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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 55: 55: Clause 14, page 9, line 14, leave out paragraph (b) The noble Baroness said: Your Lordships will know that the pre-legislative scrutiny committee that examined the Bill wanted to ensure that there were ethical principles in the law, preferably fixed by Parliament. There appeared to be very few ethical principles that the committee and its witnesses could agree on, but the one that I shall argue for is so basic that it is a litmus test of the ability of this nation to agree on ethical principles. It is the one that was crafted by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, in the 1990 Act, which has held firm and worked well for the last 17 years. It is the section that says that the welfare of the child includes the child’s need for a father. Clause 14(2)(b) of the Bill calls for the wisdom and natural practice of the centuries to be disregarded. Why should I care about this? It is because I learnt from my chairmanship of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority that the public need reassurance that science is not leaping ahead to the detriment of future generations. That theme has implicitly underlain all our discussion over the past few days. The other thing that I learnt during my chairmanship was that there are pressures on vulnerable women, and sometimes reluctant men, to spend a lot of money in pursuit of a baby, sometimes egged on, as it were, by very wealthy doctors, who urged them to keep going. One was aware of husbands who demanded a baby or threatened divorce if one was not forthcoming. I hold to the principle that every woman is a worthwhile woman in her own right, whether or not she has, wants or cannot have a baby. She is not just a mother. Likewise every man has to be free to be not just a career man, not just a genetic contributor or a pair, but a responsible father. There is no right to a baby. I think that your Lordships would agree on that. The provision that we are debating is a demarcation between, on the one hand, the goal that we all seek of a healthy baby brought up in a family to which some thought has been given and, on the other hand, experimentation. One of the main arguments against cloning is that the child would be the product of only one parent with no input at all from another. That has caused revulsion around the world. In other words, what I learnt from my chairmanship was that the science is great but that there is a risk in all that we do of dehumanisation, commercialisation and loss of identity. It has, rightly, been the policy of this Government and other Governments that there should be paternity leave in order that a father can bond with his child. It is the policy of this Government that single women should be more than encouraged to name the father on the birth certificate. It is the policy of the judges and the Government that there should be contact between father and child after divorce. It is the policy of this Government and previous Governments to make sure that fathers pay maintenance for their children. It has been the policy of this Government to end the anonymity of sperm donors in order that they can be known if necessary at some time in the future. It is all about enabling the child to discover who his or her father is. Why should that be if there is no point in having a father? As a former chair, I welcome all the excellent proposals in Part 1 that simultaneously liberalise and regulate the advance of science in lifesaving and reproductive techniques. I have no quarrel with any of it, but the results of science should adapt to the needs of society and not vice versa. The pre-legislative scrutiny committee decided inter alia that donor-conceived children ought to be given every opportunity to discover the truth about their origins, short of forcing social parents to tell them that they were donor conceived, which is too great an invasion of privacy and unenforceable. The pre-legislative scrutiny committee concluded that children need two parents. The need for a mother is implicit in the direction to consider the welfare of the child, because it is the would-be mother who presents herself for treatment. Your Lordships could usefully imagine the reaction of the public were the Bill to say that the need for a mother was to be deleted from the law. The Bill remains full of inconsistencies. It promotes truth about origins, but it will provide for birth certificates to name two parents of the same sex. It ensures non-discrimination between family units and persons at the expense, it could be argued, of the welfare of the child. After all, British law does not treat all families the same. It still rightly discriminates against underage marriage, which is not possible, and polygamous and incestuous unions, which are not legalised, so why should a child not have its family welfare considered before the mother undergoes IVF? Current government and judicial policy is unanimous that fathers have a vital role to play, and research, which I am coming to, shows that children need fathers as role models. We should not be afraid of being labelled discriminatory or politically incorrect in standing up for the welfare of the child and for its right to have two parents of different sexes, even though that requirement has not been and will continue not to be a barrier to treatment. Indeed, the number of single women and lesbian women being treated by IVF has gradually risen, and I have no quarrel with that. It has been alleged that this factor—that a child needs a father—is discriminatory. It is not discriminatory, because it applies to all patients regardless of sex and marital status. If it is discriminatory, it is justified by the welfare of the child, and it is proportionate; it is not an absolute bar. In that, I am supported by the rest of Europe, which I shall come to. The HFEA figures show that treatment is regularly provided to single and lesbian women; indeed, the number is rising. Clinics look for stability and a male role model and they consider the risk of harm. I have a list of about 80 research papers listing the unique contribution made by fathers to the upbringing of girls and boys in terms of social and academic success and psychological and physical health. The father’s input to the upbringing of girls is as vital as it is to the upbringing of boys. A household of two parents of different sexes is a microcosm of society. It gives children the chance to see the complementariness of roles, to hear adult conversation, to see two perspectives, to see the adjustment between the sexes, to have two sets of grandparents and a wider family, and to have respect for the opposite sex, not the denigration of it. In a poll of approximately 1,000 people taken in early November, 84 per cent of 18 to 24 year-olds believed that the father is important and that 82 per cent of all those questioned thought that his absence is adverse. In keeping the law as it is, we will be in line with the rest of Europe; our law is already more liberal than the laws in the rest of Europe. Single people cannot be treated by IVF in France, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Portugal and Germany. That limitation is not therefore confined to the more deeply religious societies. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child says that the child has, "““the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents””," in the plural. If we say that there is no need for a father in any circumstances, we will be in a group of countries that includes Romania, Bulgaria, Venezuela, Mexico, Belgium and Finland. I would argue that it is the hallmark of a civilised society that for the welfare of the child some restraints are put on who may reproduce when the matter is in the hands of clinics and the law. The studies that exist on same-sex parenting are largely directed towards the existence of two parents of the same sex when the children are very young, but in Norway and Sweden, where same-sex partnerships have been legal for very much longer, the risks of breakdown are considerably higher. Female partnerships have a divorce risk that is double that for males. The median length of male relationships in the UK is only 25 months. Thirty per cent of Swedish female unions and 20 per cent of male unions end within five years. In other words, it is right to consider the child’s need for a father. I have the studies indicating that; I do not have time to list them now, but they certainly exist. We need to signal to men that we are all partners in the health of the next generation and that none of us is worthless or to be written out of reproduction or valued only for the money that we can contribute—that is, if we are men. If we maintain the existing law on the child’s need for a father, that will do more to reassure the public about the advances in science than anything else we can do. I suggest that, in its way, it is the bedrock for confidence in going forward in the in vitro fertilisation and stem cell field. I therefore suggest that we restore the current law. It is not a prohibition; as I said, many single women and lesbian couples are treated. But it will cause patients and clinicians to reflect on the situation that has presented itself and ask whether all will be well—or as well as can be predicted—in this situation. This also applies to Clause 23(2). I beg to move.