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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

I had not intended to intervene in this debate, mainly because I feel I am not as expert as I might be, although I know more than most about difficult families and the bringing up of children from my long career in social work. I stand to neither oppose nor support my noble friend Lady Deech, but to raise some questions about the way in which the arguments have been presented. I think that is the nature of the difficulty we are in. I would like interrogation of every family who has a child to ensure that that child has a stable family. I do not much mind how that stable family is constituted. There is more research in America showing that same-sex couples are able to give a sustained relationship to children, but that some break down, just as many families with fathers break down. I suppose that, along with my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss, having seen the difficult end of fatherhood adds to some of my prejudice about recognising that families with fathers are not as ideal as some of us would wish to say. As a rider, I should say that I had the most terrific and wonderful father, who loved me to bits and gave me a great deal of what I am, so I do not come from the position of having had a father whom I did not adore. However, I know that there are many men who do not make good fathers. But who do we ask to interrogate anyone—of any sex or orientation—who turns up at a clinic? As the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, said, what kind of questions do you ask to ensure that a family is going to be stable? I put it to your Lordships that we would not know the answer, even if on the day it looked as though there was a stable family. My experience is that families often break down when children become difficult or when there is economic stress or sickness—things that often cannot be predicted when facing that moment in the clinic. Many of the families that I would rather not have children are the ones that will have the children anyway. I do not have the statistics before me, because I did not know that I was going to speak, but I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, would have exactly the same sense that I have from them—““If only we had not got X number of single, young parents””. We have, because intercourse and the birth of children are matters of chance. I hope that that chance can be planned. I hope that that plan can bring security to our children, because without a doubt the only thing that matters is the welfare of the child. However, many adults will not have that in mind when looking to have a child. Why, when a person goes to a clinic, should we interrogate them about their family when we are not going to do that in a million other families across the nation? I have asked myself that, without conclusion. The answer may be that we do it because we have the opportunity. In that case, we should ask not only whether there is a father on the scene, but a whole range of other questions about whether people going for IVF have the capacity to be good families. I think that then we would end up saying middle-class families; some of the criteria being put would be middle class. Those would be moral judgments from a particular, stereotyped set of moral views.