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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Walton of Detchant, in reading out the letter than many of us have read in this morning’s Times, has really made the most important point. We are dealing with a cell bank which has been built up over many years. I suspect that, in the vast majority of cases, the original donors gave consent for research into the disease and that they are currently untraceable. Many of them have been anonymised and in other cases the individuals may not be able to be traced at all. We are not talking about cells being taken from new donors. I suspect that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, was addressing at least some of his remarks to that. For that, consent will always be required. The amendment refers to cells stored before the date on which this Act comes into force. There has also been mention of the Human Tissue Act or, as I frequently call it, the Human Tissue Bill. Those of us who spent many rather difficult days in the Moses Room debating the Committee stage of that Bill will never forget it. I am very sorry that the Minister’s predecessor, the noble Lord, Lord Warner, is not in his place, because he had to defend the Government’s position on the Bill when it reached this House. It was stated then—I suspect by many of the same people who have written the letter to The Times—that that Bill would have made most medical research impossible because of the amount of consent that would have been required before any tissues could be used. I always regard the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, as one of the heroines of that particular battle. By the end of that Committee stage, we had succeeded in putting into the Bill the measures that made the Human Tissue Act workable. It is not perfect, as we learnt in the Joint Committee, but at least it was workable, and much of the research could go on. I have a horrid feeling that the Government are making the same mistake that was made four years ago when that Bill came through. This started by thinking that we must have consent for everything and therefore that there must have been consent for whatever is going to be done—even to tissues that were taken before. We were able to establish that that was impossible and therefore unreasonable. After debate, the Government, very wisely, accepted that. As I say, the Human Tissue Act is workable. It is hugely bureaucratic, covering far too wide a field, but that is a separate matter. Why must we make the same mistake again? As the noble Lord, Lord Walton, has said, we are dealing with the bank of tissues taken in the past. Therefore, virtually by definition, consent is impossible. The arguments for that, as set out in that letter and in the speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Patel, are absolutely unanswerable. I hope that the Government will have learnt from their previous error. They had to climb down and realise that if they could do something—make sympathetic noises today—that would be helpful. The amendment might not be right but could be put right in another place. However, we cannot send this Bill away with this requirement for consent for the use of tissues—to which the donor has consented but who cannot be traced—but with the inability to use them without further consent. It seems absurd and I hope to goodness that the Government will listen to the arguments that have been advanced.