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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

As one who is no scientist, I found, when listening to my colleagues on the Joint Committee talking about their immense experience and expertise in this field, that it came as something of a relief to come to an issue that I felt I could understand as a lay man. I was impressed by some of the evidence that we had from donor-conceived people, in particular the long paper by David Gollancz that appears at No. 44 in the evidence book. When I spoke to Mr Gollancz afterwards, he spelt out in some detail what it feels like to discover that you have been donor conceived. At Second Reading, I mentioned the evidence of Mr Gollancz, who said on the first occasion he spoke publicly about his experience of being donor conceived that, "““it was as though someone had taken my autobiography and torn it up””." He was worried that those were overly strong words, but that was exactly how he felt and one can understand that. We firmly took the view, as the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, and the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, said, that it is highly desirable that the donor-conceived person should be told about their genetic origin as soon as they are able to understand. That would happen at different ages for different people. I remember an occasion involving my little brother. My mother was a widow and my brother had a friend at school who had a baby sister. My brother asked our mother, ““When will we have a baby sister?””, and she had to explain to him, ““Well I’m afraid without a father that is not possible””. He asked, ““Do you mean you have to mate every time?””. He was a child of seven and he was probably at an age when he could have understood if necessary—he certainly knew enough about the facts of life to be able to take it on board. I get the impression that the earlier a child is capable of understanding, the less likely they are to be seriously disturbed, because they are unaware of what other noble Lords have referred to as the deception. Mr Gollancz also mentioned the European Convention on Human Rights. He said: "““Everyone has the right not to be deliberately deceived or deprived of significant information about their essential personal history””." I cannot think of anything to which that might be more relevantly applied than the question of a person’s genetic origin. I took the view, which was reflected in the Joint Committee’s report—my noble friend and the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, have made the same point—that it is highly undesirable that the authorities should appear to connive at deception. There are a number of reasons for that, quite apart from the moral one. There are some practical reasons. How does a person know that they can go to the HFEA and find out their parentage unless they know that they have been donor conceived? When young people begin to engage in relationships or even contemplate marriage, there is a risk that the relationship might be consanguineous or even worse. There are all sorts of reasons why it is highly desirable for people to know. The noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, was absolutely right when she said that public attitudes to this are moving on and there is not the same sense of shame or secrecy that used to surround it. However, Mr Gollancz, in discussion after our session, told me firmly that we must not make disclosure compulsory on parents, because all sorts of difficult consequences would follow. There might be a deliberate concealment. If parents are subject to a duty and then conceal the information, they will go on concealing it and people may never know. On the other hand, he was equally adamant, and I agree with him, that the authorities should provide the information that would enable somebody to find out. Ideally, when a child is old enough to be told and reaches an age—we said that it should be 16 rather than 18 for fairly obvious reasons these days—they can go along to the HFEA and find out their origin and, if they wish to, try to trace their genetic parent. That would be the ideal situation. But clearly it does not always happen like that and our system must make provision for the less happy cases. I thought that either the solution proposed by my noble friend Lord Howe or that proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, were improvements on what the committee said. We simply said that the matter was too difficult for us and that the Government ought to give it more attention. So far we have not inserted anything into the Bill, but both my noble friend and the noble Baroness have provided a solution, using in one case the long birth certificate, which certainly should record the origins, and in another case the short one, if that is what the person would rather have so as not to have to disclose the information to other people. This is one of the more difficult questions in the Bill that we have been asked to consider. I do not think that the Government have fully thought through what they want to see in the Bill and I hope that they will find this debate of interest. If the Joint Committee had had more time, perhaps we might have come up with a solution, but we were getting near the end of our evidence by that stage and we had a deadline. We had to report by the end of July. Nevertheless, it was for me an intensely interesting part of our investigation and I am full of admiration for those who have come forward with solutions. At this stage I am not prepared to say which I would back, but I believe that the Government could build on one or other of them.