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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

My Lords, as the noble Baroness indicated, the principle of the child being produced for this purpose would no longer hold good if the child was a tissue match by chance, rather than being deliberately set up in that way. I have to add another point to this. If the child was not old enough to be able to make a judgment on this matter, the child would have to be fully taken into account in its own right and the parents would have to be treated in that way by the HFEA. The child’s own rights would have to be respected. That is to do with recognising human rights. I suppose that one could add that up in practical terms by saying that, if the donation in no way affected the younger child’s prospects of survival, of living a full life and of having the normal prospects that a child has, the objection would be far less strong than if there was some question of, as in the example given by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, part of a liver or something of that kind being attributed, or one kidney out of two. Then you begin to raise questions about the survival value of that child and it becomes a different story—a story about the rights of that child.