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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

I sense that the Committee wants to reach a conclusion and to hear the Minister, but I have two extremely short points. My noble and learned friend Lord Mackay referred to Members of the House who may have been brought up in fatherless households. I was one of them. My mother was widowed with four boys under 12. My youngest brother never knew his father at all. Of course, we are not typical. We had other relations; we had uncles and grandparents and we were extremely well looked after, but I would not for one moment argue that perhaps we would not have been better off if my father had survived. It is important to recognise that. The other point is that people, such as the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, have spoken of the Joint Committee as wishing to retain the words, "““including the need of that child for a father””." But we very firmly went on to say that we would not wish to exclude the possibility of women seeking in vitro fertilisation help where there is no father because a woman is single or because she is in a lesbian relationship. We did not want to exclude them. We recognise the case, but at the same time we said, as so many noble Lords have said today, that retaining the words of the 1990 Act is important and excluding them would send the wrong message. That is what the Joint Committee decided and put in its recommendation. It is important. It was not either/or; it was the desirability of retaining the words in the 1990 Act while making it perfectly clear that those who did not fit that pattern of a family should not automatically be excluded. Some things that have been said today have suggested that they would automatically have been turned away. That is not true.