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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

My Lords, this is a considerable improvement in the drafting of the Bill to make it clear that—as the noble Lord, Lord Darzi, made clear in his reply at Second Reading—it is not intended to cover the whole spectrum of inter-species embryos, but only what he described then, and again today, as the human end of that spectrum. The new phrase introduced by the Government in these amendments makes that clearer than before. The noble Lord, Lord Patel, and I have tabled an amendment intended to encapsulate the phrase that the noble Lord, Lord Darzi, used about these being predominantly human embryos—in other words, not predominantly animal. We have put that in to fill in and cover the essence of the definition because at the moment, even with the change that the Government are proposing, there is no full definition. There is simply a list of four typical examples. The Bill would be improved if it were clear to the ordinary reader that it is talking about the predominantly human end of the inter-species embryo spectrum. I am grateful also for the noble Lord’s clarification on the relationship between the clauses. I think this an improvement in the clarity of the Bill, showing what it is really intended to deal with. It would be even further clarified were the further aspects of the definition, to which Amendments Nos. 17 and 18 refer, also incorporated.