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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

My Lords, I support the government amendment. In doing so, I wish to address three issues. The first issue concerns the way in which the debate has been turned into a discussion about the value or non-value of fathers. We should all remember that fathers are intrinsically valuable. I said in a previous debate that I had a marvellous father. Difficult as he was, I would not have given him up for anything else. But to say that we are looking for every family to have a father denies the reality of our society as it stands today. I was rather concerned by some of the comments made, where I thought the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, linked cloning with same-sex families in terms of not having fathers. It suggests to me that the hundreds of non-conventional families out in our communities—and there are many kinds—are not respected. We demand respect of those families if we are going to support them and give them a good life. Secondly, I wish to consider the issue from the point of view of the child. The noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, mentioned that for too long children had been seen as the end rather than the means. For too long, issues about fertilisation have been about childless couples rather than about the children. We know that children do best when they feel secure, understand about their background and have no sudden traumas. Growing up in any family that gives them that kind of background will be helpful. There was debate earlier about research. The most scientifically rigorous studies of the development of children in same-sex families show that children raised in lesbian mother families are no more at risk of developing psychological problems than their counterparts from families with fathers present in their home. As I said earlier, a stable and loving home environment is the most important thing that children need. The evidence compiled by CARE and laid in the Library—I am a Christian—has been called to account by some of the country’s most eminent experts in the area of fathering and parenting. They have seriously questioned the credibility of The Fatherhood Bibliography. These are no mean experts: they include Professor Michael Lamb from the Department of Social and Developmental Psychology at the University of Cambridge, and the director of the Centre for Family Research, Professor Susan Golombok. She advised the Rowntree Foundation on parenting and families, is an adviser to the Department of Health and undertakes research at Cambridge. Together with Fiona McCullen, she has followed 25 lesbian mother families from 2004 and 38 families headed by a single heterosexual mother. The quality of parenting in these families shows very little difference. They concluded that the presence or absence of fathers in a home from the outset does have some influence—this is true in single-parent families as well as other families—but has little consequence in later life. The reason I quote this research is not for self-indulgence but simply to point out that there is an alternative view to the one presented previously, which was deeply hurtful to at least 10 per cent of the outside population who saw this as a slight on their capacity to parent. I wish I had been able to make a speech as moving as the one of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, in which he described people whom I know who have brought up children. I was speaking recently to two doctors, both working as paediatricians, who had been together for the past 15 years and have a seven year-old boy. They were deeply offended by the suggestion that their parenting was not as good as that of heterosexual couples. Let me turn now to parenthood and the question of fathers who walk away. Do not sperm donors walk away? Sometimes we want them to walk away, but we want to know who they are. We will come later in the Bill to the issue of children knowing their genesis. It is an important point because if female couples have sperm donated ““on the side””, in the ways described by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, they will have very little opportunity to know who that person was; they will not know about the quality of the sperm or the health of the person donating it. I want to concentrate on what the Bill is about, not this wider debate. Of course fatherhood is vital and many of us had fathers who we loved dearly. I said that to a colleague recently, who said to me, ““But I didn’t””. We have to remember that not all men are good, which is another issue. I spend a great deal of my time dealing with the civil courts, as did the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and I know that the McKenzie magazine often depicts situations not quite as they might be. I am very fond of the McKenzie people for working for fathers. We are talking about a very small number of couples—significant but small. They are not going to undermine fatherhood in this country. What they are going to do is give children a good home and a stable and loving family, at least equal to their heterosexual counterparts. I am not saying they are more perfect but neither are they less perfect. They are like the rest of the community. They are, as the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, said, extraordinarily ordinary people who happen to want to raise a child healthily and properly through the system. I hope that noble Lords will support the Government’s amendment and give those women the chance they want.