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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

My Lords, I fully support what the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said and I greatly admire his growing scientific expertise. He is beginning to fall more and more into the category of noble and scientific that his noble and right reverend friend Lord Harries of Pentregarth referred to earlier. I do not know whether he has been taking private tuition. I certainly do not have his scientific grasp and therefore I shall not attempt to repeat his arguments. I shall simply make two points, one economic and the other ethical. Without attempting to run the argument that the free market is about to come to the rescue of embryonic stem cells, it is interesting to know what great interest there is in the investment community in adult stem cell research and how very little interest there is in the venture capital community—I have no interest to declare in this matter—in embryonic stem cell research. Markets are not always right and investors do not always make the right decisions but it is very telling, as has been pointed out by Forbes magazine and others. The second point I wish to make is the ethical one. I am relieved that we have not heard on Report some of the arguments put forward in Committee. These admixtures, as we must now learn to think of them, are very small and invisible and because they are so small and invisible to the naked eye, they are not really important. Lots of things are invisible. Good and evil are invisible to the eye. It is only when the outward manifestations are reached that we see that something has happened that should not have happened. So I am very relieved that no one has tried to put forward the housemaid’s baby argument again that this was just a little admixture, not a large one. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester was right in saying that this is where the line should be drawn. In response to an earlier debate, the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said that he felt people might look back to some of our debates and say they were old-fashioned and ancient history. On this occasion I think they will look back to what has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester and say they were absolutely right ethically.