---

Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

My Lords, I warmly support the noble Lord. If I am able to be here at the next round of this Report stage, I shall also support him and the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, on the question of birth certificates. I particularly want to speak at this point because I have been very moved by some material that I, and perhaps other noble Lords, have received. It is the kind of material that the noble Lord spoke about as having seen in the committee. A young man wrote to me asking whether I wanted him to send me a paper of his, and I said, ““If you would like to do so, please do””. I received four or five very striking pages from somebody who is part of an organisation called the International Donor Offspring Alliance. He is a postgraduate student in Cambridge. The story he tells is of being brought up by what he calls his ““raising parents””, for whom he is full of respect. But now in his mid-20s, he feels that he has been dogged by his ignorance of his father. He has tried website after website, but has not succeeded in finding him, and has ended up exhibiting himself, as it were, on a website in case his father sees his picture and recognises himself in him. He describes growing up not knowing whether he is like his father, and not knowing his real grandparents, nor they him. There are lots of such stories. I shall not go on, but they underline the great importance of the noble Lord’s amendment, and the importance of clarity on the birth certificate so that someone is not only told about his real parentage but has every possibility of finding them rather than the arrangements that exist at present. I hope that we can support the noble Lord’s amendment.