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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

It is axiomatic that fathers should be as visible and present as possible. Sometimes conversations off-stage, out of your Lordship’s Chamber, can be very instructive. I have heard a couple of conversations outside this Chamber that have pulled me up short. The first was the suggestion that the Bill is concerned with something so tiny—the end of a little finger was pointed to—that it could not be very interesting or important. I expect that others may have thought that in the middle of the last century when the word atom was first entering discourse in this country. The second conversation—equally surprising, at least to me—was that our Committee’s proceedings were best when they were being conducted by a small group of scientific experts. We have every reason to be grateful to experts. However, on debate of a public Bill in the High Court of Parliament, we owe it to the public to be understandable, and a danger lies the other way. At least this debate on fatherhood is one in which we can all become involved and join in, whether we are experts or not. Everyone has had a mother and father, even, if alas, so many people have not known one or the other. It is striking that definitions in the Bill are sometimes inexact. Last week in Committee, we had the example of the Government seeking in their Bill, to legislate about some thing—that is two words, not one—which was referred to as an interspecies embryo. The Government and the globally renowned experts to whom they had referred for help could not agree a definition. I take the simplistic, non-expert view, as I said earlier, that one should not legislate about that which one cannot define—although that seems to be a minority view among some of your Lordships. The Government are able to define the meaning of ““mother”” at Clause 33 (1) on page 35. Yet flip over to page 36 and off we go into a magical mystery tour about what an earth the word ““father““ might mean in different times and places, as a sign. This leads me to the conclusion that the Government, either by design or, as I suspect, by a muddled series of accidents, have ended up attempting to deconstruct the meaning of fatherhood in the Bill, divorcing male parenthood from biological reality as well as from practical and moral responsibilities. I hope that noble Lords do not find this language too strong, but I find that wrong—not right—if I can use such a tough word in polite discourse in your Lordships’ House. Alas, not all children can have a mother and a father who are alive, for a whole host of reasons: the death of the parents; their separation; and the development of circumstances that mean that children must go into care, with the often tragic outcomes which the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, has pointed to on so many occasions in your Lordships’ House. However, if faced with a choice between the hope of adults to become parents or the welfare and best interests of a child, which all the research that I have seen indicates is helped by a father or a long-term male role model, I would pick the best interests of the child every time. That is why it is so very odd to provide that some children can be legally barred at conception from having one of these ““fathers””. It seems as though the Government now see fathers as rather curious creatures. Rather, the Bill should emphasise, here as elsewhere, that the best interests of the child, if that child is created through fertility treatment, should be considered paramount. I know of no expert who gainsays the statistical generalities—to which of course there are many splendid exceptions—that there are close links between fatherless families or families without consistent male role models and the following factors: children living in poverty; children enjoying poorer health; children subject to a higher risk of abuse; children subject to a higher risk of offending—so many excellent civil servants, who have been unfairly traduced in the Home Office, will tell you time after time of the close link between the likelihood of offending and the lack of a father or male role model; and poor school performance. It is probably clear by now that I rather support the noble Baroness’s amendment. I wonder how much time in his very busy schedule the Prime Minister has been able to give to try to understand the wider social implications of a Bill which, after all, he inherited, as the noble Lord, Lord Darzi, inherited it, and which the Government are seeking to get through Parliament. The Prime Minister seems to me, as an outsider, to be an exemplary father. Yet if his Government’s legislation gets through as it is now drafted, it is likely to lead, whether intentionally or not, to the deconstruction over time of fatherhood in this country, and to the incipient devaluation, by the signs that the Government are giving, of the very idea of fatherhood in the United Kingdom. That is an extremely important issue. It is as serious as that.