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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

I strongly agree with the noble Earl, Lord Howe. I shall speak briefly on the amendment to which I have added my name. As a matter of principle, it seems to me profoundly immoral to bring a child up without his knowing something fundamental to his well-being. It is a sign of a kind of pettiness on the part of the parents to share a secret that they are not prepared to share with their child. In fact, it is almost impossible that a child should not learn, even if he does not know quite what he has learnt, that something is being concealed from him. That is no way to bring up a child—among hidden secrets, about which he is not allowed to know. I know a father who is not the biological father of his son and who agreed with his wife that they would not tell the son until he was 14 years old. When the day came that they decided that they would tell him about his real, biological origins, the son was quite relaxed about it and said, ““Oh well, I always knew there was something funny going on, but I thought it was Mum””. The father then said to me what an enormous weight off his mind that was. He had hated those 14 years in which knew that he was deceiving his child, with whom he got on extremely well. He hated the fact that there was something he could not talk about. From that point of view, it simply should not go on. I agree that it should be impossible to compel parents by law to reveal the truth to their child, but now it is much easier to do so than it used to be, when the thought of male infertility was a kind of insult—something to be tremendously ashamed of—that nobody was allowed or liked to admit. Now the notion of infertility is not thought to be essentially female and is recognised as a dysfunction that could happen to anybody, so there is no point in concealment There are other factors of genetic inheritance that the child may have to know one day, such as if his biological father develops a genetic condition that may be passed on. There is every reason to make it desirable, natural and normal that the child should know. How that should be done we could discuss later, but I express my profound agreement with the noble Earl.