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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

We have heard a number of things in this debate about the importance of children having the opportunity to have a father. The noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, just made a powerful case in which he echoed something that the noble Lord, Lord Warner, said to us in the Queen’s Speech debate about how children can never be accessories. That is what my noble friend Lady Deech is getting at in the amendment this afternoon, as is the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, in asking us to preserve the status quo. Elsewhere in Part 2, it is suggested that it would be possible to remove the biological identity of a father from a birth certificate. My noble friend Lord Walton, who cannot be here this afternoon, specifically asked me to say on his behalf that he would be strongly opposed to that for medical reasons. He believes that a child has the need to know his biological, genetic make-up, which is why it should be preserved intact on a birth certificate. The settlement that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, arrived at in 1990 was a fair and good one. Although we have been invited, rather like Don Quixote, to tilt at imaginary windmills this afternoon, if anyone was seriously laying an amendment before the Committee asking, for instance, that women be interrogated when they went to IVF clinics or asked about their sexual orientation, I for one would oppose it. I would be entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Winston, on that. That is not what my noble friend Lady Deech is suggesting. The noble Baroness, Lady O'Cathain, made exactly the same point. We should be very clear about that.