---

Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

I do not want questions to be asked. Here I echo what my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss said this afternoon about how the law has a symbolic value. I represented a constituency in the heart of Liverpool for 18 years before I stood down in 1997. In many of the overspill estates and in the inner-city areas, vast numbers of families have no men involved in the upbringing of the children. To add deliberately to that number would be ludicrous. For the law to send a signal—not to stigmatise others—that we do not think men are very important in this equation plays into the arguments of male redundancy on which Dr Desmond Morris touched rather well this morning in the Times newspaper. Men are not redundant. They have a unique role to play in the upbringing of children. It is estimated that some 800,000 children in Britain do not have access to their fathers at present. We should think very carefully before unravelling and unpicking the very careful sentiments that the noble and learned Lord put together in 1990. During the Joint Committee—I was not a member, but I have read the proceedings—Mr David Burrowes, the Member for Enfield, asked one of the witnesses the most important question of all: whether there were any examples of anyone who had been unable to receive IVF on grounds of sexual orientation. The answer was that there were no examples.