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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

My Lords, every successful human society has some sort of social structure in place and sanctions to ensure, as far as possible, the effective nurture of its children. In some countries, that is done by the village or tribe. In others, it is done by grandparents. In a few, the children are mainly raised by the state. But the communist formula is—and always has been—that both parents should take principal responsibility for the children they bring into the world, sometimes helped by the state. Over the past 50 years, in the context of what we are talking about in the Bill, we have to realise that important changes have taken place in our own society to which we have not yet fully adapted our parenting pattern. Today, more than a quarter of the nation's children are raised by a single parent and more than 40 per cent can expect their parents’ marriage or partnership to break up before they leave school. Grandparents and kin often live far away, but only a small, yet important, minority of parents are failing their children. I do not suggest for a moment that those are the committed single-sex couples. This group of amendments is important not because it is about fathers and mothers but because it is about a question of principle. How can we ensure, as far as possible, that children born through IVF get the parenting and family life that they need? The Government have made a good shot at it by adding the words ““supportive parenting”” and I support government Amendment No. 108 in that connection, but it does not go far enough. I will first speak to Amendment No. 108C and then to my Amendment No. 108B in this group. I believe in the importance of both a father figure and a mother figure in a child's life. Men and women are equal, as several noble Lords have said, but they are different. There are different talents, skills and qualities that they can bring to the parenting of a child. There is plenty of research to show that children as they grow up benefit from having the love and example of a woman and a man who are both committed to caring for them. For that reason, my Amendment No. 108C and others in this group would ensure that the Bill covers the advantages to the child of having a mother figure and a father figure in their lives. The noble Lord, Lord Warner, wisely suggested that this matter could be dealt with in guidance and I draw the attention of the House to the fact that the existing guidance, at paragraph G.3.3.3, states: "““Where the child will have no legal father, the centre should assess the prospective mother’s ability to meet the child’s/children’s needs and the ability of other persons within the family or social circle willing to share the responsibility for those needs””." If no reference to the father is included in the Bill, that will fall. Will the Minister assure us that some comparable guidance in relation to both a father and a mother will be included in the guidance? I now turn to my Amendment No. 108B, which suggests that the words ““and family life”” should be added after the words ““supportive parenting””. A survey of research carried out by Charles Desforges, which the Government have accepted, has shown that family life has a major influence on the child's educational outcomes and his life chances even after discounting all other factors. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child lays down that all children have the right to family life. I know that this Government have not signed up to the convention, but it is right to draw attention to the value of family life for a child, not in a restrictive definition of family life—that must depend on the child’s needs and family circumstances—but at least a family life in which the child would have the opportunity to feel safe, have fun, to learn to interact in a secure environment with friends and relatives and to learn from them how to learn. That is why I tabled Amendment No. 108B. Finally, I recognise that the inability to have a child, to which the noble Lord, Lord Winston, so movingly referred, often causes great pain and is emotionally damaging to the woman concerned. I suggest that in the majority of cases the conditions on which some of us have suggested the centre should make an assessment do not necessarily imply that that woman is denied a child by IVF. They put in place certain sacrifices that women must make for the sake of the child if they are to qualify for IVF treatment. After all, that is no different from the commitment that most of us make when we decide to have a child.