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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

My Lords, my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay has really got his teeth into this one. He did so in the Joint Committee, he did so in the Committee of this House and he has done so again tonight. The question of how you can wrap up a definition in a way that includes everything that you want to include but excludes the things that you do not want to include has proved very difficult. My noble and learned friend drew on the word ““predominate””, which apparently emerged from scientific discussion of how to do this. My difficulty comes after reading the evidence that we heard in the Joint Committee from Dr Robin Lovell-Badge. He made the point: "““It is very hard to come up with any strict definition saying this is 50 per cent human and 50 per cent animal, therefore it falls into this category rather than this one, because things change as well. You may start with an embryo which is 20 per cent human and end up with something which is 60 per cent human or vice versa””." Because the licence has to come at the beginning of the process, before the research is done, how do you decide whether you are going to be dealing with an entity that requires a licence? It may be only 20 per cent human, but by the time you are finished it may end up being 70 per cent or 80 per cent human. I am not sure that we have solved that problem, but I warmly congratulate my noble and learned friend on what is obviously an extremely brave try.