cells and enucleated animal eggs. These applications are due to be ruled on on 5 December. Following a freedom of information request by Comment on Reproductive Ethics, it is acknowledged that the HFEA has never turned down a research licence application to the best of its knowledge. Will it grant these applications? As I asked my noble friend earlier today, what then is the purpose of the Bill which dedicates so much space to the permitted creation of interspecies embryos? It would appear that the HFEA has already assumed authority in this area of science. So indifferent is the HFEA to widespread hostility to creating animal-human hybrids that they it has totally disregarded its own consultation which demonstrated that of more than 800 submissions, only one in eight supported the creation of hybrids. This not only ignores public consultation but it is dangerous to treat Parliament with apparent contempt to pre-empt deliberation in both Houses; it would make a total mockery of what passes as a democratic process. This is not a new problem. In 1982 the then Government announced the terms of reference for what became known as the Warnock committee. On 18 November 1993, in a Radio 4 broadcast of the ““Analysis”” programme, my noble friend Lady Warnock gave an insightful response when asked how the membership of her committee was determined. I quote her directly from a transcript: "““There exists what is generally known as the Central List. The Central List is produced and combed for people who might have an interest in this kind of thing. I was then given a kind of draft list and asked whether there were any other people I thought would be obvious choices, maybe people who were not yet among the great and the good, and I was with some difficulty allowed a power of veto. There was one particular person who ""was supposed to be the Catholic, and I said I would not have him. I just knew that I couldn’t work with him. We went right up to the day before publication with the civil servants saying, ‘But there’s nobody else in the world’. So in the end, the night before publication, I said, ‘Well, will you please tell the Minister that it’s a very, very bad way to embark on working on a committee when you know that there’s somebody you’re not going to find easy to work with’. The following morning two names were suggested. So I did win on that, but it was very, very hard and it took a lot of persistence””." Doubtless it would be much easier for us all if people we found it difficult to work with could be excluded from committees and public bodies. I have probably had that effect on some of your Lordships during today’s proceedings. In 2002 Susie Leather, the chair of the HFEA, said: "““I don’t think we need them””—" that is, people opposed to the use of human embryos— "““continually on the committee saying, ‘I’m opposed to all this’””. " And the Joint Committee adumbrated a very telling new constitutional principle: "““those with such public views cannot administer the law to which they may be fundamentally opposed””." That simply is not true. Removing dissenting and questioning voices is a huge error. Many local ethical review committees—I sit on one—contain people opposed to animal experimentation, but they see their role as a questioning one, ensuring, at least in the context of the law as it stands, that the interests of the subject are not dismissed or neglected. When I last looked, 70 per cent of the HFEA’s income came in fees from the very clinics it is supposed to police—a case of the watchdog being far too closely identified with the burglar. Perhaps the Minister can tell us what the current figure is. Clearly that incestuous relationship makes it difficult to say no too often, or ever at all. My Amendments Nos. 22 and 23 seek to address those issues. On Amendment No. 62, Her Majesty’s Government have declined to follow the lead of their South Korean counterparts by restricting the type of human eggs that may be used in embryo research in order to protect women’s health and welfare. Instead, appeal is made to an HFEA consultation undertaken in 2006 on the donation of eggs for research in which the publicly stated risks of side effects due to ovarian hyperstimulation—a point made today by the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger—seems, curiously, to have been described as threefold lower than those indicated by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in the same year. I refer your Lordships to two Written Answers, at cols. WA 99 on 23 October 2007 and WA 131 on 29 November, to Questions I tabled, as well as to the conflicting statements of the HFEA and the RCOG. The HFEA has said: "““Mild OHSS is relatively common (occurring in between 1-10% of treatment) and can be treated and controlled. Severe OHSS is rarer (occurring in around 1% of cases)””." The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, by contrast, says: "““Women should be informed that mild forms of OHSS are common, affecting up to 33% of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) ""cycles, and that 3–8% of IVF cycles are complicated by moderate or severe OHSS””." According to Written Answers by the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Darzi of Denham, on 22 October, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority appears to have incomplete records regarding ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome. This is not necessarily reported by clinics unless treatment was discontinued, and it does not hold data regarding how many in vitro fertilisation patients were at risk of hospitalisation after producing 20 or more eggs. Such appalling deficits would hopefully be rectified by the implementation of Amendment No. 62, which would lay on the HFEA a duty to keep records. Although clinics have to report OHSS if it causes an IVF cycle to be cancelled before egg collection for embryo transfer, they do not have to report all cases of women being hospitalised for OHSS. If women choose to continue with the cycle, risking their health, and end up in hospital, IVF clinics do not need to report it. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, in its guidelines on the management of OHSS published in September 2006, called for auditable standards, including the percentage of women who were admitted to hospital with OHSS, the number of days as an in-patient and incidence of thrombosis. The appalling degree of underreporting recently came to light when the journal, Human Fertility, reported in September that, in a four-year period of study, there were 53 incidents of women from an IVF clinic in Newcastle being hospitalised with OHSS, two of whom had life-threatening complications. However, the data held by the HFEA for the Newcastle clinic on the reported incidence of OHSS for six years during the same period show that only three cases of OHSS were reported to it. Amendment No. 62 has an affinity with Amendment No. 24, in the name of my noble friend Lady Finlay, which also stresses the importance of record-keeping, in that case of IVF—success rates on the one hand, and risks of serious adverse side-effects on the other. I hope that the Committee and the Government will be convinced by the arguments for greater transparency and accountability. I beg to move.