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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

The Minister has done real justice to this. Along with the noble Earl, I welcome her assurance that she will look again at the issue of organs and that she will be willing to discuss some of the other anxieties and concerns that Members from all parts of your Lordships’ House have raised in Committee today. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, was right when he said that after scrutiny has taken place and the Joint Committees have had their deliberations, of course people in this House can change their minds on Report as they come to see in the full light of day precisely what we are being required to do. Those who sometimes talk about moving to a unicameral legislature, and would like to see the abolition of your Lordships’ House, ought to see the record of yesterday’s and today’s parliamentary debates to see the quality of the contributions from all sides of this argument. I welcome every contribution that has been made today. This debate more than justifies the existence of this House. I reassure the Minister that the article from New Scientist was meant to be cryptic. It was actually pointed at the provisions we are allowing for in the Bill, rather than advocating them. Two issues have been raised during the debate. The first is the question of ““serious”” rather than ““life-threatening””. The noble and learned Lords, Lord Lloyd of Berwick and Lord Mackay of Clashfern, have two of the finest legal minds in the country and I hope that between now and Report they will have the chance to give further consideration to this. It may well be that provisions around the wardships of court, which have previously prevailed, should apply in all circumstances. Maybe that is the route we will have to go, rather than looking at whether we use ““serious”” or ““life-threatening””. We should consider other options for dealing with these questions when they arise. None of us wants this to become routine—that seemed to be a theme that united us. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester said we should not go towards a society that becomes deliberately instrumentalised. I agree entirely. The noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, raised the issue of ““serious”” and wondered what the problem was for people like me in the interpretation of that word. During my opening remarks I tried to allude to one instance that is a good parallel here. She will know the case of the Reverend Joanna Jepson, a young woman who challenged the Lords because, on reading the statistics for late abortions, she discovered that cleft palate, club foot, hare-lip, webbed fingers and webbed feet were being included in the ““serious”” category for abortion of a child. Clearly none of those by itself is a life-threatening disease. That is an issue my noble friend Lady Masham raised at Second Reading. It goes to the heart of how we interpret things. Therefore, we have to be careful before we change a phrase, such as from ““life-threatening”” to ““serious””, that sends a signal, intentionally or not, that somehow we want to lower the threshold of the requirement. The other issue that has been raised is whether other tissues should be included in the scope of the Bill. I refer to some comments by Dr Simon Fishel, a senior IVF expert and an inspector, peer reviewer and external adviser for the HFEA who has already created saviour siblings to obtain umbilical cord blood, and who is the managing director of CARE Fertility Group, the United Kingdom’s largest independent provider of assisted conceptions. He welcomed the new legislation and predicted, in an article entitled ““Secret ruling on ‘designer babies’”” by Mark Henderson in the Times, that saviour siblings would be used in future to provide organs such as kidneys to treat existing children. "““You might start looking at organs””," he has said. There are therefore IVF experts who would take into consideration the effect on the planned child, as specified in the seventh code of practice, and would consider it a good idea to create a child to be a kidney donor. I do not believe that is the intention of the Committee, and I hope we will be able to make progress between now and Report in dealing with that matter. I am grateful to everyone who has contributed to the debate today. We have covered some very controversial, difficult and profoundly testing issues. In the spirit of the answer the Minister has given, I am more than content to withdraw the amendment at this stage and hope it will not be necessary to test the opinion of the House on Report. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. [Amendments Nos. 32A to 48 not moved.]